Shrimps On The Barbie
 

As a former Australian, I check in on this section from time to time, but there's never much action, is there? Not many visits, even. Why is that? The Canadian equivalent (The Maple Leaf) is much more active, and I wonder why. British expats in Canada aren't inherently more interesting than their counterparts in Oz, so what is it? The same monitors service both sectors (presumably), so that can't be a factor.

I'm not really going anywhere with my questions. I don't intend to get involved. But in a long life I have been involved with a variety of forums, persuading people to at least follow topics and threads, so I know how it's done. Ah well... I'll come back in a couple of weeks just to see if there's been any change. I hope there is, for the better, because that's supposed to be what BE is all about - right?

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The Canadian forum is still active, but nothing like it was some years ago. Probably long time users are getting bored and drifting away, and new users might find the forum format a bit old fashioned. Could also be Covid, that's reduced immigration everywhere so there's less activity on BE too.

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I'm not sure there has been much migration to Australia in the last two years - Australia's international borders were closed to all except citizens and permanent residents (with some exceptions).

Borders opened to all only on 21 Feb.

But it is quiet here (BE), with very few visiting regularly

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It’s this forum. Others are much busier…

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If I suggested why, I believe it would be deleted PDQ. ;)

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Exactly.

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I’ve given up trying to fight against the Mass Formation Psychosis.

Better uses of my time/attention.

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Dear oh dear. Still no action to speak of, around the barbie - and a couple of hints that there might be actual discouragement from somewhere up above. Ah well, it happens in all forums...

"The barbie" is a good title, because that's where a lot of Australians used to gather and swap stories - and I'm sure still do. I haven't been down under since 1995, when "around the barbie" is exactly how I spent a couple of happy days, courtesy of an old school-chum of mine. I have family there - two brothers and their children and grandchildren - but not reason enough to go back. I have a son and his children in Norway, so that's my overseas destination these days. No barbies there!

Also, I let my Oz passport lapse a while back - in 1997, I guess, when China took over the management of Hong Kong. That freed the UK up to give UK citizenship to all the residents of its remaining colonies. So I have travelled on a British (EU) passport since then. The Australian government didn't disown me or anything, but now I'm British and don't need to be anything else. My son was born in England, so he's a Brit too, although his children aren't.

My home state was Queensland, and my wife's was Victoria, and we spent a year (1971) in Perth, where we spent two weeks on a safari up to Port Hedland and back - driving in a convoy of six or seven cars up the inland road and back via the coast. To get to Perth in the first place we spent three days and nights on the train from Melbourne, via Adelaide. That was worth doing, and I can recommend it. I'm not an expert on Australia or all things Australian. Also, the country has changed a lot since we left for the first time in 1963. As an old man, I like to remember the way it used to be - what I knew of it - and I would like to pass on some of those memories. I'm doing the same sort of thing on another BE thread - over in "The Rest of the World" sector. (I hope the BE rule-book - quite a volume! - allows me to mention that.) The stories there cover our 3 1/2 years living and working in what was then The New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). If permitted, I will be glad to breathe life into The Barbie. Let me start by giving a piece of doggerel that has always amused me. I don't know where it came from, but it is true enough about the Australia of a couple of generations ago.

The people of Melbourne are frightfully well-born.
Of much the same kidney is the beau monde of Sydney.
Adelaide's forte is culture,
But in Brisbane the people insult ya,
And don't hardly know they've been rude, they're that ignorant, common and crude.

It's hardly worth mentioning Perth.

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I grew up in the 1940s and '50s in an Australia that - as a general statement - despised the mass of new immigrants that were escaping their war-torn homes in Europe. There was no sensible reason for this contempt, but it did exist. These "New Australian" nationalities were (mostly) given dismissive nicknames. I can't give examples without running afoul of the BE censors, but while many of them were relatively harmless, some were plain nasty. Even the British were not always exempt. When I was 17, eleven years after the war had ended, I hitched a ride home with a pleasant English salesman who asked me "Why do Australians hate us English?" I couldn't deny the premise, and nor could I explain why the dislike existed. The only comfort I could have given him is to say that every other nationality was treated worse. Well, not "treated", but certainly regarded with resentment.

