One of Neerim South's oldest and longest residents, Jean Roper (nee Rendell), died recently, aged 95 years.

Jean was born at the Neerim District Soldier's Memorial Hospital on November 27, 1928, the only child of Frank Rendell and Margaret Miller.
The Rendell family were pioneers of the district dating back to Jean's great grandparents Richard and Maria Rendell (nee Watts) who settled in Fernshaw in 1866. Richard had a thriving fruit plantation growing raspberries and apples. Fruit, mainly for jam making, was delivered by horse and cart to Melbourne, the return journey taking three days.
In 1887 Fernshaw was compulsorily acquired by the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works for water catchment and supply. Richard and Maria Rendell had to move, and they decided Neerim East would be home for place for them and their nine surviving children.
While the family home was being built in Neerim East, Richard bought a house at 12 Craig St Warragul. He ended up owning 11 properties spread across Craig, Smith, Albert and Victoria Street. By 1917 the family owned 467 acres in Neerim East.
The site of the original Rendell family farm was on Rendell Rd.
Jean attended Neerim East school and later Doncaster Primary whilst staying with her Aunt May and Flemington Girls Secondary College.
She was accepted into Melbourne Technical College School of Applied Art and was subsequently head hunted by Val Morgan to work in their art department. She was responsible for creating commercial slides shown in cinemas.
Jean married Robert Roper at Scots Church in Melbourne on April 6, 1950. Early in their marriage they owned a private hospital at 41 Harcourt St, Hawthorn which they later repurposed into a guest home.
Robert and Jean were members of the Royal Yacht Club in Melbourne, and they enjoyed sailing their yacht, the Rani.
Jean gave birth to her first child Ann in July 1951 but continued her art studies at the Art Training Institute. In the years that followed she worked for a Sydney art firm and at Ringwood Timber and Trading Company creating their graphics. She lived at Park Orchards and Croydon and over the course of those years had two additional children, Ian and Andrew. The youngest, Lisa was born in 1967 at Neerim South Hospital.
Jean and Robert returned many times to the Neerim District, with their young children. They stayed with her father at the Neerim East property and later at 51 Wattle Lane Neerim South.
When Frank Rendell died in 1967 the pair took over the property there, with the decision to transform the acreage into a strawberry and later raspberry farm.
It was a hard life with no town water on the block until Robert dug a water line to join into that of a neighbour. This line has been joined into many times since to supply water to homes in the area.
Jean and Bob divorced in early 1975 after a long separation. Jean continued with her responsibilities of raising a family of four and managing the property.
To ensure that her children were fed and clothed Jean was up at dawn each day picking her organic strawberries and raspberries. She sold her fruit to supermarkets and fruiters and to her many loyal customers who came back year after year. All the children at one stage or other were enlisted to help pick and pack the fruit for sale.
Jean was before her time in many ways with her passion for all things organic and she would never use sprays or artificial fertiliser.
Jean was a member of the Gippsland Self Sufficiency and Conservation Group and took a trip to Cooktown in 1980 to participate in the second World Wilderness Congress.
Later in life Jean's love of art and creativity was to be revealed in two very different but remarkable ways.
Jean experimented with the use of bark as an artistic medium and before long was creating what was to become a vastly productive stream of paintings covering diverse themes including "Queen St Warragul 1876," and the "Hill of Winbaraku" in Central Australia.
Newspaper articles covered her exhibitions which were held at the Warragul library and local Neerim South venues.
The other direction in which this artistic talent was to flourish, was her magnificent garden. Jean had a natural affinity with nature and plants and went onto repurpose her wonderful acreage into a colourful palette of roses, perennials, annuals, shrubs, native and citrus trees, stone fruit trees, hazelnuts, kiwi vines, vegetables and of course strawberries and raspberries It was all arranged with an artist's eye for design.
Jean opened the garden to the public between the late 80s and 90s. She named the garden 'Mambara' which she had taken from an Aboriginal word for 'paperbark tea tree'. She concurrently opened her own art gallery at the house for her paintings. She was welcomed into the Victorian ABC Open Garden Scheme where busloads of people visited and funds raised were often donated to the Neerim District Soldiers' Memorial Hospital and local schools.
Jean was still gardening well into her late eighties.
Jean died at Casey Hospital in July.