Welcome to Australia

[Des Taff Jenkins]

HI All
it's the latest thing this calling themselves Lebanese Australians, Chinese Australians etc, only since the advent of the political correctness has this become an epidemic, started with the Vietnamese around about which time the Govt started printing instructions in many different languages, they should have stuck with English. I once asked a woman in the immigration dept why they hadn't printed anything in the Welsh language, she said but you people can speak English, I said how do you know? And how come many of these people who have been here for up to twenty years can't or will not converse in English, after all if they intend to live here they should.
My kids would strangle me if I started going around calling myself a Welsh Australian. I know I know they'd say but Dad your bloody Welsh.
Cheers Des

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[Braid Anderson]

In 1990 I came back to Oz from a spell in Malaysia, and did the grand tour of the family. Started with one son in Perth, then across the Nullabor in a Greyhound bus to my sister in Mallacoota - where she was district nurse, and her husband the park ranger. Then visit a daughter in Sydney, and another in Brisbane. Until finally the other son in Townsville. While there I received an urgent call to go to PNG, where the Project Manager on the Sports Complex for the South Pacific Games had quit just a couple of months into the project. I went to Immigration in Townsville, and asked what did I have to do to become Australian. I originally arrived in Oz in 1966 on a Document of Identity. Before my first job in Singapore I'd applied for an Oz passport, but was told it would take too long, better get a British one. By Townsville time I was a long-time PR of Oz. But Townsville Immigration told me to become Australian, I must have lived in Oz continuously for the past 12 months, and I'd only been back from Malaysia for 2 months. "But never mind," says she. "Don't take the job. You can go on Social Security for 10 months, then you can be Australian." No joke, that's what she said. I said no thanks. The job was fulltime - and how - so I couldn't get back to Oz for a while. Exactly 12 months after leaving Townsville, they cancelled my PR and informed me I was now an alien. Having lived, worked and paid taxes in Oz for 21 of the previous 24 years! And had 2 of my sons serve in the Oz Army. Maybe I should have been Vietnamese!

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Braid.
We came over here from NZ in 1972, I only had my MN discharge book my wife had an English passport, the immigration officer said what are your intentions we said to live here, he said how do I know you haven't just arrived in NZ and just come over, I said our kids [ 9 and 10] were born in NZ. Oh! Ok and he let us through. Later I became an Aussie, but my wife waited ten years. When she went in to see about citizenship, the woman at immigration looked at he passport and said but you were here in 1957, the wife said yes but just passing through on the Southern Cross to NZ, that makes no difference she said you landed here, you go through the ceremony and she'll be right. It was so much different in those days.
Cheers Des

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[j.sabourn]

Braid my memories of Port Moresby go back to 1995, when self and an Australian crew were flown up to take over and bring onto the coast a US ship. Had to spend a couple of nights in the hotel there which was constantly patrolled by guards in the passageways and other areas. On landing at Port Moresby the immigration kept us lined up outside for a couple of hours outside the terminal buildings. Thought at the time there may have been some argument between the Australian and PNG authoritys. On finally taken over ship discovered had no large scale chart for getting through the reefs in the Thursday Island area, so had to borrow a chart from the Harbour Master which I never sent back. Fortuanetly made the passage in Daylight. Although taken other ships up into the offshore areas up there, this was my only excursion ashore there, was not too impressed at the time. Cheers John S

[John Arton]

In around 1990 I was working as a Port Captain out of Singapore for a well known now, but at that time a relatively new player in the chemical tanker market, they having brought out C.P.'s chemical tanker division lock stock and barrel. One of the biggest contracts that this new outfit inherited from C.P. was massive veg oil contracts from PNG to Europe and as new and bigger ships were being brought into the fleet I was tasked with going round PNG checking out all the berths and also doing some P.R. with the growers.
Started of in Port Moresby where I met the head of their Harbours guy, an ex. pat Brit, who gave me all the info. I needed on approach channels, berths etc. They had made a big drive to update all their harbours and nav. aids so there was no problem bringing our bigger vessels into most of the harbours, that is if you discounted the Captains of these vessels being terrified of going anywhere near land without tug escorts, but that's another story.
Ended up staying on a plantation down the bottom end of the main Island where the Chief Engineer was an ex. pat Scots and the plantation was run by ex. pat British agriculturalists and accounts.
Went for a stroll one morning down from the house I was staying in, to the Palm Oil Plant. Imagine my surprise when, walking down this rutted dirt path with long grass either side of each from which came the sounds of many strange and exotic creatures that may have been dangerous, I met a young lady pushing her baby in a pram. She greeted me in the same manner as if we had met in Tesco's car park in Chipping Norton!!!
Throughly enjoyed my spell trotting round PNG inspecting berths etc. in Oro Bay, Bougainville etc. despite the terrors of having to catch small 12 seater planes that seemed to land anywhere where there was a clearing in the jungle, to supply mission posts. One of them actually had a German pilot who looked like something out of a WW2 war movie, he only having one eye with a patch over the other and a scar running down one side of his face and who barked out all the flight instructions to his passengers like Herr Flick of the Gestapo from Allo Allo, the beeb sitcom.
One of the nicest, unspoilt places I ever visited.
rgds
JA

[happy daze john in oz]

Sydney 1964, met a guy who had been with UCL some years earlier. In a pub not far from Potts Point and i made comment on the number of really goos looking shelias all with men many years older. Quite simple he told me, the young bucks are busy playing footy, drinking, surfing so no time for shagging. By the time they have come to their senses, about 30, all the good looking young ones have gone so they then become the old men chasing the young women. Bloody weird lot we are I can tell you.

[Captain Kong]

There was never ever any shortage of Shielas in OZ or in NZ, in the 50s and 60s. It was a paradise , I often wondered if there was a big shortage of men
So while the men were all playing macho, belly up to the bar, we were playing macho belly up to their women. .Happy Days., Brian

[cappy]

your right there brian no shortage and some real crackers .....regards cappy

[Richard Quartermaine]

Not all of us Aussies Brian
Richard

[happy daze john in oz]

Not all of us Aussies Brian
Richard

Of course Richard, we must keep the British spirit up as well as other things!!