Australia's forgotten migrants

Hi,

I like this article - about the British migrant experience in Australia.

Tony

Our invisible migrants

http://www.theage.com.au/news/General/Our-invisible-migrants/2005/06/15/1118645865276.html

June 16, 2005

At first, Australia baffled them but then they settled in, and learned to live with us. Jill Stark reports on the 'Ten Pound Poms'.

A million of them came to Australia by boat, in search of a better life. Many struggled to fit in, and were branded "whingers". They were the post-war British migrants, commonly known as the "Ten Pound Poms".

If they could raise 10 for their fare, the Australian Government paid the rest. But if they decided to return home within two years, they had to pay the 10 back and raise their travel costs again - an almost impossible ask for the predominantly working-class families.

Unlike other migrants, their stories have rarely been told. But now a new book, Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants - the culmination of a five-year project - documents their hidden histories. It charts their experiences through interviews, letters and diaries.

The book was produced in Melbourne and Britain by Dr Jim Hammerton of La Trobe University, and Dr Alistair Thompson, a Melburnian lecturing at Sussex University. They interviewed British migrants who left for Australia between 1947 and 1972.

"Compared with the way other migrant groups have been treated the British are an invisible majority," Hammerton says. "They spoke English so they weren't regarded as migrants and couldn't have the problems migrants have. But the Brits are migrants like anybody else.
"You change your country and it's different," he says. "They still have a migrant identity rather than an explicit Australian or British identity."

Many immigrants from Britain were baffled when they arrived. Some faced verbal abuse and were mocked for being different. In the book, many talk about being asked to bring a plate to an Australian barbecue, and simply turned up with a plate - with nothing on it.

The post-war British immigrants generally dispersed to the outer suburbs of Australian cities and were not known for making their fortune in Australia. They did well in their chosen field but didn't enjoy great wealth like other migrant groups.

"I think the Brits fit the Australian mythology of the battler very well," Hammerton says. "They tell a story about how life was really tough. They'll say: 'It was awful before we left. We made this decision to get out of it, we crossed the seas, we had a hell of a time when we got here, there was nowhere to live, we struggled from job to job, built our own house and in the end we were vindicated."

John Howell, 61, Skenes Creek

Howell has tried to understand Aussie Rules, but he can't shake his love of soccer. It's the only hint of his English heritage.

Since emigrating in 1958, Howell's thought of himself as Australian. When he returned to Croydon in Surrey for a holiday, he found it crowded and noisy, and couldn't wait to get "back home".

"In Australia you can lose yourself more and I prefer that sort of life," he says. "When we went back to England to the street I lived in, the same people lived in the house next door, and that was 25 years after I left. They still do their washing on a Monday and go to Bognor Regis on holiday.

"Everything over here is just so much bigger, and you have a lot more freedom. Our kids have had a wonderful start in this country. I don't think they would have got that in England."
Howell (pictured left) left Britain as a wide-eyed 14-year-old. His older brother had already left for Australia, and when their father died it meant a new beginning. Howell boarded a boat with his mother and sailed to Melbourne.

His knowledge of Australia was sketchy but he saw the voyage as a great adventure. "I didn't really know what to expect. I had an aunt living in Australia and when she'd returned to England on holiday, she brought eucalyptus leaves back. She would set fire to them just to describe what the smell was like. She used to bring home pictures of parrots, and as a child I was full of wonder at this place we were going to.

"My father also came to Australia before World War I, working on a sheep station, so he'd told us a bit about it. I think I expected to find my dad's horse tied up at Station Pier. When we docked I was surprised to see trams running down the street. I imagined it to be a lot more rural."

Howell moved in with his aunt and uncle in Wantirna South before his brother bought a family home in Ferntree Gully. His sister later joined them from England. He took up an apprenticeship in cabinet making and joinery and eventually settled in Skenes Creek, near Apollo Bay. He married his wife Pam, had three sons, and built up a successful building business.

He now lives on 20 hectares and has another 160 hectares in Colac. It's a long way from his humble Croydon council house.

"We felt that we could really get something for ourselves here in Australia that we would never dream of having in England, just from sheer hard work. In England, the chap up the road had a motor car and had bought his council house and he played golf. To play golf in England you had to be someone, but in Australia everyone goes out and has a game of golf.

"I'm very thankful we did come to this part of the world. We've built a lot of houses and put a lot into our community so I feel I've contributed a lot to Australia. I still feel that where I originated from is home in a way, but I don't look at it as somewhere that I hanker to go back to."

Margaret Hill, 73, Edithvale

Hill could be the archetypal Aussie battler had she not been born in England. At 24, pregnant with her fourth child, she left the dreary hardship of Birkenhead (near Liverpool) for Australia.
It was 1956; the Suez crisis was creating tension in Britain. Merseyside was struggling and Hill's husband, recently released from the army, longed for warmth.

The Ten Pound Pom scheme was a chance to reinvent themselves. But for Hill, migration was the beginning of a long struggle to find her place in a strange country, and escape a violent marriage.

"My husband was the one that wanted to come to Australia. I just didn't want to leave," she says. "I saw myself with a little home and a little family and watching my cousins grow up. But we had a couple of bad winters and the kids got bronchitis. In the end I said 'OK, we'll go'.
"It was very traumatic saying goodbye to my family. I didn't ever see my father again. I'd always had this understanding with my parents that if we didn't settle, we'd go back. But it didn't turn out like that."

The family boarded a ship, which they'd been told would bring them to Melbourne. Instead the boat docked in Adelaide. On a stiflingly hot December day they were taken to an "extremely grim" migrant hostel.

"When we pulled into the dockside there was nothing to be seen except this shrub, this bush. It was very disturbing. After the war I'd seen pictures on the television of concentration camps and to me the migrant hostel was like that. We'd had all these brochures from Australia House about nice flats, but once we got there we found out it was all promotional."

A shortage of migrant accommodation meant Hill spent two years in a hostel before her husband took a job with the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service. For 18 months they lived in isolated lighthouses in South Australia. They finally found a home in Adelaide and had four more children.

But Hill's husband was unsettled. The marriage broke down and he became violent. Fearing for her life, Hill escaped to Melbourne; she worked menial jobs to support herself.

By now, her mother and brother had come over from England. She spent several years fighting for custody of her eight children and eventually settled in Chelsea, later moving to Edithvale.
"When my marriage broke down it went against everything I ever thought," Hill says. But she was determined to settle here. "I was able to become my own person. It was cleaner, it was brighter, it was warmer, friendlier, there were no social pressures."

Hill says the "whingeing poms" tag was probably justified.

"We complained, we did. The Italians complained, but they complained among themselves. One of them who could speak English would go out and do the shopping, whereas Poms were in your face the whole time moaning.

"We complained about the heat and the quality of the clothing, and the meat. We complained about everything because a lot of us were unhappy. We were in a strange place. Everything was different. We were missing our families. We didn't mean to complain, we were just letting off steam."

Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants is launched today at Australia House in London.
It will be launched in Melbourne on July 1. Dr Jim Hammerton's sequel will look at British people who migrated to Australia between 1968 and 2005.

If you want to participate, contact him at J.Hammerton@latrobe.edu.au