If you think the odds of being struck by lightning or winning the sweepstake are infinitesimal, try this bizarre coincidence for size!
The little unit at 29 Wattle Road, Hawthorn where Ralph Collins and his family first lived when they emigrated from the UK to Australia in 1953, is the exact same spot as his wife’s bedroom at Uniting AgeWell Hawthorn Community where she now lives.
And Ralph could not be more amazed at the twists and turns that life has taken for this to have actually happened.
“It’s really a very odd story,” the 84-year-old great-grandfather says in what must qualify as the understatement of the year.
Wind back the clock to 1953, when 17-year-old Ralph and his mum and sister moved into the first of two units at number 29 Wattle Road. In those days there was no television and steam trains shunted up and down the rail tracks.
The family lived there for three years, during which time Ralph qualified as an apprentice repairing electrical motors. His certificate, which he still has, bears his address.
Ralph found a job at a factory (which he later bought) and he and his wife, Vicki, now 81, moved into their family home in nearby Power Street, Hawthorn and went on to have two children, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Over the years the units at 29 Wattle Road were torn down and it became the site of the Moorfields aged care facility, which was eventually closed and demolished to make way for Uniting AgeWell’s brand-new state-of-the-art Hawthorn Community aged care residence.
Vicki, who worked as a secretary at the factory, later developed Alzheimers disease and moved into the Uniting AgeWell Carnsworth Community five years ago.
When this closed in November 2019, she temporarily moved to Uniting AgeWell’s newly opened Preston Community and then to Hawthorn when it opened in mid-2020. Now close to the family home, Ralph makes the very short walk every day to visit her.
Because of the location Ralph felt an affinity for the facility from the get go, which he says “feels weirdly like home.” But he had no idea when he picked out the bedroom he wanted Vicki to have, that it was, to the metre, in the exact same spot as the location of his unit. So arguably, her bedroom - and possibly even her bed - is where his used to be 67 years ago!
“Given the sheer size of Melbourne, the odds of this happening are very rare,” Ralph concedes.
Ralph does his own cooking and cleaning and is delighted that Vicki is loving life at Hawthorn Community. “The staff are great, the food is good and she’s very happy,” he says. “It’s all worked out well.”