Watch Insight’s episode Second Chances, exploring what happens when we’re given or give another chance in life, career, love or a new homeland, or after making a mistake — on SBS On Demand.
Sometimes, a misunderstanding can change everything. For Judith and Tom, it led to their lives taking very different directions.
In 1959, they were engaged to be married, with Tom living in the central Queensland city of Rockhampton with his family and Judith hundreds of kilometres south in Brisbane with hers.
They had met a few years earlier when the teachers’ college they both studied at held a ball, and they were partnered up. Tom later asked Judith to go out with him.
“Tom would pick me up and take me out for a drive. We’d go down to the beach to see the boats, then we’d go for a drive,” Judith remembers.
Tom was expecting Judith to arrive in Rockhampton so the pair could marry, away from Judith’s disapproving mother. Source: Supplied / Cameron Carr
They graduated in 1957, and Tom proposed two years later, but their seven-year age gap was a source of disapproval from Judith’s mother.
“Tommy used to come down, but Mum used to just say ‘hello’ and then ignore him,” Judith said. “She thought he was much too old for me.’
Despite her family’s disapproval and their refusal to help with the wedding, Judith was determined to move up to Rockhampton, so she and Tom could wed.
“One day, Judith wrote to me and said she’d come up to get married to me,” Tom said.
“I wrote back and said I’d be waiting.”
Judith, pictured here in the late 50s, was left heartbroken when she thought Tom no longer wished to marry her. Source: Supplied / Cameron Carr
A missed connection
It’s unclear why, but Judith never received Tom’s reply, and she assumed he’d never written back.
“It’s not like how young people are stuck to their phones these days,” Tom said.
“There were hundreds of kilometres of corrugated road between us. You couldn’t just go. You might not even get there due to the condition of the roads.”
Feeling jilted, Judith decided to leave Australia and sent her engagement ring back to Tom.
“My brother was in New Zealand, and I just flew over. I got a teaching job on the west coast and started a new life,” Judith said.
“It was heartbreaking. I thought about Tom a lot.”
Meanwhile, Tom was waiting for Judith to arrive in Rockhampton, and when she didn’t, he started searching for her. He got in touch with some of her friends, but none were forthcoming about Judith’s move to New Zealand.
Some didn’t know where she had gone, and others said nothing, fearing they would land in trouble with Judith’s mother.
“I regret that very much,” Judith said.
Decades passed, and Judith and Tom both found new partners, married and raised children. Both had long and successful careers as teachers. With no information on her whereabouts, Tom spent years wondering if she was even alive.
But in 2007, Judith flew over from New Zealand to attend the 50-year reunion of the college she and Tom studied at. Tom was there too — but they missed each other again, not recognising one another. Shortly after the event, Tom saw Judith’s name on a list of those who attended and got her number.
“I was shocked. I had been to every class reunion and had never seen her name before,” Tom said.
Reuniting decades later
Judith was back in New Zealand, sitting at home knitting with her dog beside her, by the time Tom called her up.
“I told him I’d come to New Zealand, what I’d done and I asked for his address. And so I wrote to him and told him all about me and my life,” Judith said.
“I was very excited. I was widowed by this point, but Tom was still married. We reconnected and began to exchange Christmas and birthday cards.”
“When Tom’s wife died, I wrote him a sympathy card. “We began corresponding again.”
When Judith neared her 80th birthday, her siblings threw her a party back home in Australia, and she asked for Tom to be invited. He paid for her flight home and attended the party. The rest, Judith says, is history.
A second chance
After they reconnected, the pair holidayed in northern Queensland, and Tom got a second chance to ask Judith to marry him. He offered her the same ring he’d held onto all these years.
“There wasn’t much of a market for second-hand rings, so I kept it,” Tom said.
“I threw it in the back of a drawer in my writing desk, and it stayed there for over 50 years.”
Sixty years after they were first engaged, Tom and Judith finally married. Source: Supplied
“It’s the only ring anyone ever bought for me,” Judith said. “The ring from my first husband was from his previous marriage and set with a new stone. So, I think Tom is very sweet.”
“I feel lucky we’ve got a second chance together.”
Tom agreed, saying: “It does feel like a miracle.”
In 2019, the couple finally married, 60 years after they were first engaged.
Judith and Tom tied the knot in 2019 in an intimate ceremony with family and friends. Source: Supplied
They now live together near Rockhampton and say they’ve been like “giggling teenagers” since they rekindled their love.
“We had a good life in between but we’re glad we’ve got back together. We seem to have picked up where we left off. And we’re still having a good life now,” Judith said.
Tom added: “I really like our second chance. It made us feel young again. But I should have just jumped in my car all those years ago and found Judith. Maybe this would never have happened. Who knows?”
For Tom, the couple’s reunion decades later is proof that “it’s never too late”.
“Nothing’s too late. You don’t look backwards, you look forwards.”
And for more stories head to Insightful – a new podcast series from SBS, hosted by Kumi Taguchi. From sex and relationships to health, wealth, and grief Insightful offers deeper dives into the lives and first-person stories of former guests from the acclaimed TV show, Insight. Follow Insightful on the SBS Audio App, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
