‘Why I’ll always be thankful my in-laws bought us our first house’

I had the best in-laws. I met my first husband through working with his sister in the early 1960s. The family had six children and my future husband and sister-in-law were the two youngest.

My husband’s parents were hard working. His father worked for the railways, although when I first met him he had a job at Railway House as a lift driver as he was close to retirement. He had been a fettler, but had a bad accident and had broken both ankles at one time. My husband’s mother worked as a cleaner and a part-time caterer.

The whole family were very welcoming to me as I was a good friend to their daughter before going out with their son. I spent quite a few dinners at their house before we’d set off to the movies or some other outing. There was a lot of laughter shared over a meal with my in-laws. They enjoyed a drink and bet on the horses, both activities that were new to me. They had become grandparents over the years as the older children had married, so their house was always a happy place to visit.

My mother-in-law learned to drive in her 50s, my father-in-law husband didn’t have a licence. They bought a manual car, my mother-in-law never quite mastered the foot pedal control; that along with a nervous husband as a passenger, would have lead to many heated discussions no doubt. Fast forward when my mother-in-law used to drive my teenage children around in an automatic car, she had the habit of just stopping in the middle of the street to let them out or pick them up at the shops. She was the local neighbourhood watch before it was even thought of.

My husband and I were pregnant with our second child in the late ’60s and were renting. My in-laws told us they would like to buy a house and let us rent it with the purpose of us buying it off them in the future. It was incredibly generous! At the time I hadn’t given any thought to how the other siblings accepted this special treatment. They all were paying off their homes and had worked hard to achieve a deposit.

We looked at two small houses and my father-in-law chose the cheaper of the two, which we were happy with, for the price of $10,000. It had two bedrooms in a good position and we settled in to raise our children, a third baby born three years later. We paid $20 per week rent and it was never increased in that time.

When my daughter was five weeks old, my husband died in a car accident. He had a life insurance policy thanks to my brother who had suggested us purchasing it. My in-laws straight away said that the insurance money of $10,000 would buy the house so we would have a roof over our heads and I would own it outright. In the haze of the accident aftermath and with everything happening at that time, I probably never thanked them enough or fully appreciated their generosity. I had been in the house four years and it’s market value would have increased in those years. I have never forgotten their care and love along with my husband’s siblings with whom I’ve had a wonderful relationship. I sold the house in the late 1970s for $48,000 as we out grew it.

My dear father-in-law died a few years after his retirement at 69, but my mother-in-law lived into her 80s, a much loved grandmother to her many grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Did you have a special relationship with your in-laws?

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