Back in the day, British companies' employees working in overseas "hardship" places were sent home for three months every three years on paid "home leaves". Every 12 months they got "local leaves" of a week or ten days, but it was reckoned that they would "go native" if they didn't get back to Blighty at all. They left their local company-owned accommodations, and their air- or ship- fares were paid by the employers. Most African colonies were deemed to be "hardship" assignments - and, generously, many Caribbean-area colonies too.

So when Linda and I turned up in Nassau, Bahamas, in 1967, my British/Canadian trust-company employer put us up in the home of Tim Somebody's family, rent-free, until we found accommodation of our own. We had arrived just when our employer was deciding that Nassau really wasn't a hardship-post at all. So they gave all their non-native employees - including me - a hefty salary-increase, and abolished the "home-leave" arrangements. We were all required to pay for our own accommodations and annual airfares for our annual month-long vacations. Tim Whatsisname had thereafter to pay a market-rent for his family's housing, and we paid for our little flat.

Many years ago my father worked in Egypt, and after 5 years told he had to take 5 months off as they feared he was going native. For most of his career housing was paid, often car and driver, our schooling- so he resisted being posted back to home office.

A friend of mine employed by a British bank in Nigeria - back in the day - was promised a promotion to the Cameroon branch after his next home-leave, but only if he was married. So he hustled around while on the leave and duly tied the knot, with a European girl working as a waitress in Bournemouth. No problem! This happened in the mid-seventies, and the marriage is still going strong today. His kids and mine grew up together in Cayman.

Those of us who have landed exotic jobs - or jobs in exotic places, back in the day - usually have to explain to our children how we got the jobs. And/or why we sought them out. Morpeth will have been challenged by his children and/or grandchildren why he worked in Bolivia in his younger days, and how he got to be chosen for the work. Often, it will have been sheer luck - as it was for me in my jobs in foreign places.

Working for an international audit-firm in London and Toronto doesn't count as particularly exotic, but a three-week assignment in the Bahamas gave me the opportunity to apply for a job at one of the clients there, an English/Canadian trust company. Somebody else got the job - but... When I called by a month later en route to the firm's Jamaica office, the client told me "The fellow didn't turn up. Do you still want it?"

The Bahamas was an offshore-tax-haven, and I never paid Income Tax again, there or elsewhere.

Mu father, by sheer accident, had his first assignment building airfields in Eritrea during the war, and his subsequent assignments even when ending up with the same company often luck and timing affected where he was posted.

He explained his preference posting for foreign postings as due to the absence or reduced income tax, and especially non-taxable benefits , in several locations the company paid for car and driver school tuition, housing and housing staff allowances.By the time I was18, besides the UK I had lived in 5 different countries.

Your post made me realize my children have not really asked how I ended up working internationally , perhaps since their grandfather also did they consider it "normal".

As a born Australian, of English and Irish forebears, I marvel at the courage (desperation?) of my ancestors of two or three generations back who upped sticks and left their homes for a faraway land of which they can have had only the faintest of knowledge. (One of those ancestors - the Irishman - may have been a convict; I've never been too sure of that. There were three John Hickeys on the same boat to Oz!) One ancestor was actually pregnant on the voyage coming over. Imagine that!

So while I marvel at my own overseas travels, I had it a whole lot easier than they did!

I had ancestors who emigrated to Australia, USA ( in 17th century), and Rhodesia, a hardy bunch surviving and creating a new life.

As a matter of interest, Morpeth... Where did they come from (what British counties or towns), and where did they settle in their new home countries? And, did any of them ever go back to Britain? Also, did any of them use their skills (if any) in their new homes, or did they switch to some other way of making enough money to survive?

One of my ancestors was an ag-lab (agricultural labourer) in Herefordshire around 1850. He emigrated to Australia, no doubt with an eye to providing a better life for his family and descendants. When I was a young professional accountant in Australia, my family-history research turned up a third cousin who was a descendant of my man's younger brother, who had also been an ag-lab with few prospects back in the wilds of Herefordshire around 1850. This third cousin was also a young professional account, in the same grade as I was! So much for my man bettering his descendants' stations in life, eh?

