Your very first club or interest group in your new country?

[starlight7]

Thought it may be a help/interest to others to discuss where people first made contact with various groups ( other than work). The very first groups I joined were a community centre where I volunteered as a tutor ( later became a paid position), a church group called 4U and a playgroup where mums went with their kids and took turns to organise the sessions. I still keep in touch with a  few people from these groups, 42 years on.

[ScottieGirl]

Choir and running club. I do think it's easier for mums of young children to meet other mums. Not that the other mums will necessarily be welcoming but at least it's a start

[VERYSTORMY]

We were in Sydney when we first arrived and were regulars here http://breakfastpointlifestyle.com.au/category/play/

[Evandale]

The Yacht Club in the middle of Launceston where we are members. A great community spirit and a good bar and restaurant as well.

[Jack91]

AFL Club

[Gbye grey sky]

Golf club

[Jack91]

Also have a card for The Coffee Club, does that count? 

[Johndoe]

Canadian Club..............on ice

[Jack91]

57 minutes ago, Johndoe said:

Canadian Club..............on ice

CC & dry.... Just bought a 10 pack, it's a public holiday after all! 

[starlight7]

Keep on topic, guys- or start another topic on favourite tipples?

[Parley]

Local tennis club for me.

Although tennis is not as popular these days.

[Smiths]

Swimming competition club then table tennis club

[starlight7]

Now the kids have grown up and left and I am retired  I find there are heaps of things- more than when we were young. U3A, Red Hats, Probus etc - all easy to join and always recruiting new people. I used to be in a social tennis club when I was younger- mainly hit and giggle and coffee and sarnies.

[Toots]

Being antisocial and a bit of a hermit I didn't join any clubs when we first migrated.    I got to know lots other mums at a mother and baby play group after my babies were born.  Since then through voluntary work I've met quite a few people with shared interests especially through volunteering at various animal rescue shelters.   

[Quoll]

Didn't have time, raising two kids virtually solo while DH was studying then studying myself then working then fitting all the kids' activities around that. Met people at playgroup (that's what sent me back to study, I could no longer bear talking about potty training and the best recipe for playdough).  I think the first club I actually joined might have been the local African Violet and Gesneriad Society but I won't say that that was a fabulous friend making experience.

[NicF]

I didn't join any clubs for me but we did take the kids to Little Athletics and in the second season we joined the committee and helped run the group for two years.  The OH is looking for hobbies / clubs at the moment but he's not really that in to much - he likes to spend his spare time doing things like programming, which is hardly a group activity.

[MARYROSE02]

I was pondering, trying to remember 1979/1980 and I realized that I joined North Sydney ANZAC Memorial Club and North Sydney Leagues Club, both in Cammeray, and South Sydney Leagues Club in Redfern all around the same time.

We (my brothers and I) lived in a flat on the corner of Ernest and Miller Streets, Cammeray, and the ANZAC club was opposite. We parked our cars there and got our dinner there most nights, going to Norths for an occasional change. I worked in Redfern at the old Mail Exchange - now OZ Post HQ in a new building - and went tup Chalmers Street to Souths for a 99 cent lunch most days.

Norths is the only club left, though it no longer has an NRL football team. Souths does not have a club but it does retain its NRL team and the ANZAC club was demolished and replaced by units.

I don't remember making any friends in any of those clubs. Our social network came from living at the Royal Private Hotel in Neutral Bay for most of 1979, going to pubs in The Rocks - ASN, Orient, Observer, and further up George Street, the Brooklyn, and through work - Friday night drinks at the Royal Exhibition Hotel, the only place I do still go to regularly - was there last night in fact. The difference from the old days is that I know the staff by name, as they do me.

[benj1980]

Local soccer club as my son started playing within a few days. Then rugby, lifesaving... Children make socialising a lot easier, we now meet up with different parents at different times of the year.

[MARYROSE02]

Just now, benj1980 said:

Local soccer club as my son started playing within a few days. Then rugby, lifesaving... Children make socialising a lot easier, we now meet up with different parents at different times of the year.

I think that is the way to get straight into a social life, wherever you are. I have a friend from Belfast who created his social network playing in a squash league at Hiscoes gym in Surry Hills. I met him, initially, on his first night in OZ when I happened to be in the same room as him as the YHA Central. Two years later he recognized me in the Trinity pub in Surry Hills and we became friends again.

I know it's hard when you first arrive and everything is alien, pointless even. I can remember coming back to Sydney after a long absence, looking at the Sydney Morning Herald,m and thinking "what a load of rubbish. Where is the real news from the UK?"

Join a club of some sort, do voluntary work perhaps, anything to get you out of your home and out of your "us and them" mentality. It's been a long time since I differentiated between Aussies and Pommies. Funny, but some Lions fans came in the pub last night, tourists not residents, and I had no desire to talk to them. I want the Lions to win, to rout the All Blacks in fact, but I've no desire to put on a red shirt and hang out with a load of Lions fans. It's different with Spurs of course (hypocrite!) although as many of them are Aussies as Pommies.

[benj1980]

My wife went to playgroup and met Mums on the school run. I maintain she has more friends than I do! But that was ideal as originally I was working and she wasn't so it helped her settle in. We have a bit of a mix of friends now as well Poms, Aussies, a few kiwis thrown in...