Jervois’ Russell and Phyllis Nuske celebrate 60 years of marriage

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Phyllis Nuske still remembers meeting the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life.

She had come back home from New South Wales to Millicent at the end of 1962.

“My brother said, ‘Have you got a boyfriend? I’ve got the one for you’,” she said with a smile.

“On a Saturday night Mum said to me, ‘Will you go up the street and have a look at the displays in the shop windows?’ – it was the Festival of Arts.

“I saw Russell sitting outside the Somerset Hotel in his ute.”

They made a date to go out, but there were two problems.

Phyllis’ mum insisted that she milk the cow, with her hair up in rollers; then Russell came around to cancel the date – he would have to break up with another girlfriend first.

Three months later they were engaged, and on March 26, 1964, they were married at Millicent Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

They recently celebrated their 60th anniversary at home with their daughters and their partners.

Back when they met, Mr Nuske had been working on the Keith to Tailem Bend pipeline for the Engineering and Water Supply Department, now SA Water.

That work took the young couple all over the upper South East in the early years of their marriage: to Coonalpyn, then back to Millicent, Coonalpyn again, then Bordertown.

However, the arrival of their children, and in particular the health problems one of them experienced, led them to move closer to Adelaide’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

Mr Nuske had grown up at Mannum, so they settled on the River Murray: at Woods Point for 12 months, then at Jervois, in the home where they still live to this day.

In time they had six daughters: Karen, Theresa, Sharon, Angela, Michelle and Narelle.

Mr Nuske stayed with the department for many years before spending another 10 as a celebrant; Mrs Nuske kept the kids in check, sold Tupperware and ran a family day care service.

The couple have also made volunteer contributions of all kinds to their community over the years: with St John Ambulance, a Women’s and Children’s Hospital auxiliary and, for more than 40 years, the Jervois Hall committee, among others.

That had been part of the secret to their 60-year partnership, Mr Nuske said: they had both been able to enjoy their own lives while always coming back to each other.

“I never said to Phyllis ‘you shouldn’t go to the CWA, you should stay home and look after the kids’,” Mr Nuske said.

“She was the same with me.

“We’ve still got that independence.”

They had been through “ups and downs”, Mrs Nuske said, especially when Karen was young, but they had been able to sort things out in time.

“Listen to one another and work out your problems together, if you’ve got any,” she suggested.

“Everybody has their moments – you do have arguments – but you’ve got to sort yourselves out.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect birth order for the Nuskes’ daughters.