Graham grew up in Spring Gully and Dorothy was originally from Harcourt. Their social life centred on going to the pictures and the football. They also went to different places on Graham’s English-made Matchless motorbike. “We traded that in for a pram and a pushbike,” Graham recalls wistfully.

The couple were married at the Mackenzie Street Methodist Church on April 1, 1950, and honeymooned at the “big railway hotel” at Macedon. 

The second youngest of five, Dorothy’s mother died when she was two-and-a-half and she went to live with her grandmother and aunt. Dorothy recalls of a morning, taking her grandmother warm milk and bread “with a little sprinkling of sugar” for breakfast. 

When she was older, her father would come in from his Mandurang farm in a horse and gig to meet her at the Violet Street Primary School and she would buy a “big three-penny bag of lollies” at the shop across the road.

Graham was the second youngest of eight. Like his father before him, and now his son, he was a train driver until retiring in 1986. “We have about 100 years of combined work on the railways,” he says. 

One of Dorothy’s favourite jobs was working at Bennett’s Arcade.”I loved that,” she says.

“I remember my first pay and going in to Myer and buying a mauve angora wool jumper.”

The couple raised four children, sons John, Neil, Mark and a daughter Judith, who all attended Quarry Hill Primary School. 

They ran the Spring Heelers Walking Club for many years, with a membership of 90 at its peak. Graham was also the Spring Gully Hall committee president and Dorothy, a member.  

 “We always worked together, but we won’t say we never had an argument,” they say with a laugh. These days they play indoor bowls with the Senior Citizens at Strathdale.

 They have nine grandchildren and six, soon to be seven, great-grandchildren.  

The Sheards celebrated their anniversary with a dinner at the Brougham Arms on April 1.