“I just sit back in my chair and enjoy looking out at the garden,” Mr Lynes said.

“When you get to this age, you really appreciate everything.”

But there are some aspects of ageing he hadn’t anticipated.

“There are so many things you don’t realise are important until you don’t have them,” he said.

Due to illness, Mr Lynes isn’t driving at the moment and said losing his independence was very hard.

“You have to rely on family or support groups or the community,” he said.

“And then you need assistance with shopping and the bags just get heavier and heavier and people have to take you along and bring you back again.”

Mr Lynes said he hoped Monday’s Ballarat District Nursing & Healthcare forum on improving late adulthood support services would take issues such as a loss of independence into account.

“Maybe a community club or someone like that wouldn’t mind setting up a mini-bus service for people like me who are temporarily house-bound,” he said.

He also said tele-health conferencing would be a great benefit to people over  75, who he said were becoming more and more technology savvy.

He added that Legacy held regular computer classes, with many of its members now able to send emails and search the web, which all added to making them feel connected to the world.