IF anyone’s life is book worthy, it has to be Portland’s Joy Davis.

Not only was she a businesswoman, council reporter, proofreader, columnist, councillor, mayor, trustee and member of countless organisations, she raised 15 children.

“I think we were the second-largest family in Portland,” the 95-year-old matriarch she says. “And we weren’t even Catholic.”

Her eight sons and seven daughters are aged from 51 to 75 (daughter Tracey died only a day old). “No favourites! I loved every one of them,” she says. “The kids all get on, no one got into any serious trouble.”

To date, she has 41 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren, every one of them her pride and joy.

There is a Davis family reunion each year in Halls Gap, where the family has always holidayed over Easter; this year’s get-together in March saw 67 turn up, representing four generations.

Joy’s husband Ray Davis, the love of her life, died in 1999 aged 75, from cancer. It was a quick death – a blessing for Ray but a shock to Joy.

“But I still talk to him, ask his advice. We were both so interested in the business, running the Portland Observer and the printing side. We got on so well, we hardly every argued. He was a lovely man.”

While Ray was the ‘softie’ when it came to the kids, Joy was the tough cookie. She had to be.

“I cooked every meal, made all their clothes. I’d do five loads of washing, then take five little ones to my office in the old bond store where I did the bookwork and the wages, posted the papers, did the advertising, then I’d go home and cook dinner for up to 12, then report on a council meeting. Often I’d get to bed at 2am, then up at 7.”

When she served on Portland council for 15 years, she was still managing the business and had 12 or 13 children at home. When she was mayor for two terms, she had two young children. She was the only woman on council most of the time.

“I’ve worked all my life, through every pregnancy,” she says.

“Pregnancy was easy for me, I enjoyed being pregnant, though it was traumatic losing Tracey. They were all natural births, all born at the old Portland hospital and the current one.

“It was my choice to have so many children. I wanted a family that I never had growing up.”

Her Melbourne childhood was marked by the loss of her 37-year-old mother to tuberculosis – Joy was 12 at the time, the eldest of three girls (another sister died as a child from diphtheria). While her mother was in a sanatorium the two eldest were sent to an orphanage in Brighton and the youngest to a babies’ home.

Mrs Davis said her father was very dour who showed them no affection. He remarried but there was no maternal love from their stepmother. “She resented us so Dad told us we had to get out while we were still in our teens.”

At nearly 18, on a visit to Portland in 1946, she met 22-year-old Ray Davis, who had served during the war in Australia and was back working for the family business. They married in Melbourne in 1948 and nine months later their first child Michael was born.

“We had nothing to start with,” Mrs Davis says. “We lived in an old army tent for a year while building our first house in Barkly Street.  We then built a three-bedroom house next door. I loved that house.

“In 1963, we bought the opposition newspaper, the Portland Guardian – so we had two newspapers and nine children by then, but no house because we were between houses. So we rented a rundown farmhouse just out of town with no services, a separate brick building for the kitchen and a cottage - with dirt floors in some rooms - where the 11 of us slept.”

The family’s new home in Arthur Street had a luxurious five bedrooms; they later built another seven-bedder in Rebecca Road.

 Michael, 75, says growing up with a lot of siblings just seemed normal.

“It was organised chaos in the home – we looked after ourselves and the older kids looked after the younger ones. We all had a very happy upbringing and spent nearly all our time outdoors during the daylight hours as kids did in those days.

“Mealtimes were a matter of survival of the fittest. We always had plenty of food but nothing fancy.

“We always had birthday parties with cake, lemonade and hundreds and thousands with cream on fresh bread.

“We didn't have many holidays away from Portland growing up but every year we went to Halls Gap in the Grampians at Easter. Mum and Dad did that for over 40 years.

“One year while in Halls Gap mum and dad took a carload of kids to Stawell on Easter Saturday. On the way back to Halls Gap mum was doing a head count in the rear vision mirror and discovered that Belinda (child No. 8) was missing; it was a quick U-turn and back to Stawell to find Belinda at the Stawell police station.

“Another time my sister Hayley had a friend stay for a weekend at our home in Rebecca Road and on the following Monday morning the friend’s mother ran into mum in the street and said, ‘thanks for having Sue over the weekend’, to which mum replied, ‘Did I?’.

“That sums up how she has always led a pretty hectic life.”

Mrs Davis’ memory is prodigious and she’s still sharp as a tack. But at 96, her eyesight is failing. She is trying to write her memoirs, sourced from her daily diaries written over 75 years, but she can no longer read small print. She can no longer cook (though she can microwave) or do her magnificent craftwork.

But she is not one to wallow in the challenges of old age. She zips around town on her green scooter, swims 500m a day at the heated pool and keeps socially active: the Fibre Group at Julia Street Creative, Probus, the Widows Group.

And then of course there’s the family: 85 descendants to keep in touch with and track of.

Does she remember everyone’s name? Does she buy birthday and Christmas presents for all of them?

Yes, most of the time; and no, present giving stops once they leave school.

Would she do it all again?

At the drop of a hat.

“I’ve had a wonderful life. I loved having so many children. I am blessed. The harder I worked, the luckier I got.

“After Ray died, to cope with the loss, I started travelling at 73. I backpacked around Spain and Turkey, climbed Swiss mountains, travelled around France, Italy and the UK.”

She lived on a cattle station in outback Queensland, an Aboriginal mission 200km from Broome and visited the Torres Strait Islands. Bali is her dream destination; she’s been 11 times.

“I’ve also been lucky with my health. Just my eyesight is failing now and I have had a pacemaker since 2011. I’d never been to hospital before then except to have children.

“I don’t feel 95 inside, I feel 80. But I’m glad I’ve got the runs on the board. I do want to live forever, though I do worry about the state of the world. Imagine Trump being president again?”