Norm and Lynette Austwick of Mogareeka are celebrating a golden milestone this weekend.
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After 50 years of marriage the love and enjoyment of each other’s company remains strong and they will celebrate the anniversary of their 1967 wedding at an afternoon tea with family and friends this weekend.
Joining Norm and Lynette will be their two daughters, Tracey and Kerel, and three grandchildren Martin (15), Gwendorlyn (11) and Nathaniel (2).
Kerel is making the trip from the United Kingdom with her family for the special celebration, while Tracey is coming down the mountain from Canberra.
Norman and Lynette Austwick (nee Elder) were married on November 11, 1967, in Penshurst, Sydney.
“I met her in Sydney,” Norm said. “She loved animals – and she loved fishing at that time as well so we got along very well.”
Immediately after their wedding, the couple moved to the Bega region where Norm worked at the local radio station for several years and then the telephone exchange on Brown Mountain.
Lynette worked as secretary of the local conservation society, protesting logging operations in the area. She was also the secretary of the local Labor Party branch at the time Gough Whitlam was ousted in 1975 – as it turned out on the Austwicks’ eighth anniversary.
Norm said when they initially moved here, he was on wages of $4000, and bought a house at Candelo for $3000. A parcel of land at Mogarreka for a further $1000 was picked up around the same time.
“Things are a lot different now,” he said with a chuckle this week.
Initially living in the Bega and Candelo after they were married, Norm and Lynette settled in their own home in Mogareeka in 1973.
They have moved house in the meantime but are still in Mogareeka, falling in love with the surrounding environment.
“We have a lot of bushland around us, a lot of wildlife – and lovely views,” Norm said.
As for any secrets to longevity in love and marriage?
“We still get along with each other very easily. There are challenges, but you have to learn to forgive each other,” Norm said sagely.