Today is our 46th Wedding Anniversary. As Marilyn says, we should probably just stick with each other now. When we married, we couldn’t envisage where we would be in 46 years time. In those days, couples who reached fifty years had their photographs in the paper: old men with crumpled suits and old women with home perms looking bemused at all the fuss. We’re nearly there and can’t see ourselves in that way.
We were married in traditional style: white dress, dinner suit, 4 bridesmaids and so on. Our plan for a honeymoon was a cruise on the Angelina Lauro from Sydney to Perth. Unfortunately, there was a fire on the ship while it was in dry dock in Malta and the cruise was cancelled. The only other option the travel agent could offer was a coach trip from Sydney to Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, etc. A strange honeymoon, you might say but it was great.
When we came home, we set up house in Russell Vale where Marilyn had her studio for teaching Piano. I worked in Sydney at Coogee Boys’ Prep so every morning we would get up early so I could catch the train at about 6.30. It was always a rush and I can remember one morning scrambling up on the wrong side of the train as it pulled out. With all the fences nowadays, you couldn’t even get to that side of the train. Each week I would buy a weekly train ticket and a weekly ticket for the bus from Eddy Avenue to Randwick. I always carried a ten-shilling note for an emergency. It was matter of pride that the note remained unbroken by the end of the week. There were no mobile phones, or credit cards to make life more complicated.
In 1966, Robert Gordon Menzies was Prime Minister and had been for 16 years. Australia was certainly the lucky country, there were plenty of jobs and everybody was optimistic. The average wage was about $40 per week but the cost of living was low. It was an innocent time and people were genuinely shocked by crimes such as the disappearance on Australia Day of the Beaumont children from Glenelg Beach in South Australia which caused an extraordinary reaction.
Our TV set was black and white. The most popular show on TV was the Mavis Bramston Show. Don Lane and Graham Kennedy were big, and getting bigger. Normie Rowe won the Logie for the Most Popular Teenager on TV. Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots are Made for Walkin’ was on top of the charts for 8 weeks, Yellow Submarine and Good Vibrations also made it to #1 and the Easybeats released Friday on My Mind. All good clean fun songs!
The world has turned many times since then and our lives have had their ups and downs but, if I can be sentimental for a moment, life is richer when you’re married than when you’re single. We married in an optimistic time and have been able to hold on to that optimism for 46 years. Life is as good today as it was then and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted anything different.
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