“This morning I had the pleasure of meeting these humans. I thought I may be there for 15 minutes but 3 hours later I was leaving their home with a warm heart and a big smile. We laughed, chased a bush turkey out of their prize winning garden, gave their chook ‘Princess’ words of comfort with her sore comb, had a ride on their chairlift installed so they could get up and down stairs with Mary snorting hysterically, and instilled into Thomas the rescued cat that I was not the vet. It’s this part of HOL that makes me realise how lovely our world can be.”
Mary and Emily (identical twins) – ” Well we were born 13 /9/1932 in Brisbane and we don’t barrack for The Broncos! We go for St George!. We win garden competitions, you have to beautify our Lismore, I don’t like long grass and junk in yards, not my cup of tea! We’ve been in this house since we were 3 years old, so 81 years now. We have good neighbours, we should bring back neighbourhood watch and it would help the police. Our dad used to get us up early to go to Lennox fishing with the line on bottles and he’d say to us ‘Come on kids!, you will never see the same sunrise or sunset again’ I went to the 1956 Olympics, I knew Hector Hogan, met Betty Cuthbert and Dr Roger Bannister came up to me and he was so nice, the first man to break the minute mile. Good times they were! I love sport!”
“So you must have such a good relationship to live together all your lives. You laugh together and get on so well, what’s the secret?”
“Well as long as we both follow St George!” and we’ve been with the Westpac Rescue helicopter mob raising money for them for 33 years! We call it our baby when it flies over. I love my chooks, feed our maggies, have our rescue cat who was tortured before he came here. No Thomas, she’s not the vet! What we would like to say to young people is, if you can help people, do!. That rescue helicopter is our baby!
I asked if they had any regrets – “Emily always wanted to be a nurse and I wanted to be a chook farmer. I love chooks and they would all be spoilt pets. Mum had two sets of twins. Charles lives in Modanville today and his twin died when she was 3 days old”.
“I asked what advice they would like to pass on to young people? “
“You can’t take all the time, you need to give something back to the community, we do, but nobody know it’s us!
Enjoy your life! but there are always others less fortunate than you, maybe you could join an organisation to help them, maybe mow their lawn or just visit them because some of them are very, very lonely with no one visiting them, ever! just keep an eye on your neighbours!”