Leo Pietsch was just 12 years old when he first saw Joyce Bell - and he couldn't take his eyes off her.
He never has.
This month the couple celebrates a remarkable 75 years of marriage, and their love and respect for one another is evident as they share stories of their decades together with smiles on their faces and affection in their voices.
The day they met remains oh-so-clear in Leo's mind as he tells of the events that led to that meeting - their lives and their legacy.
Joyce's father was Roy Bell of boxing tent fame but these were the war years, and the shows were closed down.
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The family was needed for essential work for the government and came to Tullamore in search of land heavy with trees they could fell and burn down to charcoal that was burned to fuel the cars in those years of petrol shortages.
Young Leo was on the farm when his brother-in-law asked if he'd like to come for a drive.
Leo didn't really need to go see Roy Bell, bootmaker, but he went along.
They travelled about 10 miles out of town into the scrub, and Frank disappeared into a little tin hut.
"I’m in the motorbike sitting up in the sidecar there," Leo recalls, admitting he was getting a bit impatient on his own there - until the family started to emerge from the hut.
"At the tail end here’s this beautiful long-haired girl, 12 years old," Leo says, and the memory still makes him smile.
"I couldn't take my eyes off her."
Their romance blossomed first through snippets shared through Leo's sister and then through their own letters as the war ended, the Bells went back on the road and Joyce went to live with her grandparents in Hurstville.
Young Leo took work on his brother's farm and then in his engineering business in Forbes, while Joyce secured a job in a chemist shop in the city.
Busy and content, Joyce began to think it was unfair on Leo to have her at such a distance.
"She wrote me a beautiful letter giving me the opportunity to forget about her and get another girl," Leo says.
"I thought ... it must be hard for him up in little Tullamore, I gave him the opportunity to take his freedom," Joyce explains.
His freedom was the last thing Leo wanted, but he hadn't written back by the time Joyce's mother returned home the show circuit and enquired after her daughter's young man.
Most unimpressed with her daughter's response, Amy pressed money into Joyce's hands and ordered her to the phone booth down the road immediately reach out to Leo.
Joyce still remembers the big black phone, and the long, painful wait for connection.
Leo, at work at RL Pietsch and Co, says he was summonsed up to the office to take the call.
"I suppose I explained to him why I'd written to him and he said he'd write again - which he did, so that brought us back together again," Joyce says.
Leo would make the trip to Sydney about once a year, getting to know the Bell family - and learning to box - until they could be married at the age of 21.
The wedding took place in Forbes' Lutheran Church on January 13, 1950.
By Leo's side was his brother-in-law Frank Hatter, attending Joyce was her dear friend June Durkin whose father rode the wheel of death in the shows, and her young sister Nita.
Joyce's beautiful gown was purchased for 10 pounds from another young bride who'd had it made - and while that sum doesn't sound much her weekly wage was just 2 pounds 7 shillings and sixpence.
The newlyweds made their home in Forbes with Leo's mum, who ran a boarding house and had a couple of rooms for them.
It was here they welcomed their first child Laurence.
Leo had learned useful skills in the years since he left school, through his brother's engineering business and contracting to drill the holes for many of the power poles for the electricity supply network to be extended into rural areas between Forbes and Eugowra.
But he'd never wanted to leave the farm for town, so when he heard of a little farm for sale out on Bogan River country at Tullamore he acted quickly.
Leo picked up the real estate agent in his ute and headed with him out to the property where he heard the owner of the block, Tommy Ray, was staying.
Arriving there, they found Tommy had left to get the train back to his home in Trundle.
Back in the ute Leo got and headed straight for the railway station to wait for the little motor train to come in.
"I walked along the edge (of the platform) singing out 'Tommy Ray, Tommy Ray'," Leo remembers.
Tommy came off the train and Leo introduced himself and his interest in the property.
So keen he was, he encouraged Tommy to come with him to the solicitors then and there to sign up for the sale.
"He said, 'I can't do that, I've got to get back to Trundle', but I said, 'you come and do that bit of business, I'm going back to Forbes so I'll drop you right at your front door," Leo remembers now.
In due course Leo and Joyce found themselves the owners of a 1400-acre bush block - completely undeveloped - where they determined to make their home and their life.
Leo recalls thinking, "what the hell can I do?"
He'd found the money for the property but didn't have anything left over to pay anyone to clear the land, build a house or build water infrastructure.
Even telling their story today Leo can only say, "I don't know how we did it," but the couple agree their commitment to one another and their common cause, with the kindness of those around them, was key.
And although it might have been Joyce's beauty that caught Leo's eye, he soon found she'd be his "number one" as they worked to build their lives together - clever, resilient and hard working.
The block had to be cleared and Leo's little tractor simply wasn't big enough, but they allowed workers in the area to keep their machinery on the block and were in turn offered use of the larger machinery.