And, I write of generalities. My Dad's best friend out in the bush (the Darling Downs, sheep-rearing country) was half Chinese. My Mum met his mother once, who sat in the corner of the big room dressed exotically and who didn't speak English. Well, she probably could, but she didn't. Nobody spat in her beer, so that was good.

At my boarding school in Brisbane in 1951-56 we had a scattering of nationalities - maybe eight or ten in each year of 180 kids. I was friendly with a boy from Cyprus and another from Greece, and there was one aboriginal in my dorm - one of "the stolen generation" whom the government had abducted from his tribe and given to a white family to adopt. We did call him by a nickname that would not pass our BE censors, but it was never used nastily. Also there was a chap with brown skin whose origin we never bothered to discover - but who also had a nickname that wouldn't pass muster here. And we had two Jews - at a Church of England school, yet! I myself was mistakenly identified as a Mexican from my earliest days at the school, and was called Pablo for the whole of my six years there. But again, not derogatively. Very few of my fellows ever knew my real name; even most of the teachers called me Pablo. But I was never jeered at for being foreign, that's the point of mentioning it. So it's probably fair to say that my generation did much to ease the newcomers' path to acceptance.

Or maybe it was the Queensland laid-back attitude to life in general. She'll be right. No worries, mate!

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A couple of weeks ago in the BE "Rest of the World" section, I posted a piece about Australia's brush with slavery. Actually it was a pretty broad brush - how broad, depends on your definition of slavery. The "blackbirding" trade abducted native Pacific Islanders from their home villages and transported them to Queensland, where the colonial government assigned them to selected white settlers on small cotton and sugar plantations. The trade lasted for fifty or sixty years from the mid-1800s, until it was ended by the first Federal Parliament of the newly united Australia. Those who had lived in Queensland for fifteen years were allowed to stay if they wanted; the rest were shipped "home" to the most convenient island and dumped there.

The system was that ships' captains called at random islands and "persuaded" illiterate individuals to sign up for five years' service, for a few pounds' wages payable at the end of the contract. Some of the victims got paid, though not all. The persuasion itself took various forms, as you can imagine. Getting them drunk onboard and taking off to the nearest Queensland port was one of them. The American author Mark Twain wrote about the trade, having observed it during his voyage to the region in the late 1800s. He also noted that "kanakas" (that was the Hawaiian word for humans) were also traded from eastern islands to the Pacific coast of the USA and Canada. He was horrified by the practice.

I wasn't taught any of this at school. I only found out about the practice from my mother in the 1970s, when she lived near a small community of kanakas down near the NSW border. Her grandparents had employed nine kanakas on their small sugar plantation up outside Mackay. Ironically, the grandmother had herself been an unpaid child-labourer in the tin mines of Cornwall, before she came to Australia. What a turnaround it was for her, eh?

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Little changes in the case of Perth then. Probably a positive in a time of insane change in so many places.

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When we arrived in Perth we were told all kinds of tales from “back in the day” one of my favourite ones …living in this busy world was that at weekends you had a list of which petrol stations would be open I think it was one either side of the river, another was that at their primary school a lot of students did not ware shoes (by choice), there was not anything like air con so at night a lot of people would sleep outdoors during the hotter months (maybe a lot of people still do) that had all “gone” by the time we arrived but Sunday the shops were all closed except some in the city centre and a few even closed Saturday afternoon now that was a pleasant surprise for us as it left our weekends free to “chillax” not sure if anything stays the same but the memories are always nice to have.

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Most immigrants to Australia live in towns, naturally enough, and don't have much knowledge of what happens in the countryside. I'm going to do a few snippets of reminiscing on this thread, of my early life in "the bush". I hope it's interesting. I'll start with a report of some time ago from England's Daily Mail, of two men in a lamb-castrating speed-contest in the US somewhere who had become physically ill from removing lambs' testicles with their teeth. I may have been one of a rather small number of readers whose immediate reaction was, "Gosh, Dad used to do that all the time, and it never made him sick." Why should it? I wondered.

