How distance and old-fashioned phone calls grew love for Amber and Kirsty

perspective Love story: Kirsty was 'untouchable', then she gave Amber a rose Kirsty and Amber Sayers-Hunt met when they were both living in WA's Pilbara region and only one of them was openly gay. Nineteen years and one child later they were married at their home in the Northern Territory town of Humpty Doo and had to kick out the last of the guests weeks later. Whether it's romantic, platonic, heartbreaking or surprising, our Love Story series is about love in all its forms. Share yours with us. These are Amber and Kirsty's words. Amber: We officially met at a Baby Animals concert. We went back to my brother's house. That was kind of the first time I think we ever talked. I'd come out to my folks, but I was living in a mining town, in Port Hedland, so you can only be so out there. Kirsty was a friend of a gay friend. Within that community there are untouchables. Untouchables are the girlfriends or friends of gay people who aren't gay. So I didn't really have that kind of attraction straight away. I stuck to the rules. Just before I left Port Hedland, Kirsty sent me a rose and put her phone number on it. It was about three weeks before I left Port Hedland and I was like, you're joking, all this time! I was like, "You know I'm leaving town, right? I'm moving 1,200 kilometres away to Karratha." I think Kirsty said, "Oh, well, you know, I had to do it." So we chatted on real phones for a while and then we kind of lost contact for a bit. Realising true feelings were there Amber: I actually hadn't spoken to Kirsty, maybe for a couple of months. But I knew that she'd moved to Exmouth and I knew that a cyclone was coming, because it'd just gone past Karratha. It was pretty big so I rang her. And I was like, "Are you OK?" And she said, "I've just run down the corridor. I've watched my roof come off. I'm in my bathroom. I need to get off the phone, because my phone's going to go flat." I hung up and thought, holy shit. It actually quite affected me. I think that's when I realised that I had true feelings there. Kirsty: I definitely was not seeing myself as being gay or queer or lesbian or anything like that. I was born and bred in Port Hedland, so I had no choice. At first it was just regular phone calls. I think the relationship grew because you actually had to have genuine conversations. It wasn't relying on texts and emojis and all of that stuff. You learn a lot about someone when you can just have an open dialogue for hours on end on a landline. It was really raw talking. Building a life together started with finding where to do it Amber: I'd lived in Perth. She'd lived in Port Hedland. We didn't want to go to Broome. We wanted to go somewhere a bit bigger. We had one friend that lived in Darwin, and I rang her. I said, "What's it like getting a job up there?" And she said, "You'll have a job tomorrow if you come." I don't know that we decided we were just going to spend the rest of our lives together. It was just one of those things that once we kind of started seeing each other and then one thing led to another, we moved in together and that was it. If we were ever allowed to marry, we would marry. So, I think it was about two weeks after the same-sex marriage legislation passed I went and bought a ring and I proposed. Our wedding day was pretty special. It was bigger than Ben-Hur. We invited everyone we knew from everywhere around Australia and the world because we thought, well, they're not going to come because it's a long way to come. They all came. We had 250 people at our house, and it was massive. Kirsty: Until the legislation passed, I didn't really want to entertain the thought, or to get too excited. We had a child, we had a mortgage, we've had all of the usual family trials and tribulations and so I just didn't want to get our hopes up that we could actually then have a wedding and have everything else that everyone had. There were people there, and we knew their prior opinions on marriage equality, who ticked yes because, oh, we want to see the girls get married, that would be a bloody great party in Humpty Doo. Some people stayed a month and some people we had to kick out after six weeks. I wore a big white dress and Amber had a beautifully tailored white suit on and we were just in our garden that we had prepped and preened for months. We had made the bar out of old bits of corrugated iron. We had painted and decorated the shed with lights. It was a very DIY everything wedding. I can't remember who, but someone said, when you're standing there in front of all your friends and family, just take a moment to stop and look back at all their faces. And so I think that was probably my most favourite memory, just seeing everyone's faces and knowing what we had to do to get to that day and seeing everyone just in tears and smiling and joy. Staying connected after 27 years Kirsty: We come home and we sit outside on our balcony and chat, and just debrief every day. I think that when you reflect on it, it probably comes back to those very first days in Port Hedland and Exmouth when it was all just conversations. It's just listening and having the conversation and having someone there that probably knows you inside and out sometimes more than you do, to be there with you. Amber: I think the best part is just being with someone that you love and that you know. We're very busy people, but we also know when to spend time just by ourselves; shut off all our notifications on our Messengers and just be with us, our little unit. Loading...