A relationship forged during the troubled times of war has endured for 50 years, as NARELLE COULTER discovers.
Love messages sent between Australia and Vietnam by newlyweds Joan and Ray Henderson have remained locked away and unheard for 48 years.
Ten days after the Pakenham couple wed in 1967, Ray said farewell to his bride and Australia and was sent to Vietnam as a conscript.
“I got to go camping and shooting with the boys,” Ray joked when asked about leaving his bride of 10 days.
The couple wrote to each other regularly and posted taped messages – Joan recording family news from home and Ray talking about life at Nui Dat.
“It was good to hear each other’s voices. I’d whisper sweet nothings on the personal side. I was good at that,” said Ray with a cheeky grin.
Sadly, none of the couple’s letters survive. Ray burnt them, a manifestation he realised only later of his post-traumatic stress, and most of the tapes were stolen during a clearing sale.
There are a couple of tapes left but they can’t play them because Ray’s machine was also stolen.
They haven’t listened to them since 1968.
On 10 February Ray and Joan will quietly celebrate 50 years together aboard a cruise liner as they explore New Zealand.
They both admit that if they not wed before Ray was sent to war, they may not have ended up as husband and wife.
Ray returned to Joan after a year in the battle zone deeply scared by his experiences of war.
His post-traumatic stress went undiagnosed for decades but the couple “just got on with it”, as Joan puts it.
“We battled on. That’s what happened in those days. You go with the flow,” she said.
“He has never been the same. He’s a different person.”
Ray doesn’t hesitate to say that their lives would have been very different had the timing of the wedding been different.
“She wouldn’t have married me. That’s true.”
A natural larrikin, with a wicked sense of humour, Ray laughed his way through the dark years.
Joan remembers the army delivering back to her a husband who was short-tempered, easily startled and “always switched on” even as he slept.
“I didn’t think about it much. I accepted it. Further on I realised things were not quite right, but we didn’t know who to turn to.”
While Ray was away Joan lived with her mother and busied herself painting the Burwood house that the couple had bought shortly before their wedding.
She remembers watching the television news each night, trying to remain hopeful and optimistic that Ray was alright.
Physically he came back in one piece but the essence of who he was had changed forever.
Ray coped with his nightmares and undiagnosed PTSD by burying himself in work and alcohol.
He owned and ran a series of butchers shops, handing out jokes and jibes with his sausages and schnitzels in Nar Nar Goon, Berwick, Kooweerup and Cranbourne.
He also became a livestock buyer and a farmer.
He also taught himself to make small goods and became renowned for his hams, Strasbourgs, bacon, sausages and frankfurters.
In the last week before his left his Nar Nar Goon shop, Ray churned out 240 kilograms of sausages for people wanting to stock their freezers with his handiwork.
He was a workaholic who ran his family like a military drill and consoled himself with a bottle of beer a couple of glasses of wine and a bottle of port every night.
When he found himself opening a second bottle of port one night he knew things had to change.
After he retired Ray battled health problems. Diabetes and the insulin used to treat it caused his weight to balloon to 156.7 kilograms.
With professional help, Ray put himself on a strict diet and whittled down his weight to his current 96 kilograms. He jokes that he lost the equivalent of his petite wife.
“I’ve lost Joan, I can’t find her” he said, laughing.
“Joan was very good helping me diet. I was only allowed three handfuls of steamed vegies, no alcohol or dairy and three Optifast meals a day. I did that for four months. In the first week I lost seven kilograms. That gets you interested.”
With Ray’s health in much better shape, he and Joan are looking forward to their anniversary cruise.
No doubt their minds will wander back to 10 February 1967 to a fine, cool day at St Aloysius Church, Caulfield.
They may also reminisce about the night they met and danced together at the Bob Munroe Dance Studio in Glenferrie Road or their first date, a drive to Portsea to visit Ray’s great aunt and uncle.
“We just clicked,” said Joan.
“We just got on well. We courted for three years before we got married.”
Ray was 21 and Joan was 22.
“She was always a lady and she still is,” said Ray with affection.
The couple raised three children – Tim, Simon and Lisa – and have six grandchildren.
These days the couple like to get away in their caravan and can often be seen riding their bicycles around Pakenham. Every day they stop for a coffee at Frankie’s Cafe in Lakeside.
The couple maintain there is no secret to a long marriage, just “hard work and respect”.
“You need respect and personal discipline being married. You bite your tongue,” said Ray with a wink.
And respect the boss.
“She, who must be obeyed,” Ray chided cheekily as Star photographer Stewart Chambers captured the couple for this article.
“Yes, dear, no dear. That’s how it goes.”
* The Gazette would like to hear from anyone who has a machine capable of playing Ray and Joan’s Vietnam War tapes. The 66mm tapes were made by National Sound.