Of course that practice wasn't limited to the colonies. After all, how did the old-time farmers in England castrate their lambs and kids, if not the way my father’s generation did it? (And by "kids" I mean baby goats. Come on! Be reasonable.) Those things are way too slippery to get a grip of with hands, so teeth were the obvious tool to do the job. Around 1950, where we lived, that traditional method gave way to expandable rubber rings placed where necessary with a sort of tweezers. The surplus organs dropped off in the course of time - way too slow for speed contests of any kind, and probably not quite as certain.

There are many other cultural differences between town life and country life. Horses, for instance. Town horses - town residents' horses, that is - are trained to leap gracefully over formal obstacle courses. Country horses are mere vehicles for pulling ploughs or herding sheep and cattle. Immigrants to Oz would be well advised to read some of the poems of Banjo Paterson, Australia's equivalent of Lord Tennyson. Start with "The Man from Snowy River", to get the flavour.

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A colleague I worked with in the UK attempted to migrate to Perth.

I'm not sure of the exact timing of the move, but from the story he told they arrived in Perth on a Saturday and found most shops closed. His wife was not happy. They went to where they were staying and tried again on the Sunday to go shopping, and found it all closed.

They didn't last long as the wife hated it and returned to the UK after only a week or so. Fortunately, he had taken a career break and was able to return to his old job.

I was in Perth a few weeks back - travelling for work with a couple of engineers / managers. After many attempts we found a bar open on a Sunday night (it was still early at around 9pm) but most were already closed. Not sure if that is normal, or due to Covid.

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Is Perth in New Zealand ? :eek:

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:lol:

What are shops and pubs like in NZ Bevs?

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The bookends of Australiasia. So distant yet so close.

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Having recommended it in my last post, it's only fair that I give some background to the famous poem, and a small extract. Occasionally after school, when I was a kid, some of us would pretend we were The Man From Snowy River and charge headlong on our horses through copses with fallen trees underfoot - spurred on (so to speak) by words from the poem itself. That was fun until Bryan broke his arm trying to squeeze between two trees that were too close together.

Through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound
At the bottom of that terrible descent.

It’s an exciting description, in context, and impossible to recite properly without bending your body to the rhythm of the ride. My Dad knew all the words, but would never recite it in public, for fear of choking up. It was an unrealistic description, of course. Galloping downhill over fallen trees would be suicide for both man and horse, on a loose rein. When we boys did it, there were no hills, but even so... Bryan was lucky to escape with a broken arm.

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I'm afraid Perth would be tucked up or near enough to it at that time of night. Especially it being a Sunday. But right enough Corvid has added to the sense of desolation noticeable during the day with any buzz sadly lacking. This is simply a city of home bodies , with some sporting interest, which simply can't compete with the likes of Adelaide by the sounds of it. We even lost out crown as Australia's meth capital to that city. What ever next?

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Just a thought. Are you feeling a tinge of 'homesickness' manifesting? Back to Man From Snowy River. My father's wife from Norwich learnt that word for word after three years out in Oz. I suppose the fact she was an English teacher assisted. I learnt part of it at school. Could never recall too much though. A far cry from what Australia represents these days. Even country towns are much changed. Although elements survive obviously.

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Well, to use a lovely expression that hadn't arrived when I was young, "Yeah, nah." (Yes, I hear what you say, and it's fair comment; but you're wrong.)
Not even a little bit. After so many years away, I have even lost all trace of my Australian accent. (I've checked it on the phone's answer-machine, and my accent is what I call an indeterminate expat-British colonial accent - the kind you hear from longtime English expats in East Africa, for instance. Weird, and not attractive at all!) I can look back on my childhood (aged 0-15) in the Queensland bush with neutrality, but I have no emotional attachment to it. I do have emotional attachments to my expat life (lives?) in the Bahamas and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), and London, and a very deep attachment to the eight months my future wife and I spent backpacking around the Middle East in 1964/65. I liked the 12 months we spent in Perth in 1970, but not to the point of wishing I could re-live it.

