John and Mary Van de Graaf celebrate 60th wedding anniversary, grew up with Canberra

Now living on the 16^th floor of an apartment block in the heart of Belconnen, they previously lived all over inner-north and northern Canberra, watching the excavations of both Lake Burley Griffin and then Lake Ginninderra.

They have lived in their current apartment for eight years and now have amazing views out over Lake Ginninderra. It's a comfortable life that has been hard won.

John, 85, and Mary, 81, are Dutch by birth and both survived horrifying experiences during World War Two.

As a child John lived in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in now Indonesia for three years. His father, a member of the Dutch colonial army in the Dutch East Indies, was sent to work on the Burma railway - and survived.

Mary, meanwhile, remembers being terrified of the German soldiers during the occupation of Holland.

"I spent the first three or four years of my life in bomb shelters," she said. "Our whole street was bombed around us."

John and Mary met as teenagers in Bendigo, young migrants in a new country ready for a fresh start.

How they met was a bit of serendipity.

"I was wagging church," Mary said, with a twinkle in her eye.

She'd gone instead to have coffee with another Dutch family and in walked John, a shy young man who'd been away in New Guinea with the Australian Army in the survey corps.

They quickly formed a bond but Mary didn't want to marry until she was 21 so she didn't have to ask her parents' permission.

The couple moved in 1961 from Melbourne to Canberra, where John had a job with the Department of National Mapping. Mary was a nurse in Melbourne.

"I said, 'Go and see how you like Canberra and I'll follow' and he said, 'No, you're coming now'," Mary said.

"A bird in the hand," John said, with a laugh.

They were married on December 8, 1962, at St John's Church in Reid and their wedding was featured in The Canberra Times.

The couple lived first in Campbell and Mary was the receptionist at the Hotel Acton.

"We had a wooden bridge where Commonwealth Avenue Bridge is now and the Molonglo River used to flood every year," she said.

"When they started to excavate Lake Burley Griffin, it was like a quarry. It was horrible. The dust!"

They returned to Holland, where John could study photogrammetry, mapping from aerial photography, and also had a stint in Denmark.

When they came back to Canberra, John taught at TAFE teaching photogrammetry, cartography and surveying as well as maths to apprentices and young migrants.

The couple also lived in Clisby Close in Cook for 30 years and on Friday night were off to the cul-de-sac's Christmas party with their old neighbours.

"Before that, we had been in Macquarie and Page and Dickson," John said.

Since living in their Belconnen apartment, they have got rid of their car and walk everywhere. They are full of life.

"We both sing. We're both involved in a lot of things," Mary said. They have one son and two grandchildren.

So what is the secret to a long marriage?

"I just obey all commands," John said, straight-faced.

"Sure, sure," Mary said. "I think recognising that nobody is perfect."

"Maybe it's luck of the draw," John said. "The common language is very good. We recognised qualities in each other that drew us together in the first place."

Mary added: "We were both really hard-working and having our own home was a priority, knowing we wouldn't be booted out of it. We had a lot of fears. We grew up in a fearful world. But we did a lot of work on ourselves and here we are".