Pulaski

Now I am re-imagining you as a termite.

Gordon Barlow

Emigration... Why did we all leave home, we expats? A great variety of reasons, or just a hankering after somewhere different? Ideally, every BE member gathered around the barbie will have a different story, and it would be interesting to read them. I'll start, since I started this thread. I hope there will be a good follow-up.

My overseas venture had its origin in my grandfather's gift of a stamp-album (with some stamps inside) for my tenth birthday. He persuaded me to write to a Norwegian fishing company at the address on the label of a tin of tuna, asking if anybody there had a son of my age who would like to swap stamps with me. One boy wrote back, and we corresponded for a few years until I went off to boarding school. The hobby prompted a strong interest in foreign countries, and I carried a burning wish to see some of them - until, at the age of 23, the wish came true. How we ended up on an island in the Caribbean is another story. There have been several emigrations since that first one.

My wife's mother was an English woman who had emigrated/immigrated in the 1930s after her mother died, so it was natural enough for Linda to want to visit her aunts and cousins in London and Dover. She went over on the same boat as I did, and in the same year, although six months apart.

Our son was never encouraged to confine himself to this little island (Grand Cayman), so for him it was just a matter of where else he would go. A dalliance with a Norwegian girl in a hippie cult in Mexico at the age of 25, answered that question. Norwegian mothers like to give birth in their home country so that the children become Norwegian citizens. Very patriotic, the Norskies. So that was his reason for being where he is now.

Next, please!

the troubadour

Funny you mention stamps. That in part aroused my interest in things foreign as well. I had a father who was in a prime position at the port in dealing with ship's captains, that managed to obtain countless stamps for me back in the day. That moved onto coins . Early school years ,the match box company Redheads had a collection of world flags , which I learnt every single one by appearance. All stimulants for getting out into the world and escaping the rigours of a conservative, working class Aussie town.

Left with parents at twelve to UK, going by cargo ship arriving in Immingham. The voyage further opened my eyes to the mystic of foreign lands transiting the Suez Canal , passing the African Coast , The Red Sea, stopping in Sicily for bunkering. The drive in a Roller from Immingham down to Suffolk where we first stayed, prior to moving to Sussex after a spell in Guilford. Later spent a month in Dublin with mother's relatives.

Finally we returned after a year to Australia, but the attraction of abroad was something that remained and acted upon in late teens when landed a job on a ship and left for Africa. South Africa was another eye opener at the time and lived in Cape Town , a city returned to several times since. Ended up in London, a city at the time found the feeling of being most at home in.

brits1

A few reasons really, growing up we spent all our holidays and every weekends in Wales where we had a holiday home, this was back in the late 60’s and this was quite an different “way of life” for people in our social circle. I made friends from all over Wales and England and the accents fascinated me then in High School our English teacher gave out addresses from various countries for us to become penpals (in the early 70’s) I ended up with 3, a Canadian, Austrian and a German we wrote for years and I met them a couple of times, I still write to my friend In Germany and we are great friends, by the 90’s my DH and I had “done” a lot of travelling when one night we were in a Pub near to where we lived and some people were having a leaving party for a young guy who was migrating to Australia (through a work transfer) we went home and thought to ourselves “we should try Australia” and the rest is history, we did find out later that the young man did not go migrate to Australia he met a local girl just before leaving and decided to stay (they are still together) I think travelling is either in your blood, work reasons or you have the “let’s go for it” attitude.

Gordon Barlow

I wonder how you found the apartheid rules in SA, Troubadour! Linda and I went there on one of our annual vacations when we lived in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in the 1970s. I got caught a few times by the rules. I wrote about one of the incidents on my other thread "Back in the day" in BE's Rest of the World section, earlier this month. It's #33 there, if you want to read it. It was a minor incident, and amusing, but typical of the times.

Three of my English grandfather's brothers fought in the Boer War. One of them stayed behind after the War, and became a sugar-planter in Natal. His daughter (and only child) married a Rhodesian, and moved up there to his tobacco farm or ranch whatever they call them. When the country became Zimbabwe, their farm was confiscated - although they were allowed back to run the place! I've lost touch with the family now. I managed to have a long phone chat with one of them - the grand-daughter, I think - who was visiting her daughters in Texas a while back.

Gordon Barlow

Gosh, that was a pretty flimsy reason to emigrate to the other side of the world, brits! I'm glad the gamble paid off! Good for you.

Gordon Barlow

Every intending emigrant receives information about where he or she is going. Some of the info is reliable, some not. Here's some wonderful advice I received from a friend of my Dad's when I was about to leave my Australian home in 1963. The friend knew that I was intending to see the world (Europe) and then return via the USA. He took me aside and told me seriously, "Be careful with the Yanks, Gordon. You can't trust them. The bastards killed Phar Lap, you know."

