Happy anniversary: married to Oakleigh, and each other, for 60 years
Kevin Deaville and Fran Pask married at the Holy Trinity Church in Oakleigh on 20 February 1965.
“It was very hot!” they recall in unison, just a few short weeks after celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary.
It was the very same church Fran’s parents – Edie and Stan Pask - had married in November 1935 and where Kevin and Fran’s daughter, Sue, was to marry David Dillon in February 1985.
It’s no surprise so many of the family have walked down the same aisle to say their vows. Kevin and Fran’s story is more than a heartwarming tale of six decades of devotion - it’s a story about Oakleigh itself.
The Pasks were market gardeners and part of the Oakleigh landscape for generations. When asked how long her family had been in the area, Fran just shrugged her shoulders and smiled: “Oh, they’ve been here forever”.
Kevin, now 88, and Fran, 81, met by chance at a friend’s house one night a few years before they were married. Though Kevin was quickly on the phone to ask the young Fran out, she was a bit non-committal at first - despite the enthusiastic urging of her friends. The determined Kevin, however, didn’t accept her initial “Nah, I’m busy on Saturday night” and continued to press.
“It took a little while, but we got engaged eventually,” he laughed.
After their marriage, Kevin and Fran set up home in a quiet suburban street in Oakleigh East – remarkably, just a block away from where Fran had grown up.
In fact – apart from six months looking after the Burwood home, and three silky terriers, of friends on long service leave – Fran has lived her entire 81 years within the same suburban block, just a stone’s throw from Huntingdale Road.
So entrenched was Fran in her Oakleigh East neighbourhood that, when early in their married years, Kevin had tried to show her some lovely new display homes in Clayton and then near the corner of Blackburn Road and Ferntree Gully Road in Notting Hill, her less than impressed response was “why would I want to move out to the country?”
Apart from confessing to being briefly tempted by the greenery of Berwick, Fran said she’s never entertained any serious thoughts of leaving Oakleigh.
“Fran grew up with all the kids in the area,” Kevin said. “You know everyone who lives in your street.”
To prove his point, as I’m leaving, Kevin points to a dozen houses within the 50m stretch to the corner of Huntingdale Road and names every family that had lived there while the couple raised their own children.
Kevin, himself, came to Oakleigh in 1959 - from Ultima near Swan Hill - and started work at a butcher's shop “just round the corner”. In those days, Kevin recalls, there were something like eight or nine butchers in Oakleigh alone and the same number up and down Huntingdale Road.
There were abundant milk bars on street corners and every strip of shops had a grocer, a fruit and vegetable shop, a bank and a post office. And there were long-since-departed store chains like Nancarrow’s grocers and Clive Kings hardware.
It was a time when local grocers gathered up all the broken biscuits from packets before they were sold and bagged them up for a penny a serve, while butchers saved any excess bones for the pet dogs of neighbourhood families. And kids could ride their bikes or kick the footy in the street - even on Huntingdale Road itself.
Oakleigh had scouts, girl guides and brownies, even an angling club, Kevin remembers fondly.
Everything you needed was within a short walk and Oakleigh was like a small, self-contained country town. There were schools, jobs, family and homes.
Why would you leave?
“We’ve always just loved it here,” Fran said. “People have always asked ‘why don’t you sell up?’ But, no, I’m just happy to stay here in my own home.
“Everything we needed (shops) was right near us. Then I used to walk to Oakleigh once a week for a day out.
“There were two theatres, the Plaza in Portman Street and the Paramount in Warragul Road. There were rock and roll dances in Huntingdale and the RSL would have a dance every week.”
She recalled watching Oakleigh play footy with her uncles, and pestering them for loose coins for sweets while they were focussed on the on-field action. Back then it was safe for a child to wander around a crowded footy ground because everyone knew everyone else and kept an eye out for the youngsters.
But time rolls on and things have changed. Oakleigh has changed.
“We were the young ones back then, having our kids,” Kevin said. “Now everyone has grown up and moved on and we are the old ones still here.”
Kevin and Fran have noted the gradual disappearance of milk bars, corner shops, local butchers, neighbourhood grocers and post offices, and the rise of supermarkets and shopping complexes. Both, however, said the biggest change to the Oakleigh they’ve known has been the sheer number of cars on the roads and in the side streets, and how parked vehicles can clog their neighbourhood at certain times of the day.
Kevin and Fran still get away on regular car trips around the state, for a brief change of scenery, but they’re never too far from their slice of Oakleigh – and have absolutely no intention of changing that any time soon.
Why would you leave?