Paul and Gwenny get married!

After roughly a year's engagement Paul and Gwenny got married at the Darwin Community Church on

Sabine Road in Milner.

The Wedding Party

Paul and his best man Peter Thomsen got ready at Paul's parent's place in Wanguri.  Gwenyth and her matron of honour Maree got ready at her parent's place in Stuart Park.   Apart from the Best Man and Matron of Honour, Gwenny had her nieces as flower girls.  Sadly Gwenny's niece Rachel Ezzy had passed away tragically in July of that year and her absence was very much felt.

More to come...

Rachel Ezzy tragically killed in car accident

Peter and Joy tragically lost their oldest daughter in July 1989 when their car lost control and rolled over on the Victoria Highway near Timber Creek.   They had their whole family in the car but no one else was seriously hurt.

Paul and Gwenny were at Gwenny's parents replace when Gwenny got the call from Joy.  Her parents were at the Darwin Show for the day.  Paul has always regretted the advice he gave Gwenny to wait until her parents got home and to tell them before telling others.  He didn't consider that they might need help to get home etc.  When the rest of the family found out later that afternoon after he had told her parents they contacted Joy and then went down to get the family and bring them home.

Rachel was aged 10 at the time.

Rachel in centre in brown jacket at Coomalie Creek

Rachel (far right background) at Gwenny's 21st

Gwenny's 21st

Gwenny and Graham had their 21st at Colin and Dorothy's place at Humpty Doo.  It was held outside in Colin's partially finished but perfectly usable shed.

Paul and Gwenny were engaged to be married at the time

Paul and Gwenny engaged!

Paul and Gwenny were officially engaged today.   Paul actually popped the question on new years day (13 days earlier) but didn't pluck up the courage to ask Gwenny's Dad until the 13th!

They decided they were quite fond of each other at a camping trip to Koolpin Gorge a few months earlier.  They are planning to get married at the end of the year when Gwenny finishes her Teacher's Degree.

Where it all began?  Koolpin Gorge in '88

 

Christmas at Camooweal

Paul drove Gwenny to Camooweal for Christmas in 1988 as her parents were looking after the AIM church there whilst the normal pastor was on holidays.  Paul and Gwenny were just "going out" at the time.

They stayed there for about a week and had a good time meeting a few of the local people.   One day they all went for a drive to Mount Isa in Paul's new little Hyundai Excel and they caught up with Chris Downes as well as others.  Paul bought a Commodore Amiga 500 computer whilst in Mount Isa.

Pictures to come.

Paul gets baptised

Paul was baptised tonight at the Community Church by pastor Peter Ezzy.

Pauls work camp moves from Mount Todd to Harriet Creek

Unfortunately the company that Bruce had the mining contract with at Mount Todd Gold Mine has gone broke and Bruce is stuck with some expensive machinery that he needs work for to pay off.

Harriet Creek is a large creek that crosses the Kakadu Highway just over 25km from the turnoff at Pine Creek.  Bruce successfully got a job to build a bridge to cross this creek for the new highway.

We started demobilising our camp at Mount Todd in mid February 1988 (Rob and Jessie moved there on the 22nd) and setting up a new camp at Harriet Creek.

Paul was mainly labouring at this site - including the very hard work of using a pnuematic hand held rock drill to drill holes in the granite so explosives could be placed in the rock to break it.  Often he did night shift on the drill which meant very long hard nights.

The Harriet Creek bridge project

Rob and Bruce at Harriet Creek