Phar Lap was the greatest race-horse ever to win the Melbourne Cup - a legend for all time. (New Zealand bred, but not many Aussies knew that, or accepted it.) The horse was so good that in 1932 he was shipped to California to take on the best horses North America could produce. Alas, he died of arsenic poisoning before he could race in the US. 29 years and a World War later, I was reminded that the killer had never been identified. It could have been anybody, and he or they could still be walking the streets of California waiting to poison some other unsuspecting Australian! I promised to keep my wits about me at all times, over there.

the troubadour

As for your question with regards to apartheid , being a keen follower of currant affairs I was fully aware of the situation, but what shocked me was not the actual policy but the pettiness of the policy. First afternoon sitting on a bench in the Company Gardens to be reminded by a black couple that I was sitting in a Black Only bench. I stayed some months in a very 'liberal' house in Observatory , fair to say subversive I could say, but police attention made me conclude I'd be better finding a place elsewhere. I'd be most likely deported if police raided, as there was young guys refusing to do army service passing through, different races at times calling, these guys had a system going buying banned (in South Africa) record albums of crew members of visiting Union Mail Shipping Company vessels who were frequent visitors to the port. Also quite a lot of the 'herb' as they termed it Durban Poison . But many stories around that time and the race laws and even inter racial 'relationships'.
I left Cape Town after by chance being offered a job on a ship , who were short staffed until Hamburg. As I 'd had experience, it saved them flying over someone for a three week stint , so if not for that would most likely have stayed in CT for who knows how long? I did have a half thought out plan of travelling overland to Cairo. Never had the chance to further that nor to live a time in Rhodesia as it was then.

Gordon Barlow

I suppose there must be many BE members who have "followed the hounds" in their time. My first experience was soon after arriving in England, when a friend and I hitched down to my Dad's cousin Lucy in Bathampton, just outside Bath. She insisted we spend an afternoon at a "hunt" at Badminton. It was a bizarre experience for both of us Down Under chaps - listening to Lucy screeching updates of the goings-on. "They've found the fox!" "They're chasing the fox". "They've cornered the fox!" David & I missed seeing the finale: "The hounds have ripped the fox to pieces!" We'd lost interest long before. An Irish poet once described the event as "the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."

I've read that Australia has some fox-hunting clubs, but I've never seen one in action. Has anybody reading this seen one? Most of our horse-riding in the bush was done at a walk, mustering sheep from point-A to point-B. Only rarely did we need to canter off to bring in one that had eluded the dog. Dad and some neighbours used to go off on a dingo-hunt once in a while, but I never saw a carcase. And we lived well inside the thousand-mile anti-dingo fence anyway. It may have been just a ruse for the men to have a few beers in private, away from the wives. I'll never know, now.

old.sparkles

Not sure why you would think this - or feel it a topic to post about in the Barbie.

the troubadour

I suppose we could continue with the demise of British Ex Pats. Or we include a little more subject matter of a broader nature to help keep things afloat.

old.sparkles

For sure - happy with the ramblings, just not sure why fox hunting. Was just my comment / question.

Pollyana

I must admit you voiced my own thoughts! Don't think fox hunting is big over here!

Gordon Barlow

Further to my reference to dingoes in our little part of the Queensland bush... The men of the district organized dingo-drives once in a while, and occasionally took potshots at kangaroos. Dingoes were hated because they would kill or cripple sheep for fun (seemingly), and sheep were our livelihood. Kangaroos were and are classed as a pest - cute though they undoubtedly are - because they nibble the grass too close to the ground and leave none for the sheep. So do rabbits, which were a tremendous pest (though cute, of course) and had to be poisoneden masse in the 1950s because there were too many to shoot.

By rights there shouldn't have been any dingoes or rabbits on the Darling Downs. My Dad's modest patch of five thousand acres was inside both the official rabbit-proof fence and the dingo fence that stretched a thousand miles or so across the State. The whole purpose of the fences (erected and maintained by the State government to this day, I'm told) was to keep the vermin out of where we lived, so I don’t understand why our men's dingo-drives were necessary. Although as I said last time, I never saw any bodies.

(And, just for the record - I have actually spoken on this topic at one or two actual barbie parties, in my time. And in Australia, too. In my experience, there are no rules about what topics can and can't be covered, at real barbies. Mind you, my experience dates from the days before shrimps - or yabbies, which were the Queensland equivalent of shrimps. Back in the day, the main meal was saveloys.)

Amazulu

It should be though - those Bandicoot murdering f**kers need to be exterminated