JAMES and Margaret Skewis credit a decision to move to Australia more than 50 years ago with keeping their marriage strong.
The Hoppers Crossing couple arrived in Sydney by boat from Scotland in 1962 with their three children, Irene, John and James.
They lived in a hostel in Cabramatta before James began working with the Royal Australian Air Force and was sent to Darwin.
In 1978, the family moved to Victoria, finally settling in Werribee in 1983.
On Thursday, the couple will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.
“Moving here kept us close,” Margaret says.
“We only had each other when we came here.”
James and Margaret met at a dance when she was 16 and he was 18.
Margaret was working in a biscuit factory while James was a nurse with the Royal Air Force.
They married less than three years later, in front of about 100 people in the town of South Queensferry, north-west of Edinburgh.
In 1962, after their children were born, the couple made the life-changing decision to move to Australia.
“We heard other people talking about Australia and we weren’t able to do much in Scotland trying to raise three kids on our wages,” Margaret says.
“It’s better here.”
Over the past 60 years Margaret and James have dealt with a lot of challenges, from arriving in a country where they knew hardly anyone to the stress of James’ career sending him to Vietnam and different parts of Australia.
“It was hard being apart. I did worry about him,” Margaret says. ‘‘But I had to focus on the kids and look after them.”
While Margaret is adamant it has to be love that has kept her and James together for so long, James says the time apart helped them realise how much they valued each other.
“We just got on,” he says.
