By Brendan Rees
A Cranbourne couple have happily announced their sixtieth wedding anniversary.
Ken and Jean Perry married on the 29 March, 1958 at the church of St Martin’s in Bilbrough in the UK after a five and half year courtship.
They spent their honeymoon at the Channel Isles – a group of British dependency islands in the English Channel, off the coast of France.
“Sixty years is a long time. My husband always says murderers don’t get that,” Jean says.
The couple celebrated their anniversary at the Blue Hills Village in Cranbourne. “We had a lovely day there with 70 guests,” says Jean. “My son brought my friend over of 57 years from Nottingham.”
Ken, 82 and Jean, 80, received letters from the Queen, the Governor-General, the Federal Member for Holt Anthony Byrne and the Prime Minister to mark their milestone anniversary.
They have two twin sons who live in Cranbourne and Seaton, as well as eight grandchildren and eight great children.
In 1992, the couple moved to Australia. “I was a nurse in England and when I came over I worked for two nurse agencies and then I got regular work with the Frankston council at a hostel as a carer,” Jean says.
“We’ve got twin sons that came before us. We had been on holiday about four times before we came.”
“It was very hard because you’re older. I was 55 and my husband was 56. We both got work,” she said.
The couple met in England as neighbours where Ken was one of 10 children. From there, they “just got talking.”
“We went to the pictures and that’s how it carried on,” Jean says, adding their first movie together at the cinemas was ‘Gone from the wind’.
“We were courting for five and half years before we got married because you couldn’t live together then.”
Ken loves lawn bowls while Jean says she used to bowl, dance and swim, but added “when you get old somethings you can’t do anymore.”
When asked the key to a long-lasting marriage, the couple say “Work together and share, no secrets, and always talk. OK you have your ups and downs but you just get through them as you talk.”
