1954 to 2024: Colleen's 70-year Easter celebration as Sacred Heart organist

She wasn't planning on performing, in fact she was there by chance.

Mrs Stingel began learning the organ when she was eight-years-old.

Her music teacher Josephine Littlejohn was the organist for her local church.

"When I went for the music lesson ... she said, 'oh we're not having a lesson here with the piano Colleen, I'm taking you down to the church and going to show you how to play the organ'," Mrs Stingel said.

"And she said, 'if I'm not doing it, you will be'."

Mrs Stingel didn't think much of Ms Littlejohn's comments, she recalls thinking "oh big deal".

But on the Good Friday in 1954, a brother came to tell her that Ms Littlejohn had come down with the flu, and that Mrs Stingel would have to step in and play for Easter Sunday Mass.

"Oh, I nearly died," Mrs Stingel said.

"I can still remember how nervous I was - I was scared stiff."

Seventy years later, you'll still find Mrs Stingel playing the organ at Ulverstone's Sacred Heart Catholic Church, on the north coast of Tasmania.

"I'm honoured," she said.

"It was only my sister and I in the family, and Mum and Dad always said if you can do something and you don't share it, you shouldn't have it.

"It's just something that's happened."

However, Mrs Stingel said she hasn't played continually throughout the years, having had breaks when she gave birth to her twins, when she looked after her mum and when she suffered an aneurysm in 2009.

"Christine Delaney did it for a long time because I couldn't do it," she said.

Mrs Stingel, who performed on Good Friday and Easter Saturday, said she's grateful to have had the support of the parish.

"It's a great little parish," she said.

"Everyone's very supportive and very friendly and I'm lucky we have a really good choir, Ed Reilly's a really good conductor.

"I always say, if you like music or reading, you're never lonely."