Frank Gunner is just as in love with his wife, Jackie, as he was when he married her 60 years ago. Perhaps more so.
And last Thursday, on the morning of their diamond anniversary, Frank went down on one knee in the living room of their self-built Byford house, and asked her to marry him once again.
“Before I’d got the ‘me’ out she’d already said yes,” Frank beamed.
“It was lovely – a real surprise,” Jackie said, showing me the diamond ring he’d proposed with.
A diamond anniversary is so called because it marks the remarkable longevity of a marriage that has lasted for six decades; the diamond a potent symbol of enduring love, strength, and resilience.
And Frank and Jackie have displayed all three in abundance. While their current golden age in Byford is full of life’s riches, their love was born from humbler beginnings in Essex, England.
Frank was born just two months after the end of World War II, and Jackie two years later.
“We didn’t have much growing up and it was freezing. But we didn’t care because we had Buddy Holly,” Frank said.
They met as teenagers at the Locarno Ballroom in Basildon.
“I’d had my eye on her for a long time – she had great legs and I was always a bit of leg man,” Frank said, eyes twinkling. “She’s always been an absolute cracker.”
Luckily Jackie had similar stirrings.
Her best friend brazenly approached Frank and declared that Jackie fancied a dance with him. Despite the level of impropriety shown, Frank took that as his cue to summon up the courage and ask.
“We just sort of clicked,” Jackie said.
The pair courted for three years before marrying.
“I had 50 pounds in my bank account so I went and put that as a deposit on a caravan,” Frank said.
They found a place to park up on a pig farm which was also used as the Circus Rosaire overwintering quarters.
There was no water, no drainage, and in the mornings, they had to scrape the ice off the windows. But life together was already full of adventures and amusing characters, including a troupe of flying acrobats, a man who carried an alligator around, and Goldie “the talking horse”.
Working as a motor mechanic, Frank eventually saved enough money for the pair to progress to a “luxurious” 30-foot caravan.
It was during this caravan adventure that Jackie gave birth to their two children, David and Michelle.
Life in post-war England was tough, and even hard slog wasn’t guaranteed to change a family’s fortunes.
“You would try to better yourself but the government would cut your hand off,” Frank said. “So we said, let’s try our hand in Australia.”
Jackie had long-held a dream to travel to the antipodes, after a primary school geography lesson sparked her imagination.
“I just thought, there must have been something better than grey, misty mornings,” she said.
And Frank was keen to make good on his mother’s dreams, after three failed attempts to migrate.
But all those around them discouraged their plans.
Frank’s brother had been to Australia through the Big Brother Movement, but had returned unsuccessful after two years.
“And my dad really didn’t want us to come to Australia,” Jackie said.
But they were resolute.
After 21 days aboard the Australis – “I counted every one of them because I had sea sickness,” Jackie explained – they stepped out in Fremantle on October 11, 1970.
Word had already spread while they were aboard that Frank was a seasoned mechanic, and he landed with a job at Scarborough Beach.
But the promise of a higher-paying job with Alcoa in Jarrahdale saw the pair soon move into a new duplex in Kelmscott.
“After a while I was earning $130 a week; $50 would pay for everything we needed and we’d have $80 left over – it was incredible,” Frank said.
But stoushes between the unions and Alcoa left many of the workers short-changed, so Frank sought greener pastures elsewhere.
He applied for a job with the Mount Newman Mining Company, and the family bundled into their Vauxhall Viva to make the drive up to the Pilbara.
“The furthest I’d ever driven in England was around 100 miles,” Frank said.
Mount Newman was not the greener pastures Frank had hoped for, and after 12 days climbing into the axle of a 200-tonne truck in oppressive heat, swarmed by flies, he realised it was not the place he wanted to bring up his children.
So, they packed up and headed for the Wheatbelt, to a tiny town off the Brookton Highway called Karlgarin.
“There was nothing there, except a pub, two general stores and a garage,” Frank said.
The ‘house’ the family would occupy was little more than a tin shed, whose floor was bare dirt until the week before their arrival.
“I took one look and said, ‘oh no, let’s turn around’,” Jackie said.
But the garage was equipped with everything Frank needed to service the 30-plus farms in the local area. So, they took a punt at rural life.
“And it was the best thing I ever did,” Jackie said, who took on the administration role of the business.
It was a tough life – Jackie had to learn how to chop mallee roots to feed the 40-gallon drum hot water system, she also had her first memorable encounter with a four-foot dugite behind the wash house. And after Frank scored a job running the power house, they both needed to stay up until 11pm each night when the pub closed so Frank could switch the engine over.
But it was interesting work – “I sometimes surprised myself with the things I fixed,” Frank said.
It was also lucrative: Frank was able to charge $15 an hour for his services, and the pair managed to put away enough to put down a deposit on a house in Armadale.
It was during their time in the Wheatbelt that Frank and Jackie first truly felt at home in their adopted country.
“I consider that I became an Australian in Karlgarin,” Jackie said.
“And it was there that we were also accepted as Australians,” Frank said.
During their six years in Karlgarin, Jackie’s sister also flew over from England and married a local boy, and Jackie’s mum followed a few years later.
When their eldest reached high school age, the pair decided to call it quits on Karlgarin and move back to Armadale.
They started up Gunners Auto Spares in Jull Street in the block of shops owned by Bob Armstrong.
Beside them was a kitchen shop that sold Royal Dalton crockery, and across the road was a place that imported tropical fish.
They ran that store for six years from 1977 to ’83 when the building was pulled down to make room for the shopping centre expansion.
After a brief dabble as a real estate agent, Frank went to work for Coventry’s, first at the Cannington store, then as the counter manager at the brand-new Kelmscott store, which he stayed at for 12 years.
His experience and contacts revolutionised the spare parts industry in Armadale; instead of customers having to wait for weeks for a delivery, Frank was able to get a car part there that same day, and at a competitive price.
During this time Jackie flexed her expert cooking skills at some well-known hotel restaurants in Perth, including the Moon and Sixpence at the Wentworth Plaza Hotel.
She also later volunteered at the Armadale Visitor Centre for 15 years.
Frank and Jackie bought a block in Byford in 1993 and built their forever home, which they have lovingly decorated with a captivating display of antiques and curiosities.
Surrounded by the fruits of their labours, Frank counts himself ‘blessed’.
“The best choice we ever made was moving to Australia,” Frank said. “The harder we worked, the luckier we were.”
I asked them what their secret was to a happy, successful and long-lived marriage.
“We very often tell each other we love each other,” Frank said. “Yeah, you have to,” Jackie agreed. “And we always help each other.”
“We very often tell each other jokes – every day you live miserable is a day wasted, in my opinion,” Frank said.
“And anyone who says they’ve been married for this long and never fought must have had a very boring life – kissing and making up is one of the true joys in life.”
Photographs – Richard Polden
