Teen attraction blossoms into a lifetime love.
For some couples, it’s ‘opposites attract’ and for others, like Jim and Lillian Staal, it was an instant connection that goes back more than 65 years.
A partnership in love and life was forged the moment Jim and Lillian met as teenagers in their farming community of Greenwood in 1957.
“We met at a meeting of Queensland Junior Farmers,” said Jim.
The organisation was founded in 1946 to help young people living in rural areas to connect with one another and to foster better farming practices. Today’s Young Farmers Connect provides similar opportunities.
Jim and Lillian, Living Gems Toowoomba homeowners, met at one of the monthly meetings and soon Lillian was appointed secretary of their local chapter. One year later, Jim was elected president.
“We got on well straight away, but I was only 16 at the time and my parents wouldn’t let me date until I was 17,” Lillian recalls.
But the attraction was already there, and it blossomed into love at Lillian’s debutante ball.
With both sides of the family being longstanding farmers in the area, it was only natural that Jim and Lillian’s first home should be a farm also.
Knowing that Lillian was the girl for him, Jim worked hard, and by the age of 21, had saved up enough to purchase 300 acres just north of Oakey.
“That was in January of 1962,” says Jim. “I took Lillian out to show her the property, then brought out her parents and asked their permission to marry her.”
In October of that year, the couple married in the beautiful heritage-listed St Luke’s Anglican Church in Toowoomba and their farm became home to a growing family. The Staals have three daughters, seven grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
Toowoomba is a place they love to call home and Living Gems Toowoomba puts them near to one daughter. Their other two daughters live on the Sunshine Coast with their families.
“This daughter and her family have acreage which worked out well this past Christmas because we had all the family together in one place,” said Lillian.
Jim joked that the secret to a happy marriage was to ‘say yes to anything your wife says’, but the truth of the matter, he says, is committing to open and honest conversation as well as an easy give and take.
“You can’t be 100 percent right all the time,” Jim laughs then adds more seriously, “You have to realise there are two of you in the marriage – not one, so decisions have to be made together.”
Life is also going to be full of ups and downs, adds Lillian, which makes it all the more important to work together in partnership.
“We’ve had good times and bad times, as we all do in life, but the most important thing is don’t give up because it makes it all worthwhile in the end.”
