It’s hard to know where to start when interviewing someone whose memories span more than a century. At 106, Len Guy is in remarkably good health, with a sharp recollection of events and a seemingly endless wealth of stories.

“This might be an interesting story,” says Len, leaning in a little and pausing a moment before launching into his tale.

“My Dad and I, we went down to Sydney and my mother said when you're down there make some inquiries about a motor car.”

 Len later says this would have been in the late 1930s. After checking into their hotel, Len says his Dad asked where they might buy a second-hand car.

“The chap at the counter said you go up Parramatta Road, so we did, and we walked into this car dealership — and it's funny how you remember certain things, but I can remember the second-hand car salesman's name was Mr Wolf!

“And of course, those people have a bit of a reputation of being a bit dodgy, but anyway he was a good man.

“We asked him about the car and before we knew it Dad had bought the car!”

But now, the proud owners of their very first motor vehicle realised someone had to drive it home.

“I didn't have a licence. I'd never driven a car before and Dad hadn't... Well, Mr Wolf didn't seem to think that was a problem and he took me out to Centennial Park and he gave me three-quarter of an hour's tuition in the driving of a car and I drove it home!

“All the way from Sydney to Binnaway! I don't know how, when I look at the road these days, I don't know how!”

Len’s father had migrated to Australia from China. Initially drawn to the allure of the Victorian goldfields of Victoria, he battled around country NSW, working odd jobs until he decided to settle in the small railway town of Binnaway in 1917.

Len had been born the previous year in Bendigo, but says violent altercations on the goldfields, often racially motivated, prompted his father to leave.

“My father was very averse to violence and there was a lot of trouble on the goldfields… One day he picked up the paper and read that the NSW Government intended to extend the railway from Mudgee to Binnaway and beyond, to open up that northwestern sector of the State, and he thought well this looks like the place to start a business,” recalls Len

The general store he opened was to remain in the Guy family for over 70 years. Len and his brother, Stan, took over the business from their father and it eventually was run by Len’s grandson.

“It was a general business,” says Len. “In those days, before the chains, the stores in the country, they stocked practically everything.

“And Binnaway was a very progressive railway town in those days, but its decline started when they replaced the steam engine with the diesel-electric locomotive. Binnaway was originally planned to be a coaling and watering station for the steam locomotives and when the new diesel-electric came they didn't need that.”

While Len says anti-foreigner sentiments were prevalent in Australia at the time, by and large, the people of Binnaway embraced their family.

“To their credit, the people of Binnaway came around to being very friendly. We had some very good friends who didn't regard us… as far as culture or beliefs or religion was concerned, they were very tolerant.

“I always think that my parents were very tolerant… my father was a Buddhist and my mother was a devout Anglican and yet they ironed out all their cultural and religious differences,” recalls Len.

“At Christmas time, we celebrated Christmas and we celebrated Chinese New Year and we got along quite well that way.”

At 11 years old, Len was to undergo a bit of a culture shock for a boy from Binnaway, being sent by his father to Hong Kong for schooling.

“I spent five years in Hong Kong and I don't know whether they tossed a coin or what it was but my brother went to All Saints College in Bathurst, so they had a bit each way you could say,” says Len.

In the 1940s, when Australia went to war against Germany and Japan, Len, like so many other young Australian went to enlist, but it was during the medical exam that first discovered he was short-sighted.

“But it might have been a salvation for me,” says Len, whose friend Bobby did get accepted into the service, but sadly never returned.

“When I got knocked back for military service, I took on a job in the industry... We were making front axles for Bren gun carriers — that was our main armoured vehicle in those days — and  we were making roller bearings for the six-inch naval guns and, oh, we did a lot of things.”

Asking Len if there is anything he misses from his youth in Binnaway, he says only that community life seemed closer then.

“What I miss mainly is the contact between people, the social life, people were closer together then – well naturally your family were with you — but you had a lot more friends and they were closer…

“The weekend dance was, well it was a must in those days, you used to get together and that was a way of maintaining an atmosphere of social togetherness,” he says.

But as for tips on how to live to a ripe old age, Len doesn’t have any secrets to share.

“I have got no panacea for longevity, Jono. If I did I wouldn't be talking to you, I would have written a book and I'd be relaxing in the South of France!

“I look back and think of the times I could have been seriously injured or been killed… I went down to enlist with a mate of mine, I got out of it and he was successful in getting into the service and was killed!

“So, I think good fortune features into it a good deal — and I think good management too,” says Len, who never took to smoking and limits beer to the odd social occasion.

“I always appreciated that the human body was something that had to be looked after and could be abused and that by taking injurious substances into your body, you would damage it.

“I realised that and I think that's part of the secret of me being reasonably healthy all my life and for so long.”