By Brendan Rees
A Narre Warren South couple have celebrated a milestone occasion – their 60th wedding anniversary.
And a special guest, Casey mayor Sam Aziz marked the joyous day by visiting Bruce and Joyce Masters at their home on Tuesday 19 September where he presented them with a certificate of congratulations on behalf of the City of Casey.
Mrs Masters said the mayor’s visit was lovely.
“Our daughter was behind that. She decided to ring him up and asked to wish us a happy 60th anniversary. So he said he’d like to meet us which was nice of him.”
The couple’s wedding anniversary was held on 10 August and they celebrated with family and friends at the Ranges Hotel in Gembrook.
The Queen, Governor General and Prime Minister also sent the couple cards as acknowledgement of their anniversary.
“We had a special cake and guests. We had a lot of family travel from a long way away. Our son lives in Hong Kong and our grandchildren live in Brisbane.”
Mrs Masters said her marriage had been a “great journey”.
“We’ve played tennis for all our married life. We would like to be playing still but that’s not possible. We’re getting on a bit,” she said.
“We both worked at GMH for over 20 years. Before that we were farmers believe it or not. We changed our occupation from farmers because we were share farming and we weren’t making much money so we came down and started at General Motors together.”
Mrs Masters said she met her husband at a dance in Bairnsdale, adding he had a “gentle nature”.
The couple married at the Methodist Church in Bairnsdale and have lived in the Casey area since 1968.
“We started share farming from when we were married and then we moved to Loch in South Gippsland.”
“We found it wasn’t worth staying there so we moved to Dandenong and worked at General Motors for 20-odd years which helped us along,” she said.
The couple have two children, Wayne and Jenny, and five grandchildren – Matthew, 21; Nicholas, 23; Katie, 25; Josh, 23 and Melissa, 25.
“We’re a close family. We’ve done a lot of things together,” Mrs Masters said, adding that reaching their 60th wedding anniversary was “amazing”.
“My husband, he’s eight years older than me so we’ve done well – he’s doing well and so am I.”
