Fifty...

... for Knots in the String.

Where have the last fifty years of marriage gone?

Flown by at gale-force speed it seems.

He’s had to share me with family, dogs and horses and a profound love for Tasmania’s east coast. I’ve had to share him with family, with his still ongoing media career and the farm. But that’s the point really. It’s all about sharing and compromise.

And laughter.

The tie that binds everything and loops over and under like some Celtic wedding knot is infinite love. And pride in a man who has been rock solid and who has achieved so much and of whom people speak with admiration. A very humble man who in his time had an entry in Whos’ Who in Australia.

We’ve had two children together, nine dogs, three horses and a farm. The children always managed to contrive their accidents and dramas when he was away nationally or internationally so that I was a sole parent and I thought perhaps it was/is a way of teaching me to be strong, who knows?

He has consistently tried to kill himself.

Not deliberately, but he does seem very accident prone. Setting himself on fire at the farm, crashing the farm UTV with multiple injuries and thereby inspiring me to write a contemporary novel called Passage, knocking himself out repeatedly when mowing at the cottage because he’s bald and wears a hat and can’t see branches on trees! And requires me to drive a half-conscious man at breakneck speed the 80 km to A and E. He’s also had heart issues, viral meningitis and cancer. Geesh! But I remember, ‘in sickness and in health’.

Historically, there was the Montana Incident, when he attended school in Choteau, Montana on an AFS Scholarship and he and his friends went looking for firewood in the snow, the chainsaw slipped and cut through his leg. His mates packed the massive wound with snow, carted him back to medical care, and 35 stitches later he still had his leg. The scar beneath his nose - motor bike accident.

Or when he and his Australian schoolmates decided to blow a stump out of the paddock at the family’s sheep farm using dynamite. They practically launched the stump to Outer Space. Ultimately, it landed in bits the back garden of the farmhouse. And so on and very so forth! So many more dangerous escapades.

This is my husband. I am lucky he lived for us to celebrate 50 years!

I wanted nothing as an anniversary gift. The very fact that we have made it to our Golden Anniversary together with love, respect and laughter is the best gift of all and can be outshone by nothing. We’ve never been particularly keen on dining out and thus we choose to celebrate quietly, with local scallops and flathead and a particularly special coffee sponge (my Mum’s recipe) I have made for the occasion.

It’s what we are. Fairly simple people with fairly simple tastes, a desire for peace and country/coastal surroundings.

So be upstanding as I offer this toast to my husband to thank him dearly for fifty years of trust and love.

Here’s to you, RB…