The website myheritage.com useful for turning up interesting information, especially if one does the DNA test which is quite inexpensive.

All from the northeast, Northumberland, a few from Scotland.

The ones who went to Rhodesia stayed in mining, rest ended up in different professions. The ones from Rhodesia understandably left either back to Britain or Australia, the others visited UK but never moved back. Having worked in USA and Australia, and studied in both had opportunity to come across closer or distant relatives.

From the Northeast and border countries there was emigration to Appalachia in America, driving through my mother and I could discern Northumbrian dialect words and customs - and if we spoke in the dialect, a few times locals could discern roughly what we were saying, and we spoke in Scots which is very closely related the same.Though this was not the case so much in Australia, cultural similarities were between general British and Australia, not so much specifically the North East.

Yes, I have always found that North-of-England accents have much greater "stickability" than any other part of England. Colonial accents have the same virtue - in general - but not regularly. I myself, after 62 years out of Australia, lost my Oz accent fairly early in my overseas life, and the reason for that was that I often couldn't be understood by foreigners. I well remember a ridiculous half-hour in a car (I was hitching-hiking from Cornwall back to London) with a young driver who couldn't understand a word I said. Fortunately, he had his girlfriend on board too. She interpreted every word I said to them - and every word that he said to me, because I couldn't understand him either. Cripes! On the Continent I quickly lost as much of my accent as I decently could.

Up till the day she died, my wife didn't lose her accent. It irritated her to hear people say, "I can tell you're Australian, Linda, but where is Gordon from?" I describe my accent today as "British expat" - that accent-less English that long-term expats often speak. When people guess "English", I point out that if they can't name a county, I'm probably not English. Guess again, matey!

Good point about accents, and in the North East even the distance of three miles can mean a change in accent, though those who go on for higher education tend to lose a bit of the difference. I note on day to day basis "code switching" in the North East. A taxi driver I was speaking to asked my daughter if she were "gannin yem" and seeing she did not understand switched to say "going home" and for rest of trip would switch to standard English, yet speaking with me would switch back.

I always get a bit confused between Rhodesian and South African accents.

Some people as Expats over time as you point out can end up with what you aptly describe as British Expat accent, others not so much.

I find that many Brits can't tell the difference between Australian and New Zealand accents. Here's a tip... Somehow, get the speaker to say "six big pigs". Kiwis will say "sucks bug pugs"! And if the speaker says "seeks beeg pee-ugs", he's from Sydney!

Switching countries for a moment... I heard a BBC radio session once, long ago (it was 1971, when we were living in Bath), on the custom of the natives of Bristol to end words ending in vowel-sounds, with the ell-sound. They asked people in the street to read the words "prima donna opera singer". And every single one of them read the words as "primal donnal operal singerl". Hence presumably an earlier conversion of the city's original name of Bristow to Bristol. And - very probably - the custom of the people of New Orleans in the USA to add an ell to the word "you". Everybody spells it y'all in the singular, which forces them to say "all y'all" when using the plural. Well, that's my theory! What do you reckon?

Never been to New Orleans, so I trust your judgement

Morpeth... Back in the day, I spent a week in "The South" with a Cayman cricket team participating in a tournament. While filing out of a restaurant on our first night, the chap in front of me stopped suddenly, and I bumped into him. "What's the problem?" I asked. "The waitress wants us to come back", he said. I had to explain that she was just shouting the customary farewell of the region: "Y'all come back now!"

It must be frustrating (if that's the word) when one's own children fail to express interest in their parents' travels, or work-assignments in various places. Sometimes it's the parents' fault, of course. I was never told of my parents' lives before they married. I managed to get some info from Mum long after Dad's death. I had never known before that Dad was a bit of a tearaway in his younger days, and had been sacked from his job in a bank for coming in half drunk once too often. His marriage to a responsible city girl gave him a reason to reform to settle down and manage a sheep farm out in the bush, far away from the bright lights of the city...