The Medea Park Residential Care resident enjoy his birthday surrounded by his closest friends and family at the facility.

Mr McDonald's story began in India, he told The Examiner last week.

"It was an exciting time," he said.

"My most vivid memory of this time was of a hunting picnic on the road to Kandahar.

"While the officers were spread out looking for wildlife our Indian guards decided on some rifle practice.

"They set up a bottle on a mud wall about 40 feet away, but kept missing their target.

"I could see where the bullets were hitting the wall and like any small boy, desperately wanted to dig one out to see what it looked like."

Mr McDonald later left India and moved to England before settling in Tasmania.

"The next thing I knew, I was licking stamps as post boy in the city office of the P&O Company," he said.

"Living in London on 25 shillings a week was not possible and my mother still had to send me money for my board.

"When war broke out, I was serving as an able seaman in tankers and tramp ships in Atlantic convoys and between voyages, undertook special anti submarine and aircraft gunnery courses.

"While at sea I studied navigation and periodically obtained my certificates for second mate, first mate, and master mariner.

"During one of these intervals I met and married my wife Kaye."

Stints as a salesman and a company boss followed, before Mr McDonald found God and love in Australia soon after.