Celebrating 60 years: Whanganui couple has travelled a long and happy road

Neville and Tilina Gunasekara had to postpone the celebration they had planned for their 60th wedding anniversary but say they are happy to be together in their home. Photo / Supplied

Whanganui seemed a very quiet little place to Tilina and Neville Gunasekara when they arrived from Sri Lanka with their three children in 1974.

"We came from a big noisy city and had travelled to many other big cities so the quiet took a bit of getting used to," Neville said.

Today he and Tilina are marking their 60th wedding anniversary and had planned a noisy celebration with live music and dancing, surrounded by friends and family.

Covid-19 restrictions may have scuttled their plans for now but they hope to go ahead with the celebration as soon as possible.

"We are both musicians and it was music that brought us together," Tilina said.

"Neville is a drummer, I play classical piano and our sons Gehan and Sanji play saxophone and clarinet."

The couple met when Tilina, a young medical student at the time, went to a dance in Colombo and struck up a friendship with the handsome young man playing the drums.

"There was a strict curfew at the hostel where I was living and we had to be home by 9pm," Tilina said.

There was enough time, however, for the two to get to know each other well enough to know they had something special and they married in 1961.

At a time when many women gave up their careers when they married, Neville supported Tilina to continue her studies and she went to England for two years to study and work in her specialist field of anaesthesia.

Neville and their elder son Gehan joined her in London for a time and he worked at the Tilbury Docks as a containerisation adviser.

When the Gunasekaras decided to emigrate to New Zealand Gehan was 12, his sister Menik 10 and their little brother Sanji was just 18 months old.

For Neville, it meant leaving his career working for the Port of Colombo where he was a key player in the transfer of cargo shipping from private to public ownership.

The Gunasekaras have always shared a love for travel and adventure so when Tilina was offered a position at Whanganui Hospital they took the plunge and settled their family into a little house in Heads Rd provided by the hospital.

Neville and Tilina Gunasekara have enjoyed sixty years of travelling side by side. Photo / Supplied

There were not many women working in her field and Whanganui Hospital staff were not as multi-cultural as they are today but Tilina said it was not hard to settle in.

"Actually it seemed like a piece of cake really," she said.

"There were many complex neurosurgeries being performed at the hospital I had been working at. Many long operations.

"At Whanganui Hospital there were fewer operations and most of them were straightforward."

For Neville, life was a bit lonely at first while he stayed home with Sanji and adjusted to life in a new country.

"We soon made friends through attending services at Christ Church," he said.

"I was offered work as a consultant at the Western Building Society. I did that for a number of years and quite enjoyed it."

Since retirement, the Gunasekaras have indulged their fondness for travel and said they have visited a total of 60 countries.

"In recent years, we have been to Crete, Cuba and we travelled around South America," Tilina said.

"They were all wonderful experiences."

The couple still enjoys listening to and playing music, and ballroom dancing has also been a shared passion.

"The traditional ballroom dancing," Neville said.

"The modern ballroom dancing is too jazzy."

The Gunasekaras now have four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Gehan is a lawyer living in Auckland and Sanji a qualified doctor and engineer in Wellington.

"Our daughter Menik lives in Whanganui but we can't see her at the moment either.

"She works at Jane Winstone retirement village and in order to keep us and the residents there safe, she can't visit at the moment."

The Gunasekaras say they are grateful they still have their independence and live in the family home where their children grew up.

"We do have a lady who comes to help us with the housework but she is not able ... she is having to stay away at the moment as well," Tilina said.

They plan to share a video call with their family and celebrate their anniversary as best they can.

The couple put the success of their marriage down to a shared acceptance that they don't always have to agree on everything and their strong Christian faith.

Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) was a predominantly Buddhist country when Neville and Tilina were growing up but there was Christianity in their families.

"My maternal grandfather was one of the first Methodist ministers in Ceylon," Neville said.

"When we arrived in Whanganui, we joined the Anglican church and made wonderful friends."

Those friendships have continued and there was to have been a service at Christ Church for their anniversary.

"We had invited 50 people to come to our house for the party after the service but we will just have to reschedule it when we can," Tilina said.