Great-grandmother Janina Archabuz has cooked thousands of meals and sewn almost as many intricate traditional dance costumes during her long involvement with the Polish community in Melbourne’s west.

It was a labour of love for the post-war migrant, and part of the way in which she held on to her cultural heritage while also stitching together a new life in an unfamiliar land far from the central European country of her birth.

Now, on the eve of her 100^th birthday, Archabuz’s contribution to her local Polish community has seen her become one of the two oldest unsung heroes recognised with a Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2026 Australia Day Honours.

Great-granddaughter Alana Skinder told The New Daily that Archabuz came to Australia with her husband Waclaw and their two infant children in 1949.

It was during the “populate or perish” wave of immigration, and almost immediately after they arrived they were unexpectedly separated because Waclaw had a work contract requiring him to be based on a Queensland sugarcane property.

Tragedy struck just a couple of years later when he died of leukemia, and Janina struggled to find someone who would give her a job to support her young son and daughter.

“She walked into the manager’s office of a sugarcane mill, showed him her empty purse and demanded a position,” Skinder said. “He actually relented, and she ended up working in the kitchen feeding the labourers at the mill.”

The family later moved to Melbourne, where they had other relatives living.

“She was then a single mum with two children, so everything in Australia was an uphill battle for her, but she managed to survive it,” Skinder said.

“And from my perspective, she didn’t just survive, she thrived.”

Archabuz ­became heavily involved with her local Polish community, within which she is affectionately known as Pani Babscha (“Mrs Grandma”). She helped out with everything from fundraising, catering and administration, to coordinating functions and making dance costumes and vestments.

She was the inspiration for a 2015 short film titled Dance to Remember, made by Joel Checkley and Belinda Ensor as part of the Multicultural Communities’ Collection Project. It describes how Polish immigrants who moved to the then undeveloped Melbourne suburb of Ardeer from the 1950s assisted each other build to homes, and then a community hall (Saint John Paul II Polish Center).

“We help each other, you know – if, for instance, a neighbour is helping me today, I was helping him next day,” Archabuz said in the film, explaining that the community had to raise the money to build the hall without any government assistance.

A younger Janina with young dancers from Wesole Nutki. Photo: A Dance to Remember

Skinder said her great-grandmother had wanted to be a dressmaker since her school days, but her dreams were quashed by the onset of World War II.

It was not surprising, then, that she volunteered when children’s dance troupe Wesole Nutki (Merry Notes), which was based at the new hall, needed someone to make their costumes.

The self-taught dressmaker had no patterns to work from, and instead used photos and record covers as inspiration for elaborate designs that represented folk costumes from different regions of Poland. They were worn with pride by the young dancers who performed interstate as well as throughout Melbourne.

“Sometimes there was up to 70 kids – four groups of the children… and this is how it started with my costumes,” Archabuz said in Dance to Remember.

“That was my challenge and I was happy that I can do something,” she added, explaining that the dance teacher’s requests were sometimes very specific.

“When it’s finished, when they start to dance, it was worth it… when they were dancing, they were happy.”

Some of the elaborate costumes made by Janina. Photo: A Dance to Remember

Wesole Nutki performed from 1985-2000, and after it ceased operating Archabuz continued volunteering with her local community, including cooking and sewing priests’ robes and other items for her church.

She still repairs and alters her own clothes, and was cooking for the community up until only two years ago.

“She never officially retired,” Skinder said, laughing.

Today, Archabuz lives independently in her own home in Ardeer. Her family – including three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren ­– will be gathering to mark her 100^th birthday on February 14, which will also be an opportunity to celebrate her OAM medal.

“I think that she’s very proud of everything that she’s accomplished… that’s not necessarily how she would say it, but it’s in the way she speaks about it,” Skinder said.

“I think she’s proud she’s been recognised.”

Pani Babscha herself is typically humble when asked what she thinks about being awarded an OAM.

“I don’t expect nothing like that at my old age, but it’s really nice that someone thinks about the older people,” she said. “The attention is just a plus.”