The couple has rarely been without one another after meeting as schoolchildren in Mathoura.
At the time Elaine was the daughter of the town’s grocer and Arthur, better known as ‘Joe’, was the son of a multi-generational timbercutting family.
Joe said the 65th wedding anniversary was a “very quiet” occasion due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“It’s hard to do anything in these times, but we had a few calls from our children and neighbours,” Joe said.
After attending Mathoura Public School and Echuca Technical School together, the couple married in 1955 at Moama Anglican Church when Elaine was 21 and Joe 19.
“I married someone younger before it was in vogue,” Elaine said.
“He is a good husband. We work well together which was important back then because you had to work to make things happen, you didn’t start with any money.”
On their wedding day Elaine was unaware she’d just married a man who’d go on to be both applauded and denounced by a number of politicians and papers for his environmental exploits.
“It was a pretty normal marriage,” Joe said.
“Especially in the first decade. Elaine is a good mother and a good wife.”
The couple had one son, Brendon, two years into their marriage and a daughter, Belinda, a year after that.
Joe served as Murray Shire Council deputy mayor for 13 years and was president of the Gulpa Creek Management Committee alongside other community roles.
He even earned the title of “biggest water thief in NSW” after diverting water into a red gum forest suffering from low growth rates following the introduction of irrigation schemes in the 1970s and 80s.
“I was in the red gum industry for 35 years,” Joe said.
“I was lucky enough to be inducted into the National Foresters Grove in Lavington, and I wouldn’t have achieved that without Elaine keeping the home fires burning.”
Elaine said she wasn’t one to “just sit at home and wonder”, and had her own adventures.
“We had an insurance agency and I worked on that from home,” she said.
“I got involved in insurance after we built our first home and a chap came one day to ask if we wanted to insure it and we got talking.
“It was a good job. We helped a lot of people in Mathoura. One of the companies we represented back then was QBE, who are still around today.”
The couple has two grandchildren, one great-grandchild and currently live in Echuca’s Cunningham Downs retirement village near several old friends.
