The Jindera woman, now hard of hearing and disbelieving, went through it all without a licence.

But she kept on driving, for year-after-year-after-year. A couple of decades’ worth.

“What’s this?” magistrate Rodney Brender asked the 63-year-old aged pensioner in Albury Local Court.

“You’ve been driving without a licence for 20 years? You haven’t had a licence since 1997.”

Listening to it all through a court-provided hearing aid, Elliott replied calmly and quietly that she thought she had.

She had been to the old Roads and Traffic Authority office in Albury, now Roads and Maritime Services, and diligently paid after the bill arrived in the mail.

But Mr Brender struggled to believe her story.

“It’s impossible,” he said.

“What have you been renewing? You couldn’t have been renewing your licence,” to which she replied: “I thought I was.”

“You must have been renewing your registration,” he said.

“Did you drive here today? It’s not possible for you to honestly believe you had a driver’s licence.”

Police told Mr Brender this week how Elliott’s car was pulled over in Pemberton Street, West Albury, on December 27 about 1.45pm so they could give her a random breath test. She was asked for her licence, which she reckoned was probably in the boot of the car.

The test showed she had not been drinking.

“The driver exited her vehicle and looked through her wallet but was unable to locate her licence,” police said.

When asked again and again she said that yes, she did have a licence but that it “must be in my other wallet at home”.

Instead, she pulled out a NSW pensioner card and her Medicare card.

Police checks revealed her licence was cancelled on December 2, 1997.

Elliott, who pleaded guilty to drive while licence cancelled, was convicted and fined $220.

And she was disqualified from obtaining a licence for one month.