It started with a fight over a ball in a German pool, but more than 60 years later, Heinz and Helen Elsen are still going strong in Ardeer.
Fate stepped in on July 22, 1951, in Leverkusen, where Helen was playing with a girlfriend in the water. Then Heinz and his friends appeared.
“He got my ball and I asked for it back,” she remembered. “Soon we had moved our blankets together.”
A two-year courtship followed (“things were a lot different in those days”) before the couple, armed with a two-year immigration contract, moved to Australia on October 28, 1955.
“Heinz wanted to see Australia so off we went,” Helen said.
“It was the best decision we ever made. Australia is such a free country.”
The couple married two months later (December 31) in a Nissen hut in Ardeer as the local church was still being built.
Heinz was a fitter and turner, while Helen worked in several factories across the west before settling down to have four children – two boys and two girls – while six grandchildren and two great grandchildren followed.
Helen says the secret to a long marriage is “give and take – nothing more”.
“Not many marriages have made it this far,” she says.
“Hopefully, we’ve got a few years to go.
“Some marriages break up because the woman goes home to her mother.
“It was a bit hard for me as she was thousands of kilometres away in Germany,” Helen adds with a laugh.
