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Celebrating 50 years of married bliss on New Year's Eve 2006, Brian and Nanette D'Arcy have resided for 47 years in the parish of Sr Bernadette's, Castle Hill.
Stalwarts of the parish, the D'Arcys are engaged Catholics who live their faith in practical ways and carry their warmth and generosity into the community.
As a young married couple the D'Arcys arrived in Castle Hill when it was still a sleepy rural place of bush blocks and "streets full of children playing".
In the main street was a horse trough and in those days, when bread and milk were still delivered to the front door, the local grocer would arrive in the morning to "collect your order and deliver it that afternoon".
The fact that the D'Arcys had the only telephone in the neighbourhood also made them a hub of communication.
It was here that they raised their eight children (four boys and four girls), became involved in the life of the schools and parish council, and participated in the lay formation program Cursillo, based around Christian study, prayer and action.
"With other members of our Paulian group we would meet every three weeks to discuss the coming Sunday's Gospel and a topical subject," Nanette said.
"That challenged Brian and I to think about our faith and whether we had encountered or ignored Christ in the preceding weeks. It was a great sounding board."
Nanette said the establishment of parish sacramental programs was another "leap forward" as it offered "a way back" or a revision for parents whose own religious education had been interrupted.
The arrival of the Antioch "youth to youth" ministry in the 1980s, she said, also served her children's faith formation well, as had the once-formidable Catholic Youth Organisation (CYO) when she and Brian were young.
When Cardinal Freeman asked Catholics to open their hearts to the wave of South Vietnamese refugees who began arriving in Australia in the 1970s, the D'Arcys led a group that actively resettled 180 migrant families over the next 25 years.
Nanette recalled how beyond "a caring welcome" the refugees also needed the essentials of life in a new land: accommodation, food, clothes, work for the breadwinner, English lessons, children booked into schools, and so on.
The work led to many visitations all over Sydney, including one occasion when delivering furniture and food to a young Vietnamese man, he asked them: "Are you with God?"
Nanette recalled how the surprised manner of the man's query "made it sound as if God was in the van parked outside".
Reflecting on the truth that they were indeed "with Christ" in this caring ministry she ever afterwards testified, "that we were 'with God', realising that if we weren't, we would have given up when the going got tough".
Their tireless voluntary work was recognised in 1992 when the D'Arcys became the proud recipients of the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for their work with the migrant Vietnamese.
Likewise, many of the families they assisted have never forgotten their kindness, and it is a regular event for the D'Arcys to be present at the weddings and graduations of their Vietnamese-Australian friends.
When I mention to Brian that it seems an incredible coincidence that they should live in "Nanette Place", he explained that when he sold his original acreage to a developer years ago part of the deal was that he got to name their street after his wife, Nanette. "And just around the corner there's Kathleen Avenue, named after one of our neighbours," he added.
Now in their 70s, the D'Arcys were married on New Year's Eve 1956 in Tenterfield. Brian explained that the couple's meeting and subsequent romance was so unlikely as to have been arranged by the Good Lord (with a little help from Nanette's mum).
As a professional bridge builder with by the Department of Main Roads, Brian (or "Darce" as Nanette calls him) travelled wherever the winding road led. In the mid-50s he was encamped at the town of Tenterfield near the Queensland border, constructing a new bridge.
While there, Brian enjoyed the hospitality of Nanette's parents, Mr and Mrs Laing, fellow Catholics who often had him to their home for meals.
Nanette, their third daughter, was at that time away in Sydney working as a secretary with the Commonwealth Bank, yet her photograph in the family home made a strong impression on Brian.
"I confess I'm the bloke who fell in love with the girl in the picture," he said.
"And I'm the girl whose Mum said 'come home quick'," Nanette said.
Meanwhile, in Sydney, Nanette was herself feeling lonely and homesick. "Tenterfield had been my whole life and those city girls didn't even know where it was!"
Her faith was enriched by her stay with The Grail. This community of Catholic laywomen "opened me up to new ideas of priestly people and lay liturgical involvement. They pre-empted Vatican II by acknowledging that we're all called to ministry of some kind".
When Brian and Nanette finally met in Tenterfield it really was the beginning of a lasting love. It must have been, because Nanette followed Brian on the road. "Our first home was a caravan on the banks of the Mimosa River, 160km south-west of Rockhampton."
It was here at Baralaba "under a lean-to with a fuel stove and a shower made from a four-gallon drum under the stars and amidst the heat, flies, mossies, and snakes" that Nanette made a home for her babies, Ruth and Beth.
Beth's premature birth in the caravan coincided with a flood, which left Brian stranded on another bridge site on the Clermont-Mackay Road.
Nanette and Beth, who "weighed all of three pounds", were rushed by ambulance to reach a precious humidicrib located at Rockhampton hospital.
Along the way, property owners, alerted to the medical emergency, met the ambulance with offerings of hot water bottles so that the baby's temperature could be maintained. Mother and baby survived the experience and prospered - the Baralaba bridge, however, didn't.
With the laconic humour of a true country girl Nanette remarked that the Baralaba bridge which had taken "18 months to build" turned turtle "in just 18 minutes of flood - just as the locals had predicted". With assurance she added: "Of course it was the fault of the Department of Main Roads' poor design, not the builder!"