Leo's brother provided a sheet of tin that he propped on a railing between trees to create the roof on their first little home.
"We had a wooden legged bed mum gave us, but so much rain floated in underneath the legs of the bed went down in the mud," Leo says.
There was no electricity to the block, and the only water supply was the dam.
Their first stove was retrieved from where the chooks were using it to roost, cleaned up and quickly put back into business.
Joyce's Uncle Will was a builder and would help them build a house for their growing family, but first Leo had to get the timber.
Off he went up the hill to cut logs, but how was one man on his own to get them onto the truck and back to his building site?
"Well I had two other little rails and I’d put them on the top of the tray of the truck out onto the ground – one up the front of the truck and one at the back – and then I’d drop the logs, pull them up with the tractor right at the end of those rails," he explains.
"Then I had a rope on the truck I’d tie it on, under the rail, back over the top, over the truck out there on the little tractor, and that’d roll that log up onto the truck."
He also needed a sawmill.
"I had nothing to build it out of, I’m looking around my scrap heap and I found an old engine lying there," Leo says.
"I thought I can use that, to put the belt on, then I’ve got to put a tail shaft on to hook it on to my little crawler tractor that didn’t have a belt pulley."
When that was all worked out there was the problem of cutting logs: Leo had never cut one, but he knew someone who had and quickly worked out an arrangement where his friend could cut timber for himself as well as for the Pietsch family home.
Uncle Will lived in a tent on site while he helped Leo build the young family a home to lock up stage.
Leo put the floorboards in the kitchen first, so Joyce could prepare their meals, and once he had the house lined it was also Joyce who painted it.
Leo and Joyce welcomed four more children - Judith, Kathryn, Robert and Geoffrey - as they expanded their farming to sheep and cropping, Joyce always keeping meticulous books and accounts.
There were good years and lean ones, dust storms, mouse plagues, times when they were cut off from town by wet weather and of course plenty of snake stories.
They had chooks for eggs, a milking cow, and meat from the chooks and sheep they raised.
In time there was connection to electricity and phone, eventually black and white television.
The children started school and Joyce petitioned for the school bus run to be extended to their area - it would also often bring out a box of groceries as well as the Pietsch children.
Their life was simple but rich in community.
"There were always neighbours popping in, we had more visitors than you’d expect," Joyce says.
"People would be calling in, having a cup of tea and a yarn.
"(It was) a lovely community – a beautiful community, Tullamore."
Neighbours got together and built tennis courts at a spot called Yethera, where many happy afternoons were spent.
"It was just like one big family," Joyce said.
Of course, Joyce's family would take a spell on the property too, rolling in at the end of the show circuit to rest and repair their gear after travelling the miles back from the Northern Territory via Queensland and the rodeos.
From there they'd launch the whole new show season with the first event at Tullamore.
Leo's engineering skills were naturally in demand and one of his other roles was maintaining the phone line - there were 14 on their party line.
He recalls one day the phone went out and he set off to find the fault.
Getting to a junction he isolated the line back to Tullamore and the line back to his house, then connected the phone he had to the remaining line.
"I could hear pigs grunting, and I thought there’s only one bloke here that’s got pigs on his farm," Leo says now.
"So I went down to his house, I opened the back door and could hear the pigs."
In the owner's absence the pigs had got out of their yards and into the house where they'd knocked the phone off.
"They’re all lying on the ground, under the table, and the phone’s lying in amongst them," Leo chuckles, problem solved.
The Pietsch's capacity for community involvement and advocacy increased with time: they were passionate about keeping services in the town that had been so good to them.
Leo recalls learning there was a plan to shut down and demolish the local aged care home, and immediately taking the protest to then State MP, the late Ian Armstrong.
Mr Armstrong met Leo at Parliament and introduced him to the health minister and before Leo returned to Tullamore he had a verbal commitment for a combined health and aged care service.
Tullamore was home until the 1990s when Leo and Joyce retired off their farm and made their home in Forbes, first settling at a small acreage on Wandary Lane.
Still in their home together, their children and grandchildren in this region and regulars through it, they are so very grateful for one another and for the many people they've called friends and neighbours across their remarkable 75 years together.
As Leo and Joyce reflect on the life they built from the ground up and wonder at how hard it was, each speaks so highly of all the other did to make it happen.
They're a team.
"We were very committed and very honest too – we were trying our very best every way," Joyce says, and she's grateful for the kindness and generosity they were shown.
"Like when we had to put the telephone line up and (our neighbours) all threw their chequebooks in so we’d have a telephone and not be isolated," she remembers.
"A kind hand at times does a lot, makes a lot of difference."
"We were very, very fortunate to have good neighbours and business people, no doubt about that," Leo adds.
From the Advocate to Leo and Joyce, we offer every congratulations on your diamond wedding anniversary, our gratitude for taking time to share your amazing memories and our very best wishes.
