Ten Pound Poms
by Published on 21st May 2012 03:01 PM
Ten Pound Poms
by Mike Williamson
On a bitterly cold morning in January of 1955, my family set out on the adventure which was to determine the direction of all our lives for many generations to follow and without doubt was to set the course of my future at sea.
We were a family of five – my Mum and my Dad, my 13 year old sister, five year old brother and me. We were “ten pound Poms” on our way to Australia on the P&O Liner, “SS Strathaird”. What an adventure for a nine year old boy!
Having sold the family house in late 1954 we started the year living in rented accommodation in Mapperley in Nottingham before embarking from Tilbury on that day in January.
The trip took about five weeks. I remember the Suez and the bum boats coming alongside at Port Said, selling all kinds of souvenirs and collectables. My mum bought a couple of wooden plates inlaid with shells. I remember her telling me years later that the first words the local vicar said when he came to introduce himself were what nice collection plates they would make.
There isn’t a lot that a nine year old can remember of such a trip – but the memories of a long exciting sea voyage must have left an exciting impression, because I’m sure it was why I went to sea as a ship’s engineer a little over ten years later.
The Strathaird completed her maiden voyage in 1932. With a length of 200 metres and a 24 metre beam, she weighed just over 22,500 tons gross and cruised at 20 knots. She carried a crew of 480 and 1,242 single class passengers. During the Second World War she saw service as a troop ship, after which during her refit, two of her original three funnels were removed. Along with her sister ships, Stratheden, Strathmore and Strathnaver these wonderful ships must have delivered a hundred thousand or more fresh faced new immigrants to Australia during the fifties and the early 60s. She was eventually retired from service in 1961 and sold to a Hong Kong breakers yard shortly after.
The first place we stepped ashore on foreign soil was the port of Aden, now part of Yemen, but at that time a colony of the British Empire at the eastern approaches to the Red Sea. After that it was on to Colombo in Sri Lanka. Of course it was called Ceylon then. It was amazing. There were beggars on every street, in every doorway, and by every road. Vendors thrusting their wares in our faces and following us as we were hustled along the busy thoroughfares. The throng of humanity after the relative calm of shipboard life was overwhelming. Yet the most exciting thing which I remember to this day was the thrill of being in Aden and Ceylon and being able to buy postage stamps from those countries to add to my schoolboy collection. Vendors were everywhere and I’m sure I would have pestered the daylights out of my parents to let me spend some money.
After Ceylon the ship made the long trip across the Indian Ocean to Fremantle. We had some terrible monsoon weather and one night a passenger fell overboard after too much partying. Although the ship turned several circles he was never found. What a terrible way to go.
Shipboard life for the kids was wonderful. I’m sure it was for the adults as well, but I particularly recall sharing a dining table with several other migrant kids and our steward, a Londoner who told us to call him Seb who used to say to us, “what you don’t want, don’t eat.” This was heaven – no one telling us to eat our vegetables. We were even brought tea in bed at breakfast time. We did have to attend school lessons of a sort, but it wasn’t difficult or like real school. We were taught songs about kookaburras in gum trees, and were shown pictures of kangaroos and told something about the history of this great country we were about to call our new home.
We disembarked in Sydney in February 1955 and shortly after were on a long train journey to Brisbane. Along with all the other Queensland bound settlers, we were first accommodated at the Yungaba Immigration Centre where we stayed for several weeks. Yungaba was the first port of call for many thousands of the migrants who came to Queensland. Built in 1887 by the Queensland Government expressly for that purpose, it is situated right on the tip of the Kangaroo Point peninsula and with three-sided river views, it was a marvellous location for such an establishment.
Although Yungaba was a government-run institution, there was always an obvious concern for the comfort and welfare of its residents; not just for compassionate reasons, but also because of the competition that existed between the states as they each attempted to attract migrants who could boost their labour force. Extensions and improvements to the centre were added to present a favourable atmosphere to incoming migrants. This included playground equipment for the kids and a supply of multi-colour check blankets instead of the usual institutional grey. I think my parents were quite happy to be placed there even after the relative luxury of shipboard life.
My father had already organised his place of employment before we left Britain, and shortly after we arrived in Brisbane, Dad flew up North Queensland where he was due to start work as a motor mechanic at a small garage in the town of Mossman. We had no idea where that was but we were soon to find out! Dad’s job was to prepare the ground for us. To make sure we had a decent home to live in and to get settled into his new job. Mum was to follow on by train with the rest of us a week or two later.
What a trip that was. I have often thought about what a harrowing experience it was for my 38 year old mother, literally fresh off the boat, having left a fairly comfortable (if cold) life in England boarding a train with three children to travel 1000 miles north to “God knows where”.
Air-conditioned Sunlander trains were still a few years in the future, as we headed north on a rattling old train straight into the North Queensland wet season. Even today, conventional rail travel in Queensland can be a slow experience with a lot of stops and starts as bogeys rattle along in narrow gauge 3 feet 6 inch tracks, although Queensland’s new Tilt Train is now the fastest train in the world using a narrow gauge track. However, nothing was further away than the old rattler which took us about a week to get us to Cairns. Stopping at sidings and stations for long hours, it was a slow, uncomfortable trip with Mum doing her best to look after and feed three kids. And there were no sleeper cars; this was a journey where we were sitting up all the way. Every time the train stopped at a station, passengers and locals would make their way to the railway bar, or if there was no bar on the platform, to the local pub where they would buy and consume more and more booze for the long trip. What an ordeal it must have been.
When we came to the Burdekin River which separated the towns of Home Hill on the south and Ayr on the north, the train was unable to cross the bridge which was several feet under water. We were forced to leave the train and were ferried across the mile wide river in little flat-bottom boats, with water almost lapping the gunwales as we made our way to the other shore. There we were crammed into another even older train for the remaining 300 miles or so of the journey north.
When we eventually arrived in Cairns, Dad was waiting for us and we still had another 50 miles to travel, north along the Cook Highway to our new home. We were piled into an old International truck stopping every few miles along the way to ford another flooded creek or causeway. We eventually made it Mossman and our new home.
Mossman was a cane town – it still is. Its sugar mill was not far from the middle of town and the little cane trains with their cargo of freshly cut cane would travel down the centre of Mill Street through the town several times a day, holding up what little traffic there was. The town had five pubs and a little picture theatre in a corrugated iron building with deck chairs for seating where we saw such wonderful films as Magnificent Obsession and Dial M for Murder.
Our home was a little one storey fibro dwelling a long way from the home in Beeston, Notts. I remember one day doing hand stands in the hallway and putting my backside through a fibro wall – not something which went down too well with my Dad.
We didn’t have a car, which is something which would have disappointed my father who was always an enthusiastic motorist. We did have use of an old International flatbed truck with a foot starter button on the floor and a split windscreen which you could wind open on hot days (ie every day). My Dad painted it red.
We didn’t stay there long – about a year maybe before moving back down the Cook Highway to the big smoke – Cairns, where Dad got a job as workshop foreman at the local council. It wasn’t the big tourist town that it is now – just a few streets, a muddy esplanade, no traffic lights, no parking meters and lots of places for youngsters to go swimming.
I have great memories of those times.
This article was originally published in blog: Ten Pound Poms started by Mike Williamson
Last edited by Brian Probetts (Site Admin); 1st November 2021 at 11:49 PM.
