Why did you come to Australia? (In a sentence!)

[MARYROSE02]

I've asked this question many times of other people but when I asked myself I didn't have an answer. Whether it's because I don't know or I can't remember it suddenly became important (after nearly forty years), perhaps because I wrote ("am writing" is more apt and it was due in yesterday) about it for an Open University assignment. 

I suppose it was partly for an adventure (although I'm the most unadventurous person you could meet), or a (working) holiday, or a real desire to emigrate, or, most shockingly of all, something a mate suggested, to get as far away from home and parents as possible. I can't ask my parents and neither of my brothers know.

I sent texts to a few of my friends and these are their answers:

 “For a year of fun – eight years ago.”

:“Career.”

”I came to OZ for an easier life and to enjoy the sunshine.”

 “To study my PhD.”

“Change of scenery and wanting to travel.”

[newjez]

I didn't have any choice in the matter.

[newjez]

I didn't have any choice in the matter.

[Evandale]

Married an Australian , managed to secure the job I wanted and decided on an adventure. Living in Tasmania ticked all our boxes and we are both very content with our choice.

[NicF]

After 13 years in the UK with my Aussie OH it was time to spend some time living near his family.

[starlight7]

The weather.


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[starlight7]

Good topic MR


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[LKC]

Because we had the opportunity, but now it's time to go home.

[LKC]

Actually, thinking about it it should be 'Because we had the opportunity, and we've loved it here but it's time to go home'.

[Quoll]

Best opportunity at the time

[VERYSTORMY]

I was offered a job out of the blue and thought why not. 

[Celt Down Under]

Because of fear of the future with seeing what Thatcher was doing to the working class man, and Australia offered a bright new future, full of hope, and so it came to be.

[NickyNook]

I didn't like my job, the bad weather or living in deepest, darkest Sussex and fancied a change so I got a WHV and came here for a year in 1979 - one look at Sydney Harbour all sparkly in the sun made me determined to stay for a while and 38 years later I'm still here.

[Peach]

Partner is an Aussie, we'd made far away plans that we thought our kids should grow up here.  Then we had kids and enacted the plan.

[MARYROSE02]

Just now, Celt Down Under said:

Because of fear of the future with seeing what Thatcher was doing to the working class man, and Australia offered a bright new future, full of hope, and so it came to be.

If Corbo had won just a few more seats it might have been OK to go back! Actually, from what I've been reading in the Weekend Australian the election has been "Lose- Lose" for everybody.

[MARYROSE02]

Just now, NickyNook said:

I didn't like my job, the bad weather or living in deepest, darkest Sussex and fancied a change so I got a WHV and came here for a year in 1979 - one look at Sydney Harbour all sparkly in the sun made me determined to stay for a while and 38 years later I'm still here.

You must have arrived just after me then as I disembarked in Fremantle on 3rd November, 1978, and arrived in Sydney about a month later. But I liked my job in the UK, though I did not appreciate it until I came here, and I liked "deepest, darkest Hampshire" too. Perhaps my reason was "fancied a change" but I don't know.

There's a phrase I've come across in my creative writing classes which refers to "writing about what you know to find out what you don't know" so perhaps a reason will "emerge."

How did you make the transition from WHV to permanent residence/citizenship? I took advantage of the Australian Government's amnesty for illegal immigrants in 1980 (not that I was illegal, just inside the cut-off date.)

I went back to England for twelve years but one of my brothers has been here continuously since 1979.

[MARYROSE02]

This is the writing exercise which inspired my assignment although I've written it in prose rather than as a poem if anybody fancies trying something similar: And below it is an excellent poem by Stephen Herrick called Trains which I think was inspired by a similar exercise.

Writing exercise on memory

Write the words 'I remember' at the beginning of a line, and allow a detail to present itself, which you write down. After the first line and its details, return to the beginning of the next line, write 'I remember ...' again, and go on. Allow the details of each line to freely associate and create the next detail or fragment. (You can take out some or all of the 'I remember' phrases when you go back to edit your piece.)

