Annie Mason said one of the highlights of her day was a birthday card from Queen Elizabeth II.

Annie Mason remembers the sinking of the Titanic. She witnessed the arrival of the motor car, television, space travel and the internet. She's one of a select group old enough to have seen Halley's Comet twice.

As she turned 108 on Saturday, Annie is New Zealand's oldest person – and the frontrunner in what will become an ever-expanding segment of the population: those who live to be over 100.

According to a 2016 Statistics New Zealand report, more than 10 per cent of people born today can expect to reach three figures, while those who reach the age of 65 can expect to live into their late 80s.

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/FAIRFAX NZ Annie waits to cut the cake with her son David Mason and daughter-in-law Heather Taylor-Mason at her side.

Annie was among the 558 Kiwi centenarians recorded in the last census. And as she celebrated at The Oaks Rest Home and Village in Christchurch on Thursday, she reckoned the secret to a long life was simple – don't let life's challenges faze you too much.

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"Whatever life throws at you, you work your way through it. Happy marriages always help, too."

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/FAIRFAX NZ Her strongest piece of advice is: "Whatever life throws at you, you work your way through it."

And Annie, likely knows know all too well about life's challenges, having grown up in London in the early 20th century as the world prepared for war.

"Some days were happy days, but the poverty was great – there were the starvation days."

Those days might be long gone and the staunch royalist and Brit celebrated her milestone with a birthday message from Queen Elizabeth II, which was read during a high tea of scones, cakes and sandwiches.

"I like the Queen, she is a wonderful lady," Annie said, her room bedecked with pictures of family, the Queen, Wills and Kate.

The last of eight children, Annie said she couldn't believe she had reached 108 but was "very lucky". She has a good memory, which often means she remembers events perhaps best forgotten.

She recalls how her mother would pawn the family's sheets to buy food for the week and, on Fridays they'd cross their fingers to see if her father's pay cheque would arrive so that they could retrieve their bedding.

She left school at 14 to begin working with her mother as a milliner. She later moved to New Zealand, and enjoyed a happy marriage before her husband's sudden death in 1981.

Despite a fall three years ago and a recent bout of pneumonia, her son David Mason, 73, says Annie stakes no medication, and only moved from her home recently.

"She was at home till she was 105 and a half, always paid her own bills and did the house duties. Just amazing."

Her son, born in 1943, said she often spoke of years gone by.

"She can remember the Titanic going down. All the children were turned out into the garden while the adults spoke about it," her son David said.

Two years later in 1914, Annie's father came home from work saying, "I've joined up to go to war".

"She can remember him marching down the road, next to his brother, waving goodbye as they all marched off to the docks to get on the boat."

Her uncle was killed while fighting next to her father, who returned shell-shocked, gassed and wounded by shrapnel.

Years later and still living in London, Annie's memories of the Blitz during World War II remain clear.

"She said [it] was just terrible – you'd walk down the street and whole blocks would be gone, especially with the carpet bombing going on around factories."

During and after the war, Annie worked for the Women's Voluntary Service (WVS), tending to people repatriated after the war.

She had three children, David, Peter and Margaret. David and Margaret live in New Zealand, with Peter in England.

Annie cared for people throughout her life but always put family first – "she was always knitting cardigans for somebody".

BY THE NUMBERS

Since 1840, life expectancy across the world has increased by about two years every 10 years, according to Statistics New Zealand.

People aged 65 and over nearly doubled in number between 1981 and 2013 - from 309,795 to 607,032 people.

People aged 85 and over are making up a growing proportion of the group, growing by 10.8 per cent between 2001 to 2013.

A girl born in 2014 has a life expectancy of 95 years.

Less than one per cent of people born in the late 19th century reached 100.

Only about two per cent of men and six per cent of women born in the the mid-20th century are likely to reach the age of 100.

People born in the mid-2010s - about 11 per cent of men and 17 per cent of women - will become centenarians.