"It was huge, it filled the sky, so I asked dad if it was an A-bomb mushroom cloud.
"He just laughed and said I shouldn’t be thinking about things like that on my wedding day."
It turned out to be smoke — lots of it.
On Saturday, November 26, 1955, gale-force nor-westers had spread the embers of a small fire overnight in the Balmoral Forest, south of Culverden.
It was the most disastrous exotic forest fire ever to occur within a New Zealand State Forest, with 7790 acres of trees destroyed.
Those same nor’westers howled through Kaiapoi, and Sid Dyer remembers it was a job holding on to his new bride and stopping her bridal veil from lashing his face while the photographer snapped their wedding photos at the Kaiapoi Methodist Church.
Fire would again touch the couples lives when on November 10, 1961, they joined 20,000 other Cantabrians to watch harness racer ‘Cardigan Bay’, the first standard-bred horse to win one million dollars, take to the track in Christchurch — all while Addington’s main public grandstand was on fire.
‘‘Amazingly, no-one was injured or killed that day. We initially saw a little smoke, then they asked everyone over the PA to move to the middle of the race course and from there we watched it burn down,’’ says Jan.
When they met, Sid was a mechanic in Rangiora, and Jan was employed as a dressmaker for an exclusive frock shop in Christchurch.
They met at a dance held at the Clarksville hall.
Jan was sitting with her girlfriends when Sid walked in.
‘‘I pointed him out to my girlfriend as I thought I recognised him.
‘‘She said she knew him because he had been to dinner at her place a couple of times, so I thought he was coming over to ask her to dance.’’
Sid recalls Jan looked "pretty tidy" so he decided to ask her up for a dance.
Jan later wrote in her diary that ‘‘I met this wonderful guy, he was such a lovely dancer.
"It was like being in heaven dancing there in his arms."
That fact would have remained private, but when Sid was later invited by Jan’s mother to dinner, Jan’s younger brother sneaked a peek at her diary and then blurted out her private thoughts about Sid for all to hear.
After two years, the couple were married and headed south to Timaru for their honeymoon.
"I hired a rental truck to tow a caravan to Timaru, where it poured down. The caravan leaked badly and we got soaked inside and out, so we packed up and drove north to Rakaia, where we spent the next couple of days drying out everything."
Later, with two of their eventual three children in tow, the couple moved to Cheviot, where Sid worked in a garage owned by a former boss.
He later moved his family to Amberley for 12 years to be a service manager at a garage there, before he and three partners bought the Herrons Motors garage on High Street in Rangiora, when it came up for sale.
The couple worked together at the garage, eventually buying the other partners out.
The lease on the garage ran out after 20 years, and they moved their operation to Cone Street in Rangiora, working there until they retired nearly 30 years ago.
Known to many as keen golfers, Jan says Sid will be 92 next year, and he still plays four days a week in the senior competitions.
"I love the challenge of it and I’ve had many memorable days on courses all over Canterbury," says Sid.
Yesterday, Sid and Jan’s daughter flew out from Australia to spend the day with her mum and dad to celebrate their Platinum Anniversary, a remarkable milestone that symbolises the rarity and significance of seven decades of love and commitment.
When asked what the secret to their long partnership, both agree it’s "tolerance".
