The French boys of Narrabundah have grown up used to being in the spotlight – or at least a topic of discussion – as the first triplets born in the still-young national capital.
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They made page 5 of The Canberra Times on March 4, 1958, following their birth three days earlier.
Bob, Mick and Tom did score the front page of The Canberra Times in 1979, when they celebrated their 21st birthday.
Tom, a bit of a joker, reckons the main response they got at the time was from people upset they didn't get an invite to their party.
Their mother, Elaine, who is now 94 and still lives in Narrabundah, incredibly had 12 children with husband Tom, who died in 2006.
At the time the triplets were born, the couple also had five other children, all under the age of eight, the youngest of whom was two.
Mrs French, over the years, had two girls then nine boys and then another girl. They were Frances, Kay, David, Peter, Anthony, Mick, Bob and Tom, Christopher (who died at six weeks), Gregory, Paul and Maryanne.
"People always ask how I coped, but I just did what I had to do. I didn't think about it," she said.
Mrs French still lives in the same family home in Narrabundah which she brought the triplets home to in 1958. The walls are festooned with family photographs.
It was a three-bedroom house at the time the triplets were born, but the government added on another bedroom when they arrived.
All the clippings from the time of their birth are faithfully stored in photograph albums, including their appearance in an ad for Rinso laundry powder. The company had given Mrs French a year's supply but she gave it away to her friends because "you can't wash nappies in Rinso".
The triplets were ferried around in a large cane pram, which Mrs French still has, using it to store blankets.
"Men in trucks used to see me wheeling it around and yell out, 'Have you got a licence for that?'," she said.
Mr French, who was employed at the Department of Works, his sister and Mrs French would take turns getting up at night to feed the triplets.
"We did hire a nurse but she only stayed two nights because she couldn't get any sleep," Mrs French said.
The triplets attended St Edmund's College where they often tried to trick their teachers about who was who.
"When we did something wrong the headmaster couldn't give us the cuts because he didn't know who'd done it. Then he woke up to that and gave us all the cuts," Tom said.
Bob, a records manager at the CSIRO, said it was not easy finding their way as not only members of a large family, but as triplets who people often treated as the one person.
"My advice to parents of twins and triplets would be to treat them as individuals," he said.
Tom, now retired, said they all had their own personalities. "I'm crazy, Bob's the serious one and Mick's the sporty one," he said.
Bob, who lives in Jerrabomberra, added: "I'm more reflective, Tom wants to have fun and Mick's the more social of the three of us".
Mick, who was a locksmith and carpenter, now works with his son and lives in Queanbeyan.
"Only one of us in the family moved to the dark side [north of the lake] and that was Kay," he said.
Mrs French has 27 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, with another two great-grandchildren on the way.
She is diminutive but, we can attest, gives a nice, firm hug. "She used to be six foot four and each baby brought her down a bit," Mick joked.
So what is the secret to her long life?
"I think always being busy, hard work. I used to work 17 hours a day when they were babies," she said. "And being happy."
Tom agreed. "We all had a very good, happy life together."
