Salt Rock’s Nelson Gavin was told he had four months to live in 2017. Last week he turned 100!

The proud centenarian celebrated the incredible milestone with his children, Sharon Pissarra – a well-known local teacher – and Keith Gavin, along with his grandchildren and extended family.

Born in Harrismith to a World War I veteran father and a mother who had spent time in an Anglo-Boer War concentration camp as a young girl, Nelson spent a few years in Vryheid before the family settled in Durban. He left school and started his first job at 14 in a depleted workforce, with many young men drafted to serve in World War II.

“Both of my older brothers went to war and the middle brother was sadly killed about a month before the armistice,” said Nelson, whose uncle also died in World War I.

“By the time I was 18, the draft was finished and I never did military service. Too young to have gone to war, too old to have been conscripted!”

Nelson worked for the Department of Customs and Excise, now part of the South African Revenue Service, for a few years before taking the opportunity to fix up a travelling yacht in his early 20s.

“The yacht had sailed from England to Durban but badly needed repairs. We joined, hoping to see the world,” he said.

“We got as far as Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in the north before eventually calling it off in East London in the south when the yacht was sold.”

Nelson moved to Pietermaritzburg when he returned and spent the majority of his career working with McNamee’s and De Villiers Furnishers. He met his wife, Renata, in Pietermaritzburg, and they were married for 50 years until she passed away in 2004.

Nelson enjoyed a quiet retirement before being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer nine years ago.

“I was told I had four months left, so I packed up and moved to Salt Rock to live with Sharon and her husband, Rob.

“It was only when I went for a second opinion that the doctor said I had been misdiagnosed.”

Nelson believes regular exercise, he played soccer and tennis for most of his life, and “a lack of boozing” contributed to his long-term health.

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