Alison Kelso knows her husband Terry’s first love will always be fly fishing, so it was no surprise their 64th wedding anniversary included a trip to Murchison for a spot of fishing.
But Alison also had something else planned to mark more than six decades together.
“He had said quite recently that he would love to do a jet boat ride, and we were going to the Owen River for the weekend. We booked a rustic cabin on a farmstay that was our anniversary getaway,” Alison says.
Terry, 92, and Alison, 84, rate the trip highly. Travelling 85 mile an hour with front row seats wasn’t bad they reckon.
“It was way beyond our expectations; I would recommend it because the Buller is quite a river. In fact, the last time Terry had a buzz like this, was when I shouted him a tandem sky dive on his 60th birthday.”
The couple married in Auckland, where they met while working at the ANZ St Heliers branch “many moons ago”. Terry recalls that he was the one who first caught Alison’s eye.
“We used to have our lunch on the beach together,” Alison says of the friendship that grew into a long-lasting love.
“We actually dated for three years before we got married. My mum wanted me to wait till I was 21. We got engaged on my 19th birthday and mum eventually relented.”
They married on 14 February 1962 when Alison was 20 and Terry was 28.
“I wanted to make sure he never forgot the date,” Alison quips of the Valentine’s date.
And what did they do for their honeymoon?
“Trout fishing,” Alison says with a sparkle in her eye.
“I nearly went to Hell at the suggestion,” Terry recalls in his comedic Irish fashion.
“She said, if you do that once more, I’m going to write to mum and tell her I’m coming home.”
“He couldn't understand why I didn't want to get up at five o'clock in the morning and sit in the dinghy at the mouth of the river and watch the sun rise while he fished,” Alison adds.
“We had a two-week honeymoon, the second week was my choice,” she says.
“We went to Mount Maunganui, so what did he do? He was hooking kingfish of the Mt Maunganui wharf on trout gear.”
The passion helped Terry excel at fly fishing and was a key member of the NZ team that won gold at the 1991 World Fly Fishing Championship – the medal sits pride of place in the display cabinet.
“It's a disease that you either are born with or you fall in love with,” Terry says of flyfishing. “My father was a salmon fisherman, but he never took me fishing.”
He still remembers his first ever catch, even the exact pool he caught it in.
In fact, it was the fishing, that brought Terry out from Ireland in the first place.
While working in a small-town bank, he spotted a newspaper advertisement seeking staff to work in banks in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. He travelled to London for the interview and initially signed a contract for South Africa.
“I flew home to Ireland, rang my buddy Billy, who was also a trout fisherman, and he said, ‘that's a coincidence, I'm going to New Zealand.’”
Billy had accepted a job with ANZ.
“Billy said ‘well, the trout fishing in New Zealand is far better, it’s top notch’. So I went back to London to interview with the ANZ.”
The pair boarded the Rangitane for NZ shortly after. Terry’s widowed mother and younger brother followed a year later on his recommendation.
After marrying, Terry and Alison stayed in Auckland before moving to Rotorua, where they raised four children, who are now spread around the world along with their eight grandsons.
“I think after our daughter was born, we lost the recipe for girls in our family,” Alison jokes.
Terry has taught all of his grandsons to play chess, but jests that he can’t play them anymore because “they’re too good”.
While there are no current plans on how to celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary, Nelson Weekly will keep an eye on what adventure comes next.
