In 2009, lonely farmer Laurence Bassett appeared in the pages of The Weekly seeking a wife. To his great surprise, he found one!
Five years ago, Laurence Bassett was lonely. He was 42 and single, and his busy life as a farmer in Coonabarabran left him little time to look for love.
“I usually start work before light, and work until dark – with break in the hottest part of the day,” he explains from his home in north-western NSW.
Luckily for Laurence, a friend of his intervened, sending his bio to The Weekly’s ‘Find a Farmer a Wife’ campaign.
“A mate of mine dobbed me in, and I agreed to go along with it because … I guess you could say I could hear my biological clock ticking,” Laurence says.
“Time had moved on, but I had stopped. I never in a million years believed it would work!”
Slowly and softly spoken, Laurence sounds like a man from a different age. Country born and bred he moved to Sydney to learn his trade, but had to return to the family farm and look after his mother, Irene.
“My Dad died when I was 14, and Mum wasn’t yet 40 so I became the man of house pretty early on,” he says.
“Mum wasn’t really comfortable with me going in a magazine to look for love – she is from a different era where people who married knew one another their whole life.”
In the article, Laurence described himself as “house-trained, honest and loving”, a description that sparked the interest of Susanne Roth who then lived in Hervey Bay, Queensland.
“I got a letter from her, and several others,” Laurence says. “Not knowing how to approach them, I shuffled them, and started calling the ladies one by one.
“While a few were hoaxes, Sue was surprised I had called her back, and we got talking. To say it was awkward is an understatement, we were both very shy.”
What followed next is a modern take on an old-fashioned courtship. Laurence and Susanne corresponded by text and phone calls for a full year before finally organising to meet one another in person.
“We started with just the odd text and phone call, and ended with countless texts and daily calls,” Laurence says with a chuckle.
“When we finally met, we just clicked. We already knew one another so well – we were like best friends – she was just good company.”
Another year passed, with monthly visits between the pair, before Susanne made the plunge and moved to the country to be with her love.
“I thought it was a bit bizarre actually!” Laurence confesses, adding “I was a bit worried that she was leaving all she knew behind and that we wouldn’t work out.”
Luckily Laurence’s fears were misplaced, and three days after Christmas last year the pair wed at a local motel in Coonabarabran.
“The day went off without a hitch, and now life just feels … right,” Laurence says. “I was railroaded into going into the magazine, but I am every grateful for the article that started all this.”
In the original profile of Laurence, he said that in a decade’s time his ideal life would be a “wife and kids, and still farming with no drought”.
“We’d very much like to start a family,” he says. “But we’re not sure if time will be on our side. We didn’t get to have a honeymoon after our wedding, but as soon as the drought breaks, that’s where we’ll be headed!”
When asked how it feels to call Susanne his wife, Laurence replies: “Bizarre! I’ve always been the single one. She’s the love of my life, I only wish I’d met her years ago.”
