tommytriggs

Hands up all those that rekon the aussies should do the £10 pom again, then those of us with borderline cases can relax a little. I know, lets all email the aussie government & hassle 'em into doin it for our generation of escapists!!!!

P.S. anyone know their email addy?

NedKelly

I reckon the Brits should do $10 straylans. There are many here I would gladly pay the fare to see the back of them.

TopCat3

Whoopie-dooo!

skippy

I reckon they should do a census of all of us poms, then send back all the whingers, why do they stay here, they ought to deport them and make room for those who want to come!!
ViVi (alias skippy....forgot my password, crashed the computer at the weekend!!!!!aaghhhh hubby not happy........can I class him as a whinging Pom???? ) :scared:

TopCat3

I can only speak from my viewpoint of course, to say that there are those of us for whom it takes a while for the light to dawn by which time we are in so deep financially and aged so much from the viewpoint of employability and resilience in starting over, that it takes much heartsearching to make a move on to start again. One has to weigh up the pros and cons of the stress/angst in staying vs going. It's not cut and dried or black and white. One of the reasons I like it here on BE is that I am getting more and more perspective and feeling a lot better about why I am here, as well as touching base with the humour and culture that I am starting to miss so much. As well, I am learning more from you all about what it might be like to move on in a real sense instead of just imagined i.e. going round and round in my head. And of course, I have a sense that, here on BE, there is some "permission" here to say some things I feel it would be discourteous or "dangerous" to say out there in Australian society. Letting off some steam so I can stay balanced. I was in a lonely place for some time but I don't feel so lonely now. I guess members of other ex-pat communities in Australia can easily recognise one another by language, appearance, or the fact that they tend to inhabit particular locales. We tend not to have a particular appearance or locale by which we can identify one another. For me, I wanted to be able to contact other UK expats to bounce my thoughts around with in an honest way, and this forum has helped me (thanks everyone). It's popular, and very Australian, to label this as whingeing, and the word Pom goes with this like saying pepper and salt. I've never heard it applied to any other ex-pat community member who happens not to find everything here perfect. This is one of the traits I find so irritating, we are pounced on, almost "watched", I sometimes feel, for signs of whingeing, whereas other communities are left to get on with it because it would be non-PC or racist to start labelling them.
Feel better for that, thanks for reading, whoever has!

hevs

I'm so sorry that you feel like this, its a shame. I can honestly say hand on heart that i have never felt this way so maybe i'm lucky.

Glad you are feeling happier due to this site though and i guess for those of us here it is a release valve to a degree, the sense of humour is definately different here That and the fact the tellies shite

Ialibu

I wouldn't worry too much about what Australians think of various expat communities. More than a few have been members of various expat communities elsewhere.

As a light aside, no-one bags the US expat community, they are their own disaster committee, and quite vocally too :-)

mr mover

WONT work when my parents came here in the 60.s along with thousands of others of British Stock ,they had been through one of the worst wars Known to man. They were tough resilient people who adapted quickly, yes a few returned when they had served their indenture, and had saved up enough money. Pity i cannot say the same for SOME of the"British stock " i deal with to day............................. mm

coxfamuk

To be honest, it seems to me that, almost the world over, brits are not really that well liked. In Europe, they certainly don't like us (you only have to see the results of the last five eurovision contests to see that !) and even further afield as well. Perhaps it is a hangover from when the UK was the greatest nation in the world, having colonised a good portion of it. Whatever it is, it seems that being a brit brings with it certain labels and limitations. However, I for one, am proud to be who I am, british through and through. Perhaps what we need to do is feel steadfast in our decision to live in Australia, accept that it is not 'UK with loads of sun' and hold our heads up high. All too often we seem to be defending ourselves for being british and I for one am not going to do that.

I think other communities seem to be left alone because they rally around one another, plus they are generally not fragmented - they stick together because of their language. We speak english, so we are free to live wherever we like - finding strength in the knowledge that because language is not a barrier, we can make friends and work wherever we like. This should be a strength.

Forums like this are good because as you say you can 'meet' other likeminded people, but also I feel that negativity can become like a cancer and just feed off itself. It is important to view things with balance and to try and not get too bogged down with all that is bad, but try to remember that we are living in a new country, amongst people who have lived there their whole lives. They sometimes don't have the opportunity to leave, even if they wanted to. Slagging off aspects of their way off life must seem threatening to them sometimes.

It is a tough one, and thank goodness for forums like this that let us blow off steam and progress with life as best we can.

Banksia

Good contribution. Could a certain lack of tolerance be because many others risk their lives in leaky boats, spend years in detention and are finally found worthy of protection, while "white" people arrive in comfort, then start complaining because they can't buy some trivial product which has a perfectly good local equivalent? Or they settle in Brisbane and it's too hot or settle in Melbourne and its too cold.

Just a thought which will no doubt cause local thunderstorms. But intending arrivals need warning.

Megalania

Consider a £10 Pom - their time and place and the resources they had. Now consider the Thoroughly Modern Pom - their time and place and the resources they have - and if they bay to the Moon today about a life far away, how much then?

JAJ

Quite. One aspect of the "ten pound pom" scheme was that for an assisted passage you had to meet Australian government selection criteria. Often this meant having a job offer and fitting the 'right' profile.

Many people went to Australia without such assistance, and Australia was pretty much open to British people (before the early 1970s), but the cost was a lot higher.

Those who did take the assisted passage were not able to leave Australia for 2 years. Passports had to be surrendered to Canberra.

It was a completely different era. The UK was still recovering from WW2, while Australia was a less 'developed' country than it is today.

Contact with friends and family left behind was pretty much limited to the postal service.

Those who migrated to Australia in the 1920s and previous decades faced even harsher challenges.

Jeremy