Just this last week I established WhatsApp contact with an old schoolfriend of mine in Brisbane. We have exchanged emails for years, but this was the first time we had spoken since I was last in Oz in 1995 - when we had gathered around the barbie in his backyard and reminisced. He had happened to be walking down the street in Earl's Court when I stepped off the bus from Southampton in '63, so we hung out together that winter. By another fluke we bumped into each other again the next year in Esfahan, Iran, and of course I looked him up when I was next in Brisbane. But still no tinge of homesickness!

Is there anybody else on this thread who shares my lack of positive affection for his or her former home?

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Well I remain in Australia at this point, but can safely say I'll be joining' the lack of Australian affection club' on next departure which will most likely be permanent although unsure about what to do with the house yet. Shocking what's going down here. But I'll move on.

Earls Court 1963. Wow I first touched down there eleven years later as a teenager. What a place it was in those years. The world staying around a few streets. Every sort of human frailty known to man (and more) could be found. A real eye opener for someone from a West Australian country town that would definitely pass as having a conservative nature. But goodness it was fun. Went back in 2010 and far removed from those days but London overall has marched on.
I'd be possibly more inclined to give Manchester a go these days in place of London if starting that time again.
1970 Perth must have been somewhat different. Pre North Bridge times, tall buildings, perhaps that hotel , The Hilton, would have been the tallest structure which wasn't very tall. I guess less rules and regs, the mining not long in play, affordable, pre homeless , but a rawness, that I recall existing in the later seventies anyway.

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Nice to know that you remember Earl's Court with affection, Troubadour! I wonder if you ever saw the movie "The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie". A Barry Humphries piece of nonsense based on his Private Eye comic strip of the 1960s. Very true to the life in Kangaroo Valley at that time.

I guess you must have family in England, to be going back there in your old age. Manchester, eh? A big-city man, then. If I were to retire in England I'd favour somewhere around Bath. We rented a house there for a year in '71 while sorting out our future. I love the countryside thereabouts. Also my Barlow grandfather came from one of the Bath villages, so maybe it's a DNA thing for me. Three generations have graves in the Parish Church of Bathampton, where - for any Australians interested - there is a special little Captain Phillips chapel. I think he is buried there, but I'm not sure.

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Affection indeed. In fact user name on here Troubadour is a reflection of that. That being a coffee house of long standing, (perhaps you knew it, Brompton Road?) A most unique place in a rather unique area.

Yes. I saw Bazzie Mackenzie at the High Street Kensington Odeon soon after release. Cinema full of Earls Court Aussies learning the ropes of how to behave in England.

The Aussie pub that appeared HQ at the time of my arrival was The Kings Head. Kenway Road was it? A bit later The Prince of Teck took the crown. They even had a stuffed roo on the bar, with a fag in its mouth and Fosters in its paw. Bit of a rough place but reflected reality of the time.

I recall it went from being called Kangaroo Valley to Arab Alley in a short space of time, but by the eighties it was a microseism of the world. Great fun. I lived in Bayswater , almost in Notting Hill and great days they were.

No family to speak of in England. But none outside of spouse in Australia either. I do feel there is more to do in England in the age though.

I like cities . No idea beyond what I read about Manchester, as never been there. But it seems to have a buzz. Actually the city I was looking at after Bournemouth (expensive) was Norwich. That I do know somewhat, but no recent experience. Brexit has made EU less easily livable. ( lived there some years prior to Australia)

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Your last paragraph brought back some memories of our time in Perth, our first Christmas (we had arrived in the October) my husband and I were invited to DH Christmas works party it was for a cruise on the swan river , a small boat which has he company had hired out we had to board by 6.30pm (we thought that was a bit early) anyway because of very windy weather we “sailed” around in large circles and the party finished at 8.45pm everyone was heading home so my DH and I thought we would take a look at Perth city centre at a night we found two pubs open one an Irish themed pub and an “English “ pub but both were not busy and were empty by 9.30pm we were shocked and it had not really changed that much by the time we lived Australian not sure what it is like now though.

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Found a nice Irish bar on the return to Perth (was flying into / out of Perth to rural WA) - Durty Nelly's. t up with a former BE'er who moved from SA.

