Joanne and Bennett

Joanne Harland

Joanne was born in 1974 in Newcastle, Australia. After a few years she moved west to Bathurst before heading back to the coast at the grand age of 7 to Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. She went to St Mary's high school in Wollongong, and among her classmates was Janet. Joanne spent two separate years in Japan as part of her education, where she learned Japanese, made friends and generally had a great experience. Back in Australia, she became a lawyer in Sydney...

Bennett McElwee

Bennett was born in 1970 in Auckland, New Zealand. He grew up in the clean and pure New Zealand environment. After school and university, he went to Wollongong to work as a software developer. There, he met Joerg, who introduced him to David, who later went off to work in Japan. In 1992, Bennett visited David in Tokyo and decided he would have to return to that fascinating place one day. Back in Wollongong, he met Ted, another of Joerg's friends. Anyway, after a few years Bennett went to live in Scotland for a while, then returned to Australia to work in Sydney. Through Ted, he met Janet...

Joennett

Perhaps you can see what's coming. In June 2000, Janet had a "Wild Wild West" party at her flat in Sydney, and there Joanne and Bennett met, chatted and laughed for what seemed like hours; in fact, it was hours, as other partygoers remarked later. They bumped into each other a few more times in the subsequent months, discovering a shared interest in badminton amongst other things. Anyway, one thing led to another and due to Joanne's perseverence (and Bennett finally seeing the light*) they became an item around Christmas 2000.

In 2002 they moved to Tokyo, but after less than 18 months they moved to Hong Kong for work reasons. In May 2004 they decided to get married, and on Sunday, 3 October 2004, they were married in Albion Park, near Wollongong - the town that started it all off.

* Guess who wrote this bit