Long time Port Stephens residents Gary and Pam Dickinson will this week celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.
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Gary Dickinson and Pamela Rolston were married at Stockton on July 29, 1961. Pam was a Fern Bay girl and she had met Gary when he had transferred to the RAAF base at Williamtown.
Their daughter Erica Johnston said that Gary and Pam have lived their entire married life at Fern Bay and still live in the family home they built in 1966. They have three children, six grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.
"We had planned a 60th anniversary celebration for family and friends to be held at the Fern Bay Community Hall, but have had to postpone it due to the current COVID restrictions," Erica said.
Gary was 20 years old and Pam had just turned 18 when the couple were married. Gary was in the RAAF based at Williamtown and Pam was working as a secretary at the Rural Bank of NSW in Newcastle.
As was common practice at that time, Pam left work as soon as she married to become a full time housewife and subsequently stay at home mum when their children, Erica, Lisa and Greg were born.
"Dad stayed with the Air Force for three years and then decided to leave so that he and mum could make their permanent home in the area and not be transferred to different parts of Australia," said Erica.
"My mum was a third generation Fern Bay resident and didn't want to live anywhere too far from her close knit family. Dad started work as a clerk at BHP and later worked in the shipping industry.
"They bought a block of land at Medowie and planned to build a home there, but when an offer was made to swap a block at Fern Bay they could not refuse and so the family home, where they still live today, was completed in 1966."
Pam never returned to the workforce after marrying, but she has spent her life looking after her family and giving to her local community. Known as 'Aunty Pam', she was a Sunday School teacher to many of Fern Bay's children from the 1960s to the 1990s.
"She was one of the first foster grandparents at the Stockton Centre and even though the program finished in 2014, she still visits her foster person, Brian, in his community home at Stockton each week. She also volunteered one day a week at St Paul's Thrift shop in Stockton until the COVID pandemic put a stop to that last year."
Pam is also a long time member of Fern Bay Tennis Club, while Gary is a Justice of the Peace and has served on the vestry of their church, St Paul's at Stockton. In the past few years both Gary and Pam have had some health problems, but they have been lucky to be able to stay in their home of 55 years.