YEI Member Spotlight: Ginny du Toit

At 83, Ginny du Toit proves that purpose has no retirement age. From starting over after loss to travelling, teaching and taking on new adventures, she is still finding reasons to embrace life.

At 83, Ginny du Toit has reached a simple conclusion about growing older: life is still there to be lived, but for her, living well means having a purpose too. Perhaps life moves a little more slowly and certainly differently from the way it did at 50 or 60, but there are still places to discover, people to help, adventures to have and reasons to get up in the morning.

Looking back, that need for purpose has followed Ginny throughout her life. Retirement did not mean stopping work, losing her husband did not mean giving up on plans they had made together, and moving into a retirement village has certainly not meant withdrawing from the world around her.

Her retirement years have included teaching computer literacy, travelling through Israel, exploring some of South Africa’s lesser-known roads, journeying through Australia’s Northern Territory, camping in the Kgalagadi for her 80th birthday and, perhaps most unexpectedly, buying a 125-year-old, nine-bedroom house and turning it into a boarding house.

Not everything went according to plan, but then that is part of what makes Ginny’s story such fun.

Retirement didn’t mean stopping

Ginny’s last formal career position was as Parish Secretary at St George’s Anglican Church in White River, a morning job that left her afternoons free to teach computer literacy to young unemployed adults. Even after officially retiring, she continued doing the church books and teaching her computer classes.

It was an early indication that simply being “retired” was never going to be enough for Ginny. She enjoyed being useful and, particularly through her computer classes, being able to pass on skills that could help someone else move forward.

In 2015, Ginny’s beloved husband, Ross, passed away. Although she remained where she was for a while, she became restless. She was grieving, but she also knew she was not ready for her own life to come to a standstill.

After talking to her sister, Ce, Ginny decided it was time for a change. It was a bold one too. She was going to leave the bush behind and head for the beach.

Falling in love with “This Ole House”

Ginny travelled to Mossel Bay on the Garden Route to look at housing options and somehow found herself buying a 125-year-old, double-storey house with nine bedrooms and a serious need for some tender loving care.

Her sister was, in Ginny’s words, “suitably unimpressed”, but Ginny had fallen in love with the place. For those who remember Rosemary Clooney singing This Ole House, Ginny had apparently found hers.

Together, Ginny and Ce set about bringing the old house back to life. They scrubbed, cleaned and painted, sold furniture and bought more, renovated the kitchen and pantry, waterproofed the leaking roof, polished old tarnished brass beds and ran up and down the staircase what Ginny describes as “a gazillion times a day”.

In many ways, the house gave Ginny exactly what she needed at that point in her life: something to throw herself into, something to build and a completely new chapter to navigate.  Eventually, they were ready for business.

And then came the boarders

They initially tried their hand at running a B&B over the Christmas season, but the property eventually became a boarding house. Ginny had imagined attracting people of a similar age with similar interests.

That, she discovered fairly quickly, was not going to happen.

Instead, the old house attracted a wonderfully unpredictable collection of characters of all ages, most of whom stayed for only four or five months. There was a hermit who painted and was seen so seldom that Ginny and Ce regularly checked that she was all right, an electrician who proved extremely useful in an old house, and a very conservative woman who decorated her room with artificial creepers.

There was also an addict, and one woman whose activities turned out to be rather different from what the sisters had anticipated. Once they discovered what she was doing, they had to ask her to leave. Another resident threw herself into the harbour and, thankfully, was rescued.

It was certainly not the peaceful little community of like-minded boarders Ginny had originally pictured, but for 18 months it gave the sisters a challenge, plenty to do and more than a few stories to tell.

When enough was enough

Eventually, Ginny and Ce decided they had experienced quite enough of boarding-house life and sold the property to someone who had originally wanted to buy it.

Despite the ups and downs, Ginny looks back on those 18 months with affection. The sheer physical work involved in restoring and running such a large house actually improved her health, while living and working so closely with her sister taught them both something about the strength of their relationship.

They bumped heads plenty of times, but came through the experience with an even stronger bond. Ginny had also proved something important to herself. After one of the greatest losses of her life, she could still start again, take a risk and build a new chapter.

Retirement became their time to explore

Adventure had already been an important part of retirement for Ginny and Ross. While they had the health and opportunity to travel, they made the most of it.

One memorable journey saw them spend a month exploring Israel from north to south, from water buffalo in the north and historic churches and tells, to Jerusalem, the Negev Desert and the Red Sea.

Closer to home, they deliberately travelled some of South Africa’s “roads less travelled”, discovering mountain passes they had never heard of and places they hadn’t known existed. There were also numerous trips into the Kruger National Park and visits to family in Australia, where they tried to explore somewhere new each time.

Ginny believes that, if you are fortunate enough to have the health and financial means, those first retirement years can be what she calls “a living adventure”. For her, retirement was never about filling time. It was about making something of the time available to you.

The trip she and Ross never made

There was one adventure Ginny and Ross had promised themselves but never had the opportunity to do together: Australia’s Northern Territory.

After Ross died, Ginny decided that she would still make the journey they had talked about. She joined a tour group and travelled through Darwin, Alice Springs and Uluru, loving the experience while knowing that Ross would have been smiling down on her.

Going without him must have been very different from the trip they had once imagined, but Ginny chose to honour the plan they had made rather than leave it as something that would never happen.

It became another part of learning how to continue living fully while still carrying someone you love with you.

Turning 80 in the Kgalagadi

When her 80th birthday came around, Ginny could have chosen a rather more sedate celebration. Instead, she headed for the Kgalagadi.

Together with her sister and two friends, she joined a tour group for a self-drive adventure that included camping, sand dunes, spectacular rock formations, camels and, of course, the magnificent Kgalagadi itself, with its snakes, birds, lions and unforgettable people.

It was exactly Ginny’s kind of birthday celebration and an adventure she will never forget. Age might have changed the pace, but it had not taken away her curiosity or willingness to experience something new.

Purpose doesn’t have a retirement age

Ginny now lives in a retirement village where she has access to all the facilities she needs, and this latest chapter has brought her to perhaps her most important realisation yet.

At 83, she still needs to have a purpose.

For Ginny, that does not necessarily mean taking on another enormous project or booking the next big journey. Purpose can be much closer to home. It can mean noticing the people around you, giving something of yourself, sharing what you know and helping where you can.

Looking back, that thread has been there all along. It was there when she taught computer literacy to young unemployed adults. It was there when she continued working after retirement. It was there when she and Ce breathed life into a neglected old house, when she found the courage to start again after losing Ross and when she continued travelling and experiencing the world.

Now, purpose is about finding ways to contribute within the life she has today.

Ginny’s message to others approaching retirement, or already well into it, is not that everyone needs to buy a nine-bedroom house, cross a desert or go camping at 80. It is simply not to assume that growing older means your meaningful years are behind you.

If you have the health and means, make your later chapters an adventure. If the adventures become smaller, let them become smaller. Keep learning, keep contributing and keep finding something that matters to you and to the people around you.

Live in your own time and on your own terms, but don’t stop being part of the world around you.

Ginny is still going at 83.  As she puts it, “Just a bit slower!”

A YEI article