Doug and Marjorie to celebrate diamond wedding anniversary

“We’ll be there from noon, if anyone wants to join us,” Doug said.

While they’re both looking forward to celebrating 60 years of happy marriage, they’ve come a long way from that summer afternoon in ther UK, all those years ago.

“That day was very nice,” Marjorie said.

“It wasn’t very hot, but it wasn’t raining. That was the main thing.”

The couple met a few years earlier while living in the same small town.

“She lived on one side of the rail line, I lived on the other,” Doug said.

Doug said that their relationship began almost accidentally.

“I had failed my driving test twice,” he said.

“I needed someone with a license to sit in the car with me while I practised.

“I knew Marjorie had a license, so I asked her. At first, my girlfriend was sitting in the back of the car.

“But one thing led to another, and I proposed about 18 months before we got married."

Marjorie said they discovered they had something in common when they found out they were both quite a bit younger than their siblings.

“But when we got married, I only had one sister there, the rest had moved to Australia,” she said.

“But it was Doug’s idea to come out here. We had two children, and I was pregnant with a third.

Unfortunately, the couple lost their third child, and would move to Australia not long after, in 1972.

“We came out to Frankston, as that is where my sister lived,” Marjorie said.

In 1977, the couple moved to Shepparton, where Doug secured a job with Ambulance Victoria, similar to his work in the UK.

“We’ve been in the Goulburn Valley ever since,” he said.

After Doug retired in 2002, the couple moved to Benalla.

Looking back he said moving from Yorkshire to 1970’s Victoria was not quite the culture shock they imagined.

“It was a bit hotter,” he said.

“Sometimes Marjorie and the kids would be the only people on the beach. The Aussies thought it was too cold.”

Doug said their advice for young couples was to share everything, and make the most of every day.