Love key to a successful marriage
Just ask this couple with 60 years together
Awell-known Shannon couple celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last week with family, including grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.
When pressed for the secret to a long and happy marriage the answer was love.
Peter Sinclair and Audrey Bryson first began dating when they were both 16.
Audrey was working at the Shannon Dairy Factory, where her father Norman worked, while Peter was working for his father Frank in the family market garden at O¯ piki.
Romance blossomed and Peter drove to Wellington to select an engagement ring. Audrey said yes to his proposal, and they were married in the Anglican Church at Shannon in 1963, both aged 21.
The couple saved for and built a house, with Peter also able to contract his service outside the farm after investing in a combine harvester, two tractors and a spray truck.
The Sinclairs have lived and worked locally their whole lives, apart from three years spent travelling the world in the early 1970s.
On their return from England in 1976 the Sinclairs bought the supermarket in Shannon and ran it until 1987, with Peter also driving buses for Madge Motors as a sideline.
It was then that Peter began dabbling in photography, his first gig greyhound racing in Palmerston North, but it wasn’t long before it became a fully-fledged business.
A studio was opened in Shannon for the portrait work and picture framing.
The couple became familiar faces around town through the photography business as they attended many weddings and family reunions, while they also did family portraits, sports teams while continuing with the racing photography.
For many years Peter also had the contract for taking photographs of newborn babies at the local maternity hospital, which also appeared as a popular feature every week in the local newspaper.
It often meant they were reacquainted with a couple they had photographed on their wedding day.
Some weeks there were as many as six or seven new babies pictured in Horowhenua Chronicle.
It was a popular section of the newspaper, and seen as a way to announce the arrival of a newborn baby.