By KATH GANNAWAY
IVAN and Olive Goldsmith shared delightful, beautiful, romantic memories of a lifetime together when they celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary at Warburton on 21 May.
It included their first date, a stroll and a kiss on a moonlit night under the pine trees above the channel, and their first photo together at Healesville Sanctuary.
It was 1938 and Olive was 15 and Ivan 17.
They met at Signs Publishing Company after Ivan’s father brought the family down from Sydney to work at Signs and Ivan took on a printing apprenticeship.
They were engaged on Olive’s birthday, 30 November when she was 19 and he 21, but had to wait for Ivan to get leave from service with the 10th Field Ambulance in WWII before they could marry.
They wrote to each other every day during the war as Olive squirrelled away ration coupons for whenever the big day might arrive. It came with just 10 days’ notice they were married in the chapel at the Sanitarium Health Foods factory and celebrated with a reception at the Masonic Hall over the road.
Honeymoon photos at Apollo Bay showed a young couple very much in love.
“At that time, we reckoned we knew each other and everything was going to work out,” Ivan said as they stepped up to cut their anniversary cake.
“I remember I started off my speech by saving ‘on behalf of me and my wife’ and everybody roared laughing.”
It brought a round of applause from friends and family who were celebrating with them at the Redwood Centre in Warburton.
Shared values and interests, including family and faith, photography, holidays, sport, travel, gardening, work and more currently Probus, have kept them close.
A photograph taken on Anzac Day shows them holding hands – just like they would have on their first moonlit night.
“They have always walked hand in hand together,” their daughter Merilyn said.
Their son Colin also spoke lovingly, saying they had been best friends for 75 years, in quality and quantity.
“You don’t often see one without the other,” he said.
