CONGRATULATIONS are winging their way Down Under this week to Melbourne in Australia. But by the time you read this over your breakfast table, former Tenby couple, Tony and Joan Dickinson, who are celebrating their golden wedding anniversary today (Friday), will be nearing the end of their partying, as Oz time is currently nine hours ahead of us. Tony and Joan (née Reynolds) were married at Gelligaer Church in the Rhymney Valley on September 26, 1964. They had met a couple of years earlier when Tony, then a butcher at the former Co-op in Tudor Square, Tenby (now Jago), used to deliver meat just up the road to what was then the China Cot Café on the corner, where Joan was working. The following year, 1965, Tony decided to seek pastures new, with his career taking a change of direction as he joined the police force. Six years later, after serving in various parts of Wales, he was recruited by the Victoria Police and, as they say, the rest is history, for it was then that the couple decided to leave these shores and head for Australia. They settled in Cranbourne, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne, and over 40 years on are still there. They have three children, two sons, Wayne and Jason (who incidentally has followed in his father's footsteps by joining Victoria Police) and a daughter, Julia, as well as 12 grandchildren. They still love Tenby, though, and have many friends (as well as family) in the town, which they visit as often as they can, returning several times in recent years with the Australian Welsh Male Voice Choir, of which Tony is a past president. In fact, they are due to visit the UK and Tenby with the choir again next May, when no doubt a glass or two will be raised to the golden couple.