It is an understated celebration of a marriage which has been defined by the challenges that the Milletts have faced as a pair. 

From the very beginning of their union, at which point Brian proposed to Penny as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from a burst appendix, the Milletts made it clear that theirs was not an ordinary partnership. 

The pair met when Penny was 17 and Brian 22. 

He was living in Bega as a schoolteacher, while Penny had just returned home after being told that her chronic appendix issues would no longer allow her to pursue her goal of nursing. 

“One day I saw this charming woman on a horse … riding past, and I discovered that she worked in a local chemist’s shop, and I became the chemist shop’s best customer,” Brian recalled. 

Despite his immediate infatuation with her, Brian admitted that it took him some time to win Penny over; she initially thought that he was “too old.” 

But, as with many instances in his life, Brian relished the challenge, and Penny conceded that she was eventually won over by his charisma. 

“[He] could charm the birds off the trees,” she said. 

They officially became the Milletts on Saturday the 24^th of August, 1957, when Penny was 19 and Brian 23. 

Although, in keeping with the theme of their courtship and subsequent life, there were challenges to be overcome before they were successfully united. 

On the day of their wedding, the river in Bega flooded, making the thought of a crossing untenable. 

This might not have been a problem, had Brian and Penny not been on opposite sides of the river.

Luckily for the soon-to-be Milletts, the sun broke through the clouds and cleared a path for Brian to make it across just in time.

However Brian and Penny’s run of good fortune came to an end after the wedding. Their car suffered a flat tyre, and the rain resumed, meaning that they were late to their reservation at Ulladulla for their honeymoon. 

“I had a most beautiful pink brocade outfit … [with] beautiful shoes, and he was all dressed up, out changing the tyre,” Penny recalled. 

“We got to the hotel and … they had left the keys on the desk, with the room number, and we were drenched.” 

To cap off an adventurous beginning to their honeymoon, Brian’s sister had filled their luggage with confetti as a surprise. 

“How embarrassing,” was all Penny had to say. 

Across the subsequent years of their marriage, the Milletts flourished while living all over the world. 

At different points in their lives, the pair lived in Malaysia, Nauru, the UK, and Canada.

Most of their time overseas was spent teaching and doing philanthropic work with the locals. 

“When we were in Malaysia, that was [during] the Vietnam War,” Penny explained. 

“I had a motorbike, and I took myself off to the blind school and the orphanage to see what I could do to help.

“I wasn’t the sort of person that could sit around and do nothing, and so I got very involved with the orphanage and the blind school, teaching blind kids to swim.” 

After all those years of travel and turmoil, Brian’s retirement was the right time to finally settle down. 

In 1997, Brian and Penny found a house in Yass after 40 years of shifting from one country to another and watching their four children and ten grandchildren grow up. 

Though life has become more stabilised for the Milletts, it is by no means quieter. 

Brian and Penny have entrenched themselves in the Yass community since their arrival. 

Penny, in her own words, has taken up her time with writing, gardening, and art, while Brian has taken the path of more prominence with his role as Secretary of the Yass Music Club and as one of the founders of the community radio station, along with his attempt at running for local government, along with various other projects. 

August 24 is not only be a celebration of a marriage, but of two lives lived in unison, and a partnership which thrives on facing the next challenge, whatever it may be.