“Yesterday.”

“Do you have a job?”

“No.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I don’t know.”

The Border’s Indian community remains grateful an East Albury couple never just left such conversations at that.

For decades, Abraham and Molly Mamootil have been welcoming and supporting new arrivals to the region.

This month, those they assisted have congratulated Dr and Mrs Mamootil on their 60^th wedding anniversary.

The Mamootils celebrated their milestone with their family, which includes five children and seven grandchildren.

Married in India, the couple came to Australia in 1975, settling first in Holbrook before later arriving in Albury.

Dr Mamootil, a dentist, started a group for the Indian community and became the first president of Albury Wodonga Indian Australian Association.

“Local councils, local Lions club and Rotary club, everybody I invited for the early meetings,” he said.

“Just to make everybody know that we are here and that we are not strange people; we were accepted very well. I was very happy to introduce anybody or talk to anybody.”

Association president Aruna Gandhi said the couple had helped many people settle in.

“When you come here in a totally unknown country, they have given us full support,” she said.

“If we needed something to get done, then we go and ask (Dr Mamootil) and he’s ready to advise us or help us in any way he can.”

Mrs Mamootil said she and her husband had also been welcomed when they arrived.

“When we landed in Holbrook, at that time Culcairn was the railway station and there was an Indian doctor there,” she said.

“He was the first one to come and take us home and take us to Holbrook, so we did the same thing when we came to Albury.”

Often the initial need for visitors was a basic one.

“You feed them first,” she said.

“So many times we had to feed them, buy them groceries,” her husband added.

From small beginnings, the Indian Australian association has grown to where “we don’t even know half the people, it’s that big now”.

“Once you get a job, you stay on and this is a good place, isn’t it,” Mrs Mamootil said.

Now 91 and 79 respectively, Dr and Mrs Mamootil live a little more quietly now.

But over the years they have kept busy with work and family commitments as well as interests such as writing and craft.

“We were not sitting idly,” Dr Mamootil said.