New Australians

New Australians

I was born in a major rural city in central Victoria. We lived a dozen miles or more away from that city, in a rural district, where my mum Daisy was the Post mistress and telephone exchange operator of an old fashioned manual telephone exchange. Back in the days when the switchboard consisted of a bunch of plugs on weighted cords that would be placed into a hole on the switchboard for the residence to be  called. The handle on the side of the exchange would be cranked just so many times to let the person being called know that they were wanted. A long time ago.

Mum (Daisy) and dad (Harry) who are both deceased now had emmigrated to Australia in 1957 as ten pound Poms. On the trip out there was my elder brother Teddy and one of my elder sisters Sal. Another sister, Barbara, stayed in England for some reason, she was supposed to join us later after we were settled, that never happened for some reason. I've never really found out why and as a result I've never met her (but that's another story). Of course I was on that trip too, making my mum's life difficult carting me about, the first to be born in Australia a few months down the track. After me came a little brother that never came home from the hospital as he was stillborn, he just didn't make it, but that used to happen quite often back then. I often wondered what it would have been like to have had a little brother to share my life with, but it wasn't to be. However, life goes on and a few years later, mum brought home a little sister for me, Joanne. I remember I was so excited about the prospect, I wanted mum and dad to call her "Pink Lemonade".  It was at that point in time the best thing I could think of, so surely it would have been a great name. I do believe there's a very famous singer these days that goes by the name of Pink  (obviously, I was a tad ahead of the times).

Harry was a British Army veteran and before the war he had been an English dairyman through and through. He dearly loved dairy cattle, but work of that nature was hard to come by here in Australia during the fifties, especially for a Pom. Harry had served as a soldier fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Aussies, both at Tobruk and at El Alamein, he had decided then and there that Australia was where his family would go and his sons grow to be such as the men he had served with.

Mum and dad got off the boat in Melbourne, mum was simply too sick to stay onboard another minute. Mum once told me that she  had sat on the stoop of the migrant hostel in the pouring  rain whilst dad had gone off looking for work, apparently at that hostel you weren't allowed to stay there during  the day, only at night. Mum told me that, at the time, she was pregnant, cold, sick and destitute. The entire sum of the  family wealth was something like tuppence ha'penny (about three cents).  We were supposed to have gone to East Gippsland as part of a returned soldier re-settlement plan or whatever it was called back then, but Gippsland was believe it or not an arduous five day trip back then, by boat and rough country roads. However, mum was heavily pregnant, sick as a dog, had two small kids in tow and another five days travel would have been the end of her, probably me too. Come to think of it, such a journey was truly beyond her. Within a day or so dad had managed to secure a position at a dairy farm out Werribee way, mum said it sounded like home, so that was where we would go and dad had a job on a dairy. It turned out that things weren't so rosy, in reality, they were bloody crook. The owner of the farm didn't think much of Pommy dairymen, the old cottage they were to rent was apparently pretty ramshackle, damp, dank and draughty. Call it what you will, serendipity or fate, but something happened that was to change our lives.

A couple of months into this miserable existence a few months before I was born, dad had occassion to take some Bobby calves to be sold at the old Newmarket sales yards. While there he made the acquaintence of a well to do woman that was also selling calves. This woman, we all came to know her as "Ma", she had made a considerable fortune selling scrap iron to the Japanese before World War 2 had started. Something for which she held deep regrets. After the war Ma spent considerable time, effort, energy and money on doing whatever she could to help returned servicemen. She said it was her way of trying to make up for selling scrap iron to the Japanese and turned into bombs, guns and bullets, using them to kill our soldiers.

Dad had mentioned to Ma that he was looking for a new position. When pressed for more information he related the  circumstances of his family's plight, Ma immediately put dad into her chauffer-driven Bentley and drove with him back to Werribee. This wonderful woman took one look at the conditions in which my family were living and took great umbrage at it. Ma could see that my mum was in distress at her circumstances and was unwell, my brother and sister both had coughs and colds, a pretty serious thing back then if not properley cared for, especially in children. Ma declared that not for another hour would she allow our family to live under such conditions, as it would be the death of mum and me for sure. Ma told mum and dad to pack their belongings while she went to have a word with the owner of the farm, who in her opinion had spent the war in a protected industry, enjoying a life of relative ease whilst others had fought and died.  Ma was incensed that the owner of the farm would treat a returned serviceman and his family the way ours was being treated. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. Ma was not a woman to be messed with. Ma returned shortly and handed dad a handful of pound notes, the equivalent of a few weeks outstanding pays. Supposedly it was from the owner of the farm, but I have serious reservations about the veracity of that statment to this day. My family were then bundled into the Bentley kit and kaboodle and away we went.

Ma said to dad, "Harry, I can't pay you a wage, but you can live rent-free on a place that I own out Bendigo way". "In return, what I will ask of you is that you fence the boundary of the property with timber you cut from the block and clear enough of the land for me to run a few sheep on".  "You can make a quid off  of the kangaroo bounty". "Stay until after the baby has come and you can get yourselves properley settled". What an amazing woman! She will forever hold a special place in our hearts. Sixty years later, most of that fence still stands, the posts cut by hand, shaped with an adze and the sweat of my father's brow.

That place was at the Northern end of the district. I have no memory of it, only the stories I've been told by my family. I surmise that we stayed there long enough for dad to have honoured his commitment to Ma. Dad finished the fences, cleared enough land for some sheep to be run ( I have heard stories about that little excersize) and for mum to secure the opportunity at the Post Office that was just a few miles down the road.

 'The Post Office', the place I recall vividly, where my bit of this story really started. A place where I  remember a childhood of freedom, adventure and even some danger. These things are inextricably linked one to the other. It was where I underwent the gaining of a knowledge of Australia's landscape and its animals. It was where my love of the  bush and this country came into being and where the seeds of a fierce independence took root and grew. Still it abides within me. I'd go so far as to say that the very bones of this land attached themselves to my soul through my small bare feet. I feel it still at sixty. I take my boots off even now and allow my soul to revel in the cherished memories that this land has given me. The love that this hostile land engenders in those that become a part of it is not to be taken lightly.