As to the flying to rural areas - who needs roller coasters :lol:

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English pub most likely Moon and Sixpence. I was a 'regular' of sorts there in late nineties. Been gone for years, leaving a big hole in pub choice in the city. The other English pub went as well over in North Bridge. (Elephant and Wheelbarrow) You need to go far into the suburbs to locate an English pub now. Still a few Irish ones around though.
Night is most odd in Perth. People eat so early and return home. The later out of course the more unsavory it becomes. The drugs play a big part (ice) but there are obvious other issues as well. Sometimes on a late shop Friday there is something close to a buzz as well as around Christmas Time when loads of tourists many from Asia, enjoy viewing the lights.
By and large wouldn't bother to go to the city. More here in Leederville , although limited as well, but at least can walk home and no hassle with parking or catching public transport.

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Wouldn’t get me back to pommyland for all the tea in China. Godawful bloody place!

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One of my most comfortable memories of my time in Australia - years ago - is of standing round the barbie chatting about yesterday's or last weekend's "Footie". Australia's major football code is Aussie Rules, of course, but in Queensland it was Rugby League. And my home town was Toowoomba, where League was king of all sports. My Dad and I used to walk down the hill every Sunday, to watch one of the town's four clubs play each other. Our favourite was the All Whites, much to my mother's disgust, because they were a Roman Catholic club, and she was very anti-RC. (For good reason, but I won't go into that!)

They introduced T'ba to what was called "contact football" - the players were coached to pass the ball pretty much as soon as they were touched by the opposition. It made for a very fast game, and the players had to be light on their feet. There was no limit to the number of tackles, back then; today the limit is six, after which the ball has to be given to the opposition. It was glorious to watch. I don't think any of the other football codes were ever played there. Maybe Rugby Union at some of the schools; but no Aussie Rules and no soccer.Union was played at my boarding school in Brisbane, but even there we all followed League games whenever we could.

I'd been working in Brisbane after I left school, but packed it in after 18 months. This was 1958. The week before I left, I went to "the Gabba" (Woolloongabba, the city's main sports venue) to see the Second Test between a visiting Great Britain team and Australia (Queensland and NSW). It was the most memorable match I've ever seen. It was a hard-fought game, written up as "the Battle of Brisbane”. You can find it on Google under that title - but you have to add "rugby 1958" to find The Independent's report. What made it memorable was that the GB captain broke his forearm three minutes after the start. No substitutes were allowed in those days, so for the rest of the game he played with his arm hanging loose from the shoulder – packing down in the scrums, tackling and passing as best he could. Four other British players were badly damaged during the game; but only one with a broken collar-bone went off. I don’t remember much about the game, but the captain’s absurd bravery is a very vivid memory.

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You forgot to mention what the crowd did…

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I can't remember what the crowd did. Tell me. I suppose it was the usual milling around. I was in a state of shock and disbelief, mind focussed on this madman. We kept looking at him throughout the game, wondering how he could keep playing with this useless arm hanging down. He was in the second-row, I think. I suppose there was the usual milling around, at the end. I usually just left the arena without delay - trams to catch and places to go... I might have been on my own, even.

I remember the warm-up match that preceded the big game. It was between two clubs' Under-17 teams. As they ran onto the pitch one by one, one of the audience shouted "He's a bit hairy-arsed for sixteen!" I'd never heard that particular description before, and it's stuck in my mind ever since.

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Started barracking for the poms.

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OK. Well, I don't remember that! And I don't altogether believe it, I have to say. Still, it's possible. They might have been cheering the man. It was such a mad, mad thing to be doing. I've never seen anything like it. They bandaged him up a bit at half-time, and would have given him a shot of painkiller. Those were the days, eh?

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I can't stand Rugby League - although I love Union - but I had a read about that game. What a match - Great Britain won too, which was extraordinary. People pre-1960s were made differently. The only thing I can think of that comes close is the 1974 Lions tour of South Africa, which was incredibly violent, with both sides giving as good as they got

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Lunch break Soon I now know what I am going to read so thank you. I love Bath and visited fairly often I also really like Salisbury/Winchester/York and Norwich I enjoy cities but the smaller more scenic cities suit me just fine. I just wanted to say thank you for your stories it’s lovely to hear them.

