Benjamin Millar
Brookfield couple Jim and Evelyn Oakley have chalked up a remarkable milestone, celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary.
Last Tuesday marked 75 years since the couple wed in St Cuthbert’s church in the north of England on August 10, 1946.
Evelyn, 96, said the pair have enjoyed a wonderful life together since meeting one another.
“We’ve had a very good life together and have lovely memories, my husband is 98 and he usually has a nap in the afternoon and sometimes dreams about those days.”
The pair met towards the end of World War II, when Evelyn was working on the buses.
“He used to travel from home to work in the shipyards and I was a bus conductress,” Evelyn said.
“I had some mates on the bus with us, they were urging me to go and chat her up,” Jim said.
A year later the pair wed, setting sail for Australia five years later in 1951 on the RMS Cameronia with a three-year-old son.
Evelyn said the journey was inspired by an advertisement Jim saw in the newspaper.
“The advert said to ‘come and play in sunny Australia’, it was freezing in the north of England and things were still at a standstill, so we thought we would give it a try.
“We came out under the ‘ten pound Pom’ scheme and my husband liked the work out here.”
The family spent three years living in a migrant hostel in Brooklyn before building their first home in Sunshine, where they lived for 25 years.
When Jim’s work moved to Dandenong they relocated to Vermont South, then moved to Bacchus Marsh upon his retirement.
After 22 years there they moved to their current home in Brookfield.
Over that time their family grew to include four children, six grandchildren and now 10 great grandchildren.
The couple put the secret of their long relationship down to shared interests and respect for one another.
“We get on very well and we both like the same things,” Evelyn said.
“We are both fond of dancing, not that we do a great deal of that anymore, we both like to read and go out to the movies and go out for a meal.”
