Community & Business
12 November, 2025
Seventy years strong
IT TAKES just four words to encapsulate 70 years of a happy marriage - love, trust, honesty and respect.
So said long-term Herberton resident John Wyatt, known as Jack, who celebrated the milestone with his beloved wife Dawn, and close family, over lunch at the Herberton Bowls Club on Saturday, 1 November.
Jack, 93, and Dawn, 90, were both born and raised in the town, from parents who were also born in the Herberton District.
Though Jack and Dawn attended Herberton High School together, they were in different grades and didn’t really meet until they were both working.
Dawn recalled typing on her typewriter at the Herberton Shire Council Office and looking out of the window to see a handsome Jack working outside Jack and Newell’s store across the road, washing bottles.
They courted for three years before they married in 1955 at the Methodist church in Herberton.
The couple made their life in the village where Jack worked for Jack & Newell’s, then ran the Wondecla Store and petrol depot, became a tin miner at Wondecla mines Bradlaugh and Rip and Tear amongst others, and finally had his own business in Herberton, Wyatt Motor Repairs.
Dawn worked at the council before raising their family and later became a teacher’s aide at Herberton State School.
Socially, they also kept busy. Dawn was an avid tennis player and keen dressmaker, while Jack was a member and patron of the Tableland Competition Car Club and a Herberton Sporting Shooter - which he still enjoys weekly to this day.
They have three sons, Kevin, Greg and Max, and two daughters, Karen and Janelle, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. And they still live in the family home in Herberton.
Had they ever wanted to leave Herberton?
No. It was where they met, where they had built their life together.
“From Watsonville to Herberton, to Wondecla and back to Herberton, I’ve travelled widely!” Dawn said wryly.
The couple have been out and about over the years, visiting some of their children and family who had moved away for short periods, to places such as Tennant Creek, Coen, Kyogle and Wongaling Beach. And later, with their caravan, they would travel to shooting events and take holidays.
But they were never tempted to leave their home, despite seeing many changes over the decades.
“Herberton had everything back then, including general stores, a hospital, a movie theatre... and now many of these conveniences are no longer in the town,” they said.
“We are now almost strangers in our own town with so many newcomers having arrived over the years.”
What doesn’t change is their love for each other and their family, and their sense of place.
They said they feel blessed to have reached this stage in their life, and thanked God every day for the health, happiness and the future of all their family, friends and people around them.
