Early Married Life

The next chapter of our lives began quietly, not with grand events, but with the practical steps of building a home and learning what it meant to create a life together.

This chapter begins with a simple truth: this is the ordinary story of two ordinary people in an ordinary marriage, with all its ups and downs and life’s twists and turns — nothing spectacular. And yet, looking back, it is often the plain, everyday moments that shine the brightest, because they are the ones that shaped our life.

We married in 1967, full of hope and practicality in equal measure. Then, in August 1969, we arrived on the shores of Australia, newly planted in a new country, learning what it meant to begin again from scratch. In 1970 we took another big step and bought our first home: a brand-new house at 21 Netley Street in Perth.

I can still remember our old landline number to this day — so well, in fact, that I have caught myself almost using it for PIN numbers (though I probably should not admit that!). The landline itself disappeared decades ago, yet the memory of those early years has never really left.

I can still picture Chris standing outside the property while I tried to sound confident.

“I want us to buy this house, Chris,” I said.

He asked the price: $17,236 for the house and land — brand new.

“Oh God, no,” he replied. “We can’t afford that.”

Then came the mortgage figure: $99 a month.

“Oh never! We can’t afford that.”

And somehow, despite all that certainty that we couldn’t, we did.

We bought the house.

Not long after, our first car came into our lives too — a modest Morris 1100. By then Chris had “learnt to drive”… or so I thought. One day we were driving over the Horseshoe Bridge into the city when he turned far too sharply, and suddenly the wheel was hanging over the side.

“Brake, brake!” I shouted, as my heart tried to climb out of my chest.

At that exact moment, a group of bikies rode past. Without hesitation they jumped off their bikes and helped lift the car back to safety.

There is kindness in this world, and that day I felt sure our guardian angels were watching over us. The axle had broken, but we were safe — and, to his credit, Chris did get better at driving.

That little house did not only become our shelter — it became a place that welcomed Chris’s family too.

The first to arrive was Alfie. He stayed with us while studying for his degree, and in time secured a good government position. It felt good, in those early years, to be building a home that could hold more than just the two of us.

Alfie’s story also carried heartache. An old welding accident eventually led to his leg being amputated. Chris supported him through long months of hospital visits, rehabilitation, and learning to manage life again until his prosthesis was fitted. In those days it was a peg leg.

I will never forget one day on the boardwalk: a child on a little tricycle bumped into Alfie, and the peg leg flew off down the street. The child’s expression was priceless, and the onlookers looked as though they were watching a scene from a horror movie. Somehow, even in the midst of difficulty, life still found ways to surprise us — and sometimes even make us laugh.

Elder brother Allen came next. He had helped us when we first arrived in Australia, and now it was our turn. Freshly retired from flying with Air India, he moved in with us at 21 Netley and soon found work as a prison warden — quite a change from being a flight purser. Later he married the lovely Kathy, the same warm-hearted air hostess who had welcomed us when we first arrived in Perth.

Little brother Eddie arrived on our doorstep next — young, dashing, and wearing his Akubra as if he had been born in it. He secured a job driving trains in Port Hedland and quickly became a character well known in the Red Dust: Santa Claus beard, wild hair, and that hat tipped at a jaunty angle. Everyone seemed to like him, especially a young nurse named Sandie. They built a good life together for many years.

Eddie had both a stroke of misfortune and a stroke of luck. One day his little finger became caught in a coupling and he lost the tip, dreadful at the time, yet it healed quickly with a bandage and determination. Then came the surprise: compensation that allowed him and Sandie to establish a truck stop that became well known along the route, one of those outback places travellers spoke about with familiarity.

And the migration did not stop there.

My younger sister came next. We were planting the front lawn at the time and left her to place the runners into the soil while we were at work. A gardener happened to pass by, offered his services at a good rate — and then asked her out on a date. Chris, having been put “in charge” of her (she was eighteen; he was the wiser twenty-seven, of course), laid down the law:

“You will not go out with the gardener. I’ll have to answer to your parents.”

She didn’t.

Later, when she moved to Melbourne for work because her teacher’s training was not recognised in Western Australia, she met Peter, a dairy farmer from the Camperdown district. A romance blossomed, and she did not marry the gardener after all — she married the farmer.

Mum’s first question?

“How many cows does he have?”

Then Chris’s parents arrived. His father worked diligently in whatever roles he could find, cleaning schools and offices, before securing a steadier position as a gatekeeper with an interstate transport company. His mother worked at St Anne’s Hospital as an assistant cook. I am sure many patients enjoyed her delicious meals.

Before long, our little house filled once again: Chris’s younger sister and her husband, my younger brother, and Aunty Hortense and Uncle Frank with their two children, our niece and nephew. It felt as though everyone was being given a beginning in Australia, one spare bed and one shared meal at a time.

Eventually my parents visited too, but only briefly. They felt most at home in India, surrounded by their friends and familiar social circle. Dad had a flourishing stockbroking business and was President of the Bangalore Golf Club — his name still appears on the honour board there. In Australia, the idea of beginning again did not appeal to him. So they returned to Bangalore, where they lived comfortably until their passing.

Then, in 1971, came the happy news of my first pregnancy.

Even now, after all the moves and all the houses that followed, 21 Netley still lives in my heart. It was our first real foundation in this country — the place where we learned courage, where family arrived one by one, and where an ordinary little house quietly became the beginning of everything.

When I think back to those early Australian years, new marriage, new country, new home, new responsibilities — I do not see anything spectacular. I see two people doing their best, sometimes frightened, often exhausted, and still turning up for each other the next morning.

I see a small house that held far more than its rooms: laughter at the kitchen table, worries spoken late at night, and family arriving at our door with their suitcases and their hopes.

Time has carried us on to other places, but it has never quite carried me away from 21 Netley. It sits quietly within me still — proof that love is built, day by ordinary day.

Continue reading:

Becoming Three (coming next)

Part of The Long Road of Love — Memoir Series

A story of love, resilience, and a marriage shaped across continents and decades.

New chapters are added regularly.

Thank you for reading, dear friends ღ.

© Stephanie Roberts