Just three months shy of her 92nd birthday, Patricia Wornall will be the oldest female competing at the Pan Pacific Masters Games when she takes to the pool in the 50m breaststroke and 50m freestyle races from Friday.

It will be the first time Mrs Wornall has competed in more than 70 years — the last time being at high school, when she won the race.

She said she entered the Masters competition, held this year on the Gold Coast, "just for fun".

"[Some people] think I'm crazy. They say 'oh, you've got a lot of nerve'," she said.

"Well I think, it's too late now. I've entered [the Masters] and that's it.

"I felt that for my age and fitness level, I thought 'who cares. Let's have some fun'."

Building strength and endurance

After moving to Australia 18 years ago, it was only last year that Mrs Wornall took up swimming again at a heated pool in Buderim, training twice a week for the Games.

Her coach and Goodlife Community Centre aquatic manager Joanne Efendi has been impressed with her fitness and grit.

"Everyone who knows Patricia is amazed by her determination and just how positive she is about going and competing," Ms Efendi said.

"We don't have many 91 year olds training at our facility. She asked me about swimming at the Masters and I said 'Let's do it. It's quite achievable'.

Mrs Wornall has always dreamed of performing in an underwater ballet like her Hollywood heroine Esther Williams. ( ABC Sunshine Coast: Megan Kinninment )

"So we've been working on building up her strength and endurance.

"She's a very determined woman. She hasn't competed since high school, but once she puts her mind to something she wants to achieve it."

Early start as a swimmer

While the competitive training is new, Mrs Wornall has had a life-long love affair with the water.

Growing up in New Zealand, her mother taught her to swim at a small pool across from their home.

"It was just a concrete pool, corrugated iron fence and no heated water or anything in those days," she said.

"My mother would tear up an old bed sheet, tie it around my waist and walk around the pool to teach me to swim.

"I could swim by the time I was three and I never feared the water."

While Mrs Wornall learned to swim young, it was underwater ballet that really captured her heart.

"I loved Esther Williams. I would have loved to have been in an underwater ballet … but it wasn't the done thing back then," she said.

Mrs Wornall, from Buderim, is the oldest female competitor at the Games held on the Gold Coast. ( ABC Sunshine Coast: Megan Kinninment )

Instead, she would copy the routines of the 1940s Hollywood star and perform them to a small audience at a local waterhole.

"I feel free in the water," Mrs Wornall said.

She attributes her fitness to a lifetime of ballet and gardening, including a stint on farms when she was called up to the Land Army in New Zealand during World War II.

"I've done a lot of dancing in my younger days, and I think ballet and hard work is what's kept me fit really," she said.

Whether she wins a medal in the swimming competition is not the point, Mrs Wornall said.