Alex and Noel Allitt on the day of their anniversary, 2025.
What is the recipe for 70 years of happy marriage?
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Is it Noel Allitt’s Melbourne show prize fruit cake? Or Alex Allitt performing his poetry?
Or perhaps it’s the more binding family recipe that has kept them together and happy for 70 years.
Either way, the Allitts have the secret and marked their anniversary on Wednesday.
Another celebration will be held this weekend.
Alex loved performance when he was young and was a supporting member of the drama club. He came from a sport loving family.
Noel loved sport and played cricket with Alex’s four sisters, so meeting was inevitable.
This was the innocent beginnings of beautiful friendship, followed by courtship and marriage.
At this time Noel was living with her grandparents and her grandfather happened to be the sergeant of police for the district.
Sergeant Hyde was an imposing figure, and Alex had to ask his permission to court Noel. This would have bowed a lesser man!
After three years of courtship, going to the movies and dancing, they were married in Yass where Noel’s parents were stationed.
Alex’s brother, Bruce, and Noel’s sister, Margaret, made up the wedding party.
They are lucky to still have Noel’s sister Margaret in attendance at their 70th wedding anniversary.
They honeymooned in Goulburn, Sydney and up the north coast of NSW.
On their return to Deniliquin, they were to live and work on Boree Park, a dairy farm on the Moonee Swamp Rd. They worked hard and saved enough to purchase the property.
Initially, they were off to a hungry start to their marriage, as Noel had not cooked before her marriage. Apparently, their first foray into scrambled eggs was experimental to say the least!
In 1957, their firstborn Jenny arrived, followed by Helen in 1960, Sandra in 1963 and Brett in 1966.
Mundiwa North School was the educational starting point for all the children until it closed in 1971.
As with all small country schools, Alex and Noel committed time and energy into it.
The dairy continued, as well as rice, and all the family contributed to its running.
Alex also share-farmed with his brothers and with his brother-in-law, Artie Doncon.
This allowed the family the opportunity to purchase a larger property, ‘Holmwood’, beside Alex’s family’s farm on the Hay Rd.
They gave up dairying for rice, cattle, sheep and cropping.
Alex and Noel had always been active in the community with the P&A society, Rural Fire Brigade and local council.
As the children grew and left home to follow their own careers, and without the encumbrance of the dairy, they now had some spare time to follow their own interests.
Choir and poetry, two of Alex’s passions, were reignited. He finally had the time and energy to “find his voice” and has thrived in the theatrical environment, much to the pleasure of others.
Noel has taken a quieter but no less important path, in supporting (very well) Alex’s endeavours and also joining the garden club with friends and Probus Club supporting her parents’ interests.
The family has now extended to include three much loved in-laws - Tony, Leigh, Chris and Rachael.
Grandchildren then followed - Karah, Tim, Mikaela, Jayne, Katelyn, Ryan and Miles - and now great-grandchildren are arriving - Kit, Sully, Hayley and Dallas.
So what is the recipe for a happy marriage ?
Alex and Noel will say hard work, good genes, luck and a sense of humour.
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