A couple’s Midas touch

A lifetime of love and luck has been the cornerstone of one Manjimup couple’s relationship, who last month reached their 70th wedding anniversary.

Nancy and Peter Jones celebrated their wedding anniversary on March 17, surrounded by their family and friends.

Born and raised in Manjimup, Nancy’s family were orchardists who lived on Seven Day Road.

Peter said coming from somewhat of a broken family, Nancy’s family took him under their wing.

For years before they got married, Peter would go out to Nancy’s farm to spend time with the family.

Even though they were together, the couple were not able to get married.

“The decorum of those days was that the eldest daughter married first,” Peter said.

Nancy added that due to that tradition, she and Peter were not able to get married for 14 months because her sister got engaged a few months after them.

“The culture was so different back then,” Peter said.

Nancy said she was not quite sure what it was originally that set them on the path of love, but she remembered Peter had been coming out to the home as a friend for years.

“We just treated him like one of the family for years and then I don’t know what happened, we just decided we’d go out together,” she said.

Having met when she was 16, they started going out together when she was 19. Nancy joked she had looked around and had “not found anyone better”.

Peter added that he felt they had not so much drifted into love, but rather they had realised how lucky they were.

The couple married on St Patrick’s Day in 1949, a usual practice in those days, when Peter was 23 and Nancy was nearly 22.

“A lot of people married on feast days,” Peter said.

Nancy added it was also common back then for people to get married during Lent — a Catholic period between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday — which was a time when people liked a celebration.

Peter and Nancy also share their wedding anniversary date with one of their grandchildren and Nancy’s parents.

From the beginning of their married life, Peter said they were quite lucky in how their family grew, starting with a one-bedroom house, right up to a family house fit for their six children.

“Our fingers seemed to touch gold everywhere we went,” he said.

“Not money, we never had money, but everything seemed to work out so marvellously.”

Peter said in their 70 years of marriage, he and Nancy never had any real problems.

“I just said yes to everything,” he joked.

Nancy said the key to success in their happy marriage was keeping family as the focal point.

“We did everything we could together and we never bought anything we couldn’t afford,” Nancy said.

Having being born, raised and married in Manjimup, Nancy said she had seen so many changes in the town.

Changes included how the family dynamic worked and the huge changes in technology.

“I think we had the lucky years, myself,” she said.

A house painter by trade for about 50 years, Peter said he met so many people and one thing he felt had changed over the years was social interaction.

Having been married in 1949 and having lived through World War II, Peter said living in Manjimup at the time, there was an element of scarcity.

“Those were horse and cart days,” he said.

He added that in those days, there was a blacksmith in what is now the carpark area behind the Manjimup Hotel.

“We often go down the main street and try and remember what businesses were there, we can almost get all the way down the main street,” Nancy said.

Their Lower South West Football League team of preference is Tigers, even though one of their sons played for Imperials at one time.

While they are consummate Manjimupians, the couple have travelled the world, but they have always made a happy return home.