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I think when we arrived in Perth 1998 we were just seeing (to my mind) the last of the good days, yes it was a shock at first how quiet the place was but that came with some positives, homes were affordable. easy to get a job, mining was not massive . we actually did not know of anyone who at that time did fly in fly out and no mass home building in “green” areas ie Canning Vale (lots of other areas I could name) I know these bring jobs and mass migration but it did change Perth some for the good (ie nicer shopping centres, improvement to some of the older towns ie Armadale/Midland etc) Jobs but for me the knock on effect for Perth was not the same.

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I think when we arrived in Perth 1998 we were just seeing (to my mind) the last of the good days, yes it was a shock at first how quiet the place was but that came with some positives, homes were affordable. easy to get a job, mining was not massive . we actually did not know of anyone who at that time did fly in fly out and no mass home building in “green” areas ie Canning Vale (lots of other areas I could name) I know these bring jobs and mass migration but it did change Perth some for the good (ie nicer shopping centres, improvement to some of the older towns ie Armadale/Midland etc) Jobs but for me the knock on effect for Perth was not the same.

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Gosh, thanks for the kind words, brits. Much appreciated!

Here's a little story Troubadour will like. In London in the 1960s, young Aussies used to advertise on notice boards in Earl's Court for travelling companions. My future wife did that twice. The first ad she answered got her together with four others, who drove around Europe for a month or two in an old London taxi owned by one of them. The second time, she answered a girl's ad for a lone travelling companion, and off they went. Unfortunately, the two weren't compatible, and after a few weeks the deal ended in a blazing row one night in Greece. Linda stormed out at four in the morning and hitched a ride to the nearest Youth Hostel. That evening, there was an English-language movie ("Zorba the Greek" - a great movie) playing at the local cinema, and a bunch of us went and watched it, and sat around afterwards drinking coffee back at the Hostel.

Next day, or the one after, I was ready to hit the road again, in my VW Beetle that I'd bought second-hand in Hamburg a few months previous. I had already promised a lift to two fellows, each of whom stuffed an alarmingly large back-pack into the car. Then some girl from the Zorba session asked if I had room for one more. Well, not really, but what can you do? The boys got out where they wanted, but she and I drifted into Turkey and headed east. We parked the car in the Customs shed in Ankara and hitch-hiked around the Middle East for three months, married in Canada two years later, and eventually ended up here in the Caribbean. It wasn't love at first sight for us, but I was a more compatible travelling companion than Louise, apparently.

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I agree. I love reading Gordon's words and stories.

Bath will always remind me of the Mineral Hospital. My Mum had severe rheumatoid arthritis and we spent many many months in Bath over many years because there was , then, specialist treatments to try there.

My Mum came under the very personal care of Andrei Calin who came from the USA to the UK . The reason he took on my Mum was that I had written to him following an article I had read in the New Scientist. I addressed the letter to Mr A Calin, Standford University , USA. That was it. I enclosed a surreptitious taken photo of Mum and simply asked him if he could help somehow . He wrote back and stated that he was taking up a position in Bath Min Hospital in the future and would contact again. He did !

The matron of the Min Hospital was not best pleased as we were from outside the area however Mr Calin was firm . I will always thank that man for his work . Mum was a kind of rheumatoid celeb up there because of the severity & the very early onset of the condition. Took part in several clinical trials + agreeing to be present when he gave his lectures and findings.

We had tough days there did Mum and I but we also had glorious days.

So Bath to me is a beautiful place.

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What a wonderful story, BEVS! So many questions... What year was this? And where did you stay/live when you and your Mum were there? How long were you there? It's good that you have such warm feelings towards the specialist. Are you still in touch?

I had to look the Hospital up on the map - it's got a different name now - and I never visited that part of Bath. We lived up on Combe Down for the whole of 1977, and my Dad's cousin lived in Bathampton, so we kept mainly to that side of Bath. Loved going over the little toll-bridge there! I did some family-history research and found that a maternal grandfather had lived in Widcombe, where he was a Police Constable before emigrating to Queensland. And Bathwick was home to some of the cousin's ancestors; some of them were married in the church there. Bath is a beautiful place in my memory, too.