Mrs Robbins takes over the title from Jane Gray, who died on Saturday at her Smithfield nursing home.

When Mrs Robbins was born on February 28, 1902, Edmund Barton was prime minister, Australia was fighting the second Boer War and Brisbane was yet to be declared a city. Orville and Wilbur Wright were still working on their idea for a flying machine and the invention of the personal computer was 75 years away.

Widowed 40 years ago, Mrs Robbins spent most of her life in Coogee. She lived independently until 2011, when she moved into the Little Sisters of the Poor nursing home in Randwick, where staff regard it as an honour to care for her.

A long-time volunteer for causes ranging from the Coogee Public School P&C to Alcoholics Anonymous, she also became a familiar figure at the Prince of Wales Hospital when she took up volunteering there at the age of 100.

Mrs Robbins spent every Tuesday at the hospital working in the mail room until she stepped down from her post in 2012.

Her impressive efforts have been recognised by the federal member for Kingsford-Smith, Matt Thistlethwaite, who launched the annual Vi Robbins Volunteer Award in her honour earlier this year.

Mrs Robbins won her first modelling assignment at the age of 108, when she posed for photographer Anne Geddes for a coffee-table book, Beginnings, published in 2010.

Her hearing and eyesight might be failing but she enjoyed an afternoon tea with fellow nursing home residents at the Little Sisters of the Poor on Monday. A non-driver, she has previously attributed her longevity to frequent walks, not smoking and only drinking in moderation.

Mrs Robbins is in an elite group of so-called supercentenarians, or people who live past the age of 110. It is believed there are only four living supercentenarians in Australia and between 300 and 450 in the world.