IF THEIR wedding day was anything to go by, Peter and Lorna Rocke would never have made it.

The pair married on August 15, 1945, in a Coburg church before things started to go dreadfully wrong.

First, they arrived at the reception only to find that the Collins Street restaurant they had booked as their venue was inexplicably closed. Then, dozens of their guests failed to appear due to tram delays.

Mrs Rocke, now 83, recalls how remaining guests were forced to squeeze into a friend's St Kilda flat to feast on sandwiches and whatever else was in the cupboard.

But that day would not a reflection of the years to come.

More than 60 years later, Mrs Rocke believes the secret to a long marriage is compromise. "Everybody has their own opinion," she says. "If it's not right coming from the other side, you discuss it and you talk about it."

Mr Rocke, 84, adds: "We have survived the years as they have rolled along … You can have your blues, but you have to get over that."

And while their long marriage is very rare, a new Australian Bureau of Statistics report, released yesterday, has shown that people are staying married longer.

The report, Divorces Australia, found that the national divorce rate had dropped, for the fifth year in a row, by 1024, or 2 per cent, from 52,399 in 2005 to 51,375 in 2006.

The number of divorces in 2006 represented the fifth drop since a high of 55,330 in 2001. There was a 2.4 per cent decrease in 2002, with the decline in the number of divorces slowing each year to 2005.

Divorces in 2006 represented a decline on the number granted in 1996 (52,466), but a difference of more than 10,000 divorces to the 1986 figure of 39,417.

La Trobe University's Professor David de Vaus said the misconception that divorces were soaring was wrong. However, he added that divorce statistics failed to take into account de facto couples who do not get married but break up.

He said people were marrying later and with more relationship experience. "Those who are making the decision to marry on the whole are making much more considered and deliberate decisions."

Males aged 30-34 years had the highest divorce rate, 19.5 per cent per 1000 married males, while the lowest divorce rate (2.2 per cent per 1000 married males) was among males aged 65 years and over.

The highest divorce rate for females was among 25-29-year-olds at 20.4 per 1000 married females compared with 1.4 per cent for females aged 65 and over.

 

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