She made a bit more last December when, as the oldest resident of an Australian immigration detention centre, she celebrated her 99th birthday with cake and a song with inmates and staff at Brisbane's low-security facility.

With a little luck, she will make more history in December, when visitors who became friends in Brisbane will fly down to mark her 100th birthday at the Melbourne home that constitutes community detention.

It will not only be one woman's extraordinary resilience that will be celebrated, but the bond that brought four generations of one family on board a boat in the hope of giving their young ones an education and a future.

Other family members were offered resettlement as Rohingya refugees in the US two years ago, but say they declined to take it because it would mean leaving Ali Nesha, pictured, behind in Kuala Lumpur.

''My brother said, '[If] my grandmother not going, my family not going to America','' recalls granddaughter Tara Begum.

Now they are all together, apart from Ali Nesha's son-in-law, who suffers from asthma and did not think he would survive the voyage, and two of his daughters who stayed with their father and their husbands in Malaysia.

The voyage was most remarkable not because the youngest of more than 120 passengers was just a few weeks old, and the oldest 98. All were Rohingyas, who had fled Burma and are described by the UN as ''one of the world's most persecuted peoples.'' Nor was it most remarkable because they left Malaysia without any GPS or crew, with only the clothes they were wearing, their UNHCR identity cards and a map to tell them where they were heading.

What distinguished it from most others, according to their accounts, was that there was no people-smuggler involved, no middle man who organised their travel for profit.

The families say they simply pooled their meagre resources, bought a boat and headed off for Australia or New Zealand.

Tara Begum says her grandmother handled the 10-day voyage as well as any one on board. Everyone else suffered seasickness and was scared, she says, while Ali Nesha slept most of the journey. ''She is very special.''

Now they are preparing for a new life, and trying to put out of their minds the fact they do not yet have a visa and that, when and if they get one, it will be temporary.

Ali Nesha might be too old for dreams and her body is frail, but her mind is sharp and her smile is warm and generous.

She lives for the present and says she is very happy the family is safe, together and has a future.

''[Before there was] never free time,'' she says, through Tara, who also learnt her English in detention and is hungry to learn more.

''Now is very free time.''