Bev and Bill Thrift Celebrate 60 years of Marriage in Tea Gardens Myall Coast Myall Coast - popup ad Myall Coast News by News Of The Area - Modern Media - September 28, 2023 Now – Sixty years on, in front of the may flower bush to remind them of whence they came. TRUE love lasts, as it has for Bill and Beverley Thrift, who celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on a sunny Thursday, 21 September, 2023. Beverley and Bill both originally hailed from Singleton, where they grew up on opposite sides of town. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message us. Phone us – (02) 4981 8882. Email us – media@newsofthearea.com.au Despite attending the same high school, they did not meet until one fateful night at a Fellowship Dance at the Parish Hall Barn Dance. “I walked over to straighten his tie,” Beverly said. “She is still trying to straighten it!” Bill added. Meeting at the tender age of eighteen, it was love at first sight, and within two years they were married, on 21 September, 1963. “We never really left each other after we first met,” Bill reflected. After many years of milking cows on her father’s dairy farm, Bev worked as ‘boss cleaner’ at most of the establishments in Singleton, including the Army camp, TAFE, high school and rugby club. Bill, too, began life on the land at his father’s dairy farm, then worked in a power station and then the coal mines, in true Hunter-man fashion, and still likes to be on the land today. “The land stays in your blood,” he said. How have they made it work for six decades? “Give and take, you’ll have your ups and downs, but you just work with each other and realise that you can still disagree,” were Bill’s words of advice. “You have to put up with each other,” agreed Beverley. After spending most of their married life in Singleton, then living in Yamba, they finally moved to Tea Gardens for retirement. Bill loves his bowls and restoring vintage fishing rods in his home workshop, while Beverley dotes on her antique doll collection, and frequents the bingo at Karuah, Tea Gardens and Raymond Terrace. Their prodigious progeny includes four sons, Greg, Mark (dec.), Colin and Stephen; eight grandsons and three granddaughters, three great-grandsons, three great-granddaughters, while they are kept on their toes by Fred, their bouncy Jack Russell Terrier. By Thomas O’KEEFE Then – Beverley and Bill’s 1963 wedding photo.
