Let's forget the coronavirus pandemonium for a second and soak up the joy that is Melba couple Rita and Cornelis Besselink, who celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary on Tuesday, April 14.
"Oh, I still love my wife!" boomed 90-year-old Cornelis. "Seventy years married but we've still got another 10 years to go!"
The effervescent Dutch migrants have lived in Canberra since 1950. Cornelis started Besselink Master Painters in Queanbeyan with his brother Rin and it's since been run by his daughter Patricia Zutt and now grandsons, Jeremy Zutt and Elton Willis. That three-generation business is something of which they are very proud.
But back to the great love story.
Rita and Cornelis have known each other since they were children in Holland. Rita was 12 and lived on the third floor of an apartment block in Amsterdam. Cornelis was 11, yes, a younger man, who lived around the corner. He had a friend who lived on the floor below Rita's apartment.
"We met on the stairs," Rita said. "I didn't like him that much..."
"Skip that bit," Cornelis laughed.
"He was cheeky," Rita, 91, said with a smile. "Nothing's changed."
The war separated them for a year when Cornelis went to live in the country. They reunited later as teenagers, first at a dance and then on camping trips. Cornelis was smitten.
"She was the cleverest of the lot," he said.
They were engaged at 18 and married at 20 and 21 - but by proxy.
A painter and signwriter, Cornelis had migrated to Australia in 1950 to get work. Rita, a seamstress, was to follow, but only after she had the permission of the Queen of the Netherlands to marry by proxy and migrate. That permission came through at 11.30pm the night before the "wedding", essentially some perfunctory signing of forms by Rita in Amsterdam and Cornelis, who had settled in Canberra but had to ride his motorbike to the Dutch Embassy in Sydney for the event. [They reaffirmed their vows on the Mimosa ferry on Lake Burley Griffin for their 50th wedding anniversary.]
Within three months, Rita had joined Cornelis in Canberra. He was living at the Riverside Hostel at Kingston. She lived at the South African High Commission in Yarralumla where she cleaned and helped to organise functions, meeting many dignitaries.
Cornelis was working for Jennings building houses. They were given their own blocks of land and he and four colleagues would knock off work and, one by one, build their own houses for each other.
They ended up having five daughters - Patricia, Sylivia, Ingrid, Wilma and Hetty.
Cornelis said he was enticed to Australia by pictures of "beaches and beautiful girls". Then he landed in 1950s, sheep-paddock Canberra.
But they were very happy to be in the national capital.
"It was such a great place," he said. "The milkman would come and deliver your milk bottles. The baker would come in his little cart and put the bread there ... and the magpies would enjoy it very much.
"It was such a small town, everyone knew everyone in 1950. And we did a lot to build it. We were very happy. It was 21 years before we went back to Holland for a holiday."
They later moved to O'Connor, Sutton and then their current home in Melba, where they have been for 38 years. While Cornelis' entire family followed him to Canberra, Rita's stayed in Holland- and that was hard. They went back regularly to see her parents as they aged, but were always glad to return to Canberra.
"I couldn't live anywhere else. I'm too used to the open space," she said.
The secret of their long marriage has been to find an easy contentment with each other.
"Try to understand each other, the other way of thinking," Rita said. "We've never had a fight," Cornelis said.
The couple have 12 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. The coronavirus lockdown means there'll be no party on their wedding anniversay, but there will be phone calls, FaceTime and gifts dropped at the door.
The pandemic has been frustrating for the active couple. They like to go to their local club twice a week. Until last week, Cornelis swam every day in the backyard pool. But they remain robust and positive.
"You get to the stage where you wake up in the morning and think: 'Hello! I'm still here,'" Rita said with a laugh.
