By ALESHA CAPONE
A TASTE for travel has seen Kathleen and Eric Russell literally cruise through their lives in love.
The Taylors Lakes husband and wife, who recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary, have been on 76 cruises together.
They married in 1943 during World War II, when Mr Russell was an army sergeant, and went on to have a son named Paul.
The couple’s first holiday together was in Lorne and they have become seasoned jet-setters since then.
The adventurous pair, aged 92 and 95, have not let age weary them – or their travel plans.
“On our last cruise, before Christmas, we travelled for 75 days to Russia, China, Japan, over to America, Vancouver, over the icefields, to San Francisco and Honolulu,” Mr Russell said.
“We love New York and Honolulu – we’ve been there seven times.
“Plenty of times we’ve been the ’Most Travelled’ on the ship and they give you a bottle of champagne for that.
“We’ve got lots of bottles of champagne.”
Mrs Russell said she met her future husband as a teenage girl, while he worked with her father in Port Fairy.
“It kind of evolved from there, slowly and slowly, and then we knew were meant for each other,” she said.
When they were younger, Mr Russell was a professional boxer.
“I was in 23 fights and I won 21 of them,” he said.
He even knocked-out the well-known boxer Harry Rowe during an eighth round stoush in Adelaide.
The couple lived in Sunshine for 45 years, before moving to Taylors Lakes.
Mr Russell spent 38 years working at the Wiltshire factory in Tottenham and his wife was employed by the Post Master General’s office in Melbourne for 43 years.
The pair said the secret to their successful marriage was a shared fondness for travelling – and their long-standing love.
“We like everything about each other,” Mr Russell said.
