IT was a very big weekend for Dimboola’s Dorothy and Vern Petschel, celebrating an impressive 70th wedding anniversary with dozens of family and friends on Saturday. Just two days earlier, Dorothy was also celebrating her 94th birthday at Dimboola Hospital, and with Vern having just delivered her a beautiful bouquet, they were happy to share about their long marriage. Looking back on their lives since they formally intertwined on September 1, 1956, their parallel journey amazingly began even earlier, in the last few years of primary school in Murtoa. "There was a bit of a twinkle then," Dorothy laughed. Now with five children, nine grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, there were plenty of blessings to be thankful for and lots to reflect on, including the time it took from that initial spark to eventually tying the knot. Living on a farm as a practical girl with chickens and milking cows, Dorothy would even ride her horse, Trixie, to school. Around the end of World War 2, she left Victoria for Adelaide at 14 for a year to attend Immanuel College. "I can remember when they said the war was finished," she said. "The fruit and vegetable man came past with his bike. He said, 'Go home. The war's finished.' That's all I can remember." In her absence, Vern began to realise the truth of the adage that the heart grows fonder, and by her return, he was motivated to get a bit more serious. "I wasn't really paying too much attention at that stage," he admitted. "Later on, I thought, 'oh yes, I'd better make a move here, or I'll miss out!' "So that's what happened. A phone call later, and off we went to the pictures." But Vern's call up to national service at 18 – even though he didn't actually go until over a year later – and subsequent fortnightly refresher courses, along with home life at his own family's farm, created some practical obstacles to the relationship's development. They also owned some additional property in Dimboola. "I said to Pop at some stage, 'Look, why don't we work it ourselves? You know, travel back and forth?'" Vern said. "So that's what happened. I'd camp down here in the caravan for a bit ... paddocks took longer to work those days than what they do today. So I was busy with farming, really, up until I started to think otherwise." His busyness with farm work ended up being underlined by their eventual wedding day during a very wet season in 1956 with "sheets of water" lying on the ground. "I was still cropping on the Saturday we were due to get married!" Vern said. "The minister rang up and wanted to have a chat with me. Pop answered the phone, and then you hear Dorothy – Dorothy made the call – and (she said) 'oh, what – don't you think you're gonna turn up? Won't be very nice!'" With a move to Wail, they set up home and "tried to scrounge a living with chooks and milking cows". Children followed and so did a move to Dimboola in 1967 – living in town, but farming outside. "That was a dry year," Vern said. With Dorothy looking after the kids and becoming a very adept homemaker, Vern began to have more time and space to explore his natural knack for engineering inventions to make life and work easier. Their son Gary was present for this interview and offered his own recollections as a kid of watching his father's output from the 1960s onwards. "Dad's been making stuff all his life," Gary said. "You really need to see photos to understand what he's made. "Back then they didn't have four wheel drive tractors. Dad had started farming, and then he started doing a bit of earth moving, digging some dams and cleaning dams. He had a single tractor, but that used to rear up. "So then he got two Masseys and he hooked them together, and turned them into a four-wheel drive tractor. "He actually got the steering rams off a World War 2 fighter plane, off a Fairey Battle. "He was always tinkering and making things. So he spent his whole life making stuff. "And mum's been the offsider because I don't know how many hours mum would have spent in some second-hand machinery yard or steel yard." Dorothy was asked how she would spend her time in those situations. "I looked at quite a few brick walls," she said dryly. "I used to take knitting along. I knitted the back of a jumper for Gary at one place." Gary clearly still admired his dad's skills and resourcefulness, recollecting how other farmers noticed the practicality – "he was ahead of his time" and especially treasured one of Vern's earliest works, a garden tractor with a Harley Davidson motorbike engine, a fan set up and a jam tin wind governor to solve any overheating concerns. "I've got the job of going to restore it," Gary said. "I tell everybody, 'Oh, my dad made a garden tractor, and it had a 750 V-twin Harley engine.' "They all (say), 'What?' "It was all self-taught." Vern was still building things until quite recently at 88 – only about five years ago – and Dorothy remembered back how sometimes his engineering inspirations would blend into their life together. "When we were out on the farm when we were first married – when he was making the tandem tractors – the laundry floor was full of tractor parts, mudguards and things like that," she said. "He used to work on that, and I used to do my bit – 'oh, good night, I'm going to bed!' "It was an interesting life, because I thought tractors came before me!" Informed of Dorothy's excellent cooking skills, Vern was asked what was his favourite food. "Chicken and veggies and gravy," he said. "She's good at sausage rolls and all that sort of thing, dumplings." Gary said he loved trifle, but his mum's lofty standards were going to make it hard for him to emulate for the family celebration. "I'm trying to take on the challenge," he said. "Everybody loves mum's trifle – because we're having this function on the weekend, and they'll be (saying) 'where's your mum's trifle?' "So I reckon the pressure's on me. Mum was a wiz in the kitchen." Reflecting on seven decades of marriage, Dorothy was radiant in her attitude. "I'm thankful for the life that we've had and the years that we've spent together," she said. "There's been ups and downs, but we've come through them, and I'm thankful for what we've got." Vern said his advice to have a long and successful relationship was to have "give and take", and Dorothy added "love and understanding". Gary said that the way his parents lived for each other remained meaningful to him. "When we did their 90th (birthdays), there's all these photos, and you go through all the years, and there's photos of mum and dad sitting there hugging each other with the same look on their face for 70 years," he said. "They've always been there for each other, so it's been a good role model for us as kids, and the older generation is a good role model for us ... we can learn a lot from them. "It's all those (things) – resilience, regard, respect, tolerance and understanding for each other. "They've always had that."
Seventy years together: Dorothy and Vern Petschel mark platinum milestone
