Resort living brings families together

Jennifer Pierson and her husband John have lived at Living Gems Toowoomba for five years, so when her younger brother John Penney and his wife Maree were looking to move from New Zealand, Queensland’s garden city had plenty to recommend it.

“Our family comes from Blenheim in New Zealand’s South Island and there were some years where we had snow for Christmas, so it’s been great to come to somewhere which is so much warmer,” said John.

With most of the children now living in South East Queensland, Toowoomba is centrally located to make family visits a regular occurrence.

“I have to say that John and I weren’t particularly close when we were young,” said Jennifer.

“There was a bit of an age gap between me and John, who is eldest of my two brothers.

“But many years later we ended up working together in the Marlborough Museum and found that we got on very well.”

John’s passion has always been electronics, starting with computers and database administration and later moving into the print industry.

“We pioneered print-on-demand printing in New Zealand,” he said.

“We specialised in printing books. I looked after the printing side of things and my wife Maree did all the typesetting.”

Jennifer chimes in, “I much prefer print books.”

“I don’t,” replies John. “I’ve got my iPad.”

While brother and sister still have their disagreements, the one thing they both agree on is how much they enjoy life at Living Gems Toowoomba.

“One of the reasons we love this place is because it is so easy to get around,” said Jennifer.

“Yes,” added John. “That was something which was important to me. We looked around at other places and were so pleased to find Living Gems Toowoomba was largely on the flat.”

John regularly gets together with a few other men at the resort to build electronic gadgets.

“I’ve created a raffle ticket shuffler and folding machine. Another fellow has created a scoring device for table tennis that puts big digits up on the wall,” he said.

“I enjoy the library,” said Jennifer. “In truth, I’m not a very outgoing person. But I have made plenty of friends here and enjoy the Friday happy hour in the Country Club as well as the monthly dinners.”

John and Jennifer also get together for dinners with their respective spouses and early on it used to be a challenge to know which John was which, but in the end, it was the grandchildren that helped sort the confusion.

“Our father’s name was John and there is my brother John and my husband John,” said Jennifer.

“Eventually, my husband got the nickname Popeye. Now he only has one eye and the grandkids always called him Pop, so Popeye it became, and the name stuck.”