* It is very important to use details, senses, fragments, so that you don't write about the past, but actually write the past. Don't worry about deliberately constructing causal or narrative relationships at first, allow them emerge of their own accord, then you can structure your piece more consciously once you have the material.

Once you have written the exercise freely, see how you might structure it to give it a shape or form. It may be a poem, or a narrative story, or a set of interrelated fragments that can be read as a 'collage'.

Trains  (Stephen Herrick)

we threw water bombs from the front carriage

 onto kids like us

walking by the tracks

 step by step to school

 we stood on verandahs armed with slingshots

and aimed for the guard's van

 we wrote Steven loves Wendy

 on any carriage Wendy might ride & waited at lunchtime for her passing

we lit fires in Cowpers Paddock

to blind the train

 we all had an uncle who was an Engineman

 we knew our brother's body was coming home in a freight van

 we placed apples on the tracks and laid bets on whether they'd squash or roll away

 we lost the bets

we lay awake to hear the 10:15 to Kyogle

 its whistle drove us from clean sheets

 and the smell of moth balls

we refused to ride in the same carriage as our parents

we played chicken over Stable Swamp Creek with the all-stations-to-Beenleigh Afternoon Daily

 we knew the nurse who got dragged 500 metres into Sunnybank Station under the front diesel

we walked that stretch and saw the bloodstains

we read about the engine-driver's heart attack

we never crossed at the overhead bridge

 we never paid the $10 fine"

 we left town one year

before the first electric train

 blew its whistle on our childhood

[Guest The Pom Queen]

Adventure I think. At the time we also told people it was a better life for our children, I don't know if I actually believed that at the time but I do now.

[NickyNook]

1 hour ago, MARYROSE02 said:

How did you make the transition from WHV to permanent residence/citizenship? I took advantage of the Australian Government's amnesty for illegal immigrants in 1980 (not that I was illegal, just inside the cut-off date.)

 

Same here. I squeezed in just before the 31/12/1979 deadline for the 1980 amnesty. They gave me a 6 month extension on the WHV and I was granted PR under the amnesty in April 1981. Became a citizen a bit later in 1989.

I was very fortunate to qualify for PR in that way and I've always been grateful for it.

[Johndoe]

Married an Aussie so didn't have much say in the matter..................or in much of anything come to think about it?

[dv4]

"Better life for the children"...as an Asian parent who grew up in a system where grades were all that mattered, we wanted a more balanced well rounded education for the children and when the opportunity arose to move...we decided to give it a try. The kids are loving it here and appear to be thriving. It's still closer to home(though..my understanding of the word "home" is probably very different to that of the kids') and the weather is great!

Edited June 11, 2017 by dv4

[benj1980]

After coming over visiting friends we imagined where we could slot in!

[MARYROSE02]

Just now, NickyNook said:

Same here. I squeezed in just before the 31/12/1979 deadline for the 1980 amnesty. They gave me a 6 month extension on the WHV and I was granted PR under the amnesty in April 1981. Became a citizen a bit later in 1989.

I was very fortunate to qualify for PR in that way and I've always been grateful for it.

I didn't know or had forgotten that deadline was 31/12/79 though I did remember getting a six month extension from November, 1979, then another six month extension. I would never have been accepted for PR otherwise, though my brothers might have done and one of them did get sponsored by his employer. I've been a citizen since OZ Day 1983 and haven't renewed my UK passport since that expired 7 or 8 years ago.

[MARYROSE02]

I'm always asking people from overseas this question and variations of it - "Do you like it here?" "Do you want to stay?"  "Have you experienced any racism?" (Nobody has ever abused me for being a Pom, though I thought, before i came here, that I would be a constant target for abuse.)

Looking back, particularly to my first few years, I can't understand why I did stay. Funny but I was looking at some old photos from a 1990 holiday in England today and I remembered how I'd look at these photos in the 80's or 90's and think "I wish i was back there with Mum and Dad" but now I don't have any feelings of longing.

[Beaty]

...it's time for a pivot.

B