LOVE STORY:
Australia’s oldest married couple share their secrets
Like a scene from one of the films that screened at the cinema where he sold refreshments, when 17-year-old Ron saw Esther, 16, on an Adelaide street, he knew she was “the one”. It was the mid-1930s, and even though they had been introduced before, dressmaker Esther had blossomed into a beautiful young woman.
Ron was smitten.
Eighty years of marriage, three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren later, 103-year-old Ron Collings and his 102-year-old wife, Esther, have invited The Weekly to lunch. In a pretty floral top that compliments the cornflower blue of her eyes, and a fashionable bob haircut softly framing her face, it’s easy to imagine the captivating young Esther. Ron still has the gift of the gab and twinkle in his eyes, quick with a joke and a story, honed after a lifetime as a travelling salesman. Sitting around the dining table at the Sandpiper Lodge, a retirement home at Goolwa, South Australia, the decades fall away as Ron recalls that fateful day.
“I thought she was the one as soon as I saw her again, and we’ve just gone on from there,” he says. Just like that, without dating apps or websites, the most enduring match in the country was made. With their eldest son, Ronald Jnr, his wife, Lynne, and their son, Giles, at their side, it’s a chatty lunch with much laughter.
Last year, Ron and Esther celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary, receiving a parliamentary mention and tributes from the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader, a video message from the Governor General and a big party at the Sandpiper Lodge. “We got a message from the Queen,” Ron says with a chuckle. “We’ve received five from her now: one each for our 70th and 75th wedding anniversaries, then our 100th birthdays, and now for the 80th anniversary.”
Ron was born just weeks before the Gallipoli landing, and he and Esther have experienced profound changes during their lives. As young adults, telephones and cars were a luxury; television and appliances non-existent. Entertainment was the radio, Saturday night dances and black and white silent films where a pianist provided a live soundtrack. “Talkies didn’t come in till 1930,” says Ron.
Esther and Ron were married in 1938 at St Cuthbert’s Church in Prospect, SA. The effects of the Depression lingered, and war clouds gathered on the horizon. Like many brides-to-be of the era, Esther made her own wedding dress – and those of her two bridesmaids.
“You just did it yourself,” says Esther modestly. “It was no problem.”
“Esther worked at the Myer Emporium children’s department making frocks,” Ron adds proudly. While married women were discouraged from working, Esther continued dressmaking at home, sewing for women in the country after she had children. “They’d order a dress, and when it was finished, she parcelled it up and sent it to them,” Ronald Jnr explains.
“It was rarely anything else than beautiful silk fabric,” Esther adds.
For their honeymoon, the couple toured regional NSW. It was also a business trip for commercial traveller Ron, a profession he’d
pursue until retiring at 65. “In those days, a man had one career and he did it for life,” adds Ronald Jnr, 78, a former British Airways and Qantas pilot.
Ron’s first car came with his first business trip and his boss decided the 21 year old should also have a driver’s licence. “There was no driving test in those days,” laughs Ron. “The boss drove with me to Murray Bridge and then said, ‘Righto, you’re on your own.’”
Without highways or motels, life on the road meant dodging trees and kangaroos, getting bogged or breaking down on unsealed roads that even today’s SUVs would find challenging.
“It was dirt tracks from Renmark to Mildura, driving in and out of trees,” says Ron. Selling souvenirs took Ron as far north as Queensland, and south through Victoria with his sample case, taking orders from gift shops and newsagents for tea towels and hankies, postcard booklets and wooden knick-knacks and mementos.
“I got bogged three times in one day, near Lake Cargelligo in NSW,” says Ron. Abandoning the car overnight, Ron flagged down the postie for a lift to town, and stayed at the local pub. “There are not many places I haven’t been.”
Ron insists life on the road was never lonely.
“You would see something different every day,” he says. “I didn’t spend time inside an office much at all.”
“That’s the same reason I love flying,” says Giles, 32, who, like his dad, is a pilot. “Travelling must be genetic.”
While Ron was away working, Esther was kept busy with three children and dressmaking. Raising a family in the 1940s and ’50s with an absent husband and without the appliances we take for granted would have been challenging, but Esther is uncomplaining. “I remember Mum reading The Weekly, cooking the recipes and doing knitting patterns,” Ronald Jnr says. “Those magazines were very important.”
After falling ill and requiring surgery in the 1960s, Esther discovered yoga and meditation. She became a yoga teacher and in the 1970s, studying under Australia’s foremost yoga expert Swami Sarasvati, travelled to an Indian ashram. “She became a vegetarian and interested in Indian mysticism and meditation,” Ronald Jnr says. Half a century on, Esther still radiates serenity.
Ron, meanwhile had interests of his own – sport, particularly cricket and Aussie Rules. “I’m a red and white man,” says the die-hard Swans fan.
In the 1930s he saw cricket icon Donald Bradman make a century at Adelaide Oval. “It was one of the most famous cricket grounds in the world,” he says with pride.
After Ron retired, the couple travelled the world, from Tel Aviv to Egypt, Singapore, India and England. Ron puts the longevity of their marriage down to the different interests they’ve pursued. “There’s no real secret to a happy marriage,” he says. “We had a great respect for one another and our own individuality.”
Lunch over, Ron and Esther adjourn to their separate rooms before meeting again for an afternoon drink in her room – a glass of red wine for Ron, a tonic for Esther. Will their next birthdays be a big occasion? “We might keep it low key,” says Ronald Jnr with a smile. “Save the next celebration for when they turn 105.”