‘How moving to the country was the best thing we ever did’

I’m 85 years old and I’ve lived in Australia with my wife, Jacqui, for 32 years. That’s a little over half of our married lives together! The rest of the 60 years were spent in New Zealand (five years) and England.

We’ve always been a couple who enjoy meeting other people, finding out how they live and where they’ve been in their lives. This is where Australia stands head and shoulders above the rest of the world. We have made many more friends in the latter 30 years, than we did in the first 30. And to fine it down even further, we spent our first nine Australian years in Melbourne and the last 23 years in the small town of Yarram, in Gippsland, 10 minutes from the sea.

Life in Melbourne wasn’t a lot different to the first period of our lives together actually. We made an average number of friends; you know, something like 10 or so close ones and maybe another 50 more casual acquaintances. All nice people, but somehow there wasn’t that close connection that you get with real friends, friends you look on as more like your family than anything else, people you could rely on in an emergency, people who, if they have something to say to you by way of a criticism, they’ll say it to you, not sneak around telling other people what they know! As I said — average friends.

Then we moved to Yarram, in deepest darkest Gippsland, and things started to change, fairly swiftly. Within three days of moving into a rented house at Port Albert, about 12 kilometres from Yarram, I was asked by the owner of the property if I’d like to go to go to a Lions meeting with him, that very evening.

By the time I got back home to Port Albert — two hours later — I had been invited, and accepted, membership into the Lion’s fraternity! This gave me an instant list of about 28 new friends, which also meant the same number of lady friends for Jacqui, because the ladies do join in and help out at most of the fund raising events put on by the club. That number grew quickly too, as my new friends introduced me to their friends — it was like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering new acquaintances for us, all the time.

Volunteering, we found, was the very essence of country life and when word got about that Jacqui and I were available for voluntary work around the town, things really accelerated. As we have since discovered, it’s the volunteers who keep most things working in a small town, without them Yarram and many other small towns would have died a long time ago!

Almost before I knew it, I was in the CFA (Country Fire Authority); on the boards of the Country Club, the kindergarten, the local hospital, the Regent Theatre Committee and, the apogee of my involvement in the town’s socioeconomic life, I was asked to stand for, and I became, the councillor representing our part of the Shire of Wellington! In fact, Jacqui and I got involved in most of the activities going on in the town in those early days, partly because we wanted something, preferably useful, to do where we lived and partly because it was an excellent way to meet more people and make more friends. It was an experience we both thoroughly enjoyed and I would recommend it to anyone moving from the city into the country to have a go!

We’ve both pulled back and slowed down a bit recently, as old age and infirmity start to catch up with us, but we continue to keep ourselves as active as we can, in a sedentary sort of way! We both paint a lot and of course, we like to write blogs for Starts at 60 and have done so since the inception of that wonderful journal for we ‘older citizens’, seven years ago. I used to write as many as two or three new blogs a day then, and it’s now down to about two or three a week — but it does help to keep our brains active! We are also in the local U3A (University of the Third Age), another brain feeder, but don’t take it too seriously, it’s as much social as it is educational!

Country living is very different to the city lifestyle you might be leaving behind, but almost without fail you will find friends and plenty of things to do when you get there. It’s also worth mentioning the wonderful feeling of safety, so hard to find in cities these days. Moving to the country was the best thing we ever did!

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