MEMOIRS:
CHAPTER 3 WELCOME TO AUSTRALIA
Fed up with the bad weather, London traffic and a diet of bread and dripping, my parents felt that a change of scenery was in order.
So they decided to move to my mother’s homeland and purchase a convalescent hospital.
As you would.
As you would if you were living in a scummy London flat with a newborn baby in the freezing dead of winter watching Coronation Street and eating fatty sausages and Yorkshire Pudding and suddenly you’d think, “Hey! Here’s a thought! Let’s move to a paddock in the colonies and take out a mortgage the size of a third world nation’s national debt and buy a big old thirty room mansion filled with old people.”
We left England aboard the impressively white and noble looking Northern Star. The Tokyo Olympics had just come to an end, and my mother was bursting with national pride at the recent conquests of Australians Dawn Fraser in the pool, and Betty Cuthbert and Ron Clarke on the track.
I don’t recall being breastfed in Durban, Capetown, Freemantle or Melbourne. Nor the several weeks of ship-board living, ocean crossing, deck-coits and dressing for dinner.
According to my parents I was front-and-centre rail as the Northern Star steamed through Sydney Heads that morning in the mid 60s. And as the mighty leviathan was pushed and pulled by powerful little tugs through the azure harbour channels, I’m sure all the passengers made quite a fuss over the sight that met their eyes.
It has to be said that Sydney is one of the best harbours in the world. It is wide, deep and breath-takingly blue, surrounded by elegant houses, bushland and waves breaking on rocks, peppered by seagulls and boats with white sails.
Coming in from “the Heads”, as the locals call them, ships at first turn to the left and head through a broad waterway towards the Eastern inland waterfront suburbs of Watson’s Bay and Rose Bay. And just as the innocent and unprepared tourist is packing their camera back in their bag with that disappointed look that disappointed tourists get, the ship turns right… and… there it is.
Sydney.
The Botanical Gardens swept expansively down and around the waterfront, like a garden of Eden. Behind it, the city skyline - now so tall and impressive - was hardly a skyline at all. The AWA Tower, a few meagre storeys tall, was the highest point in the city. My dad even took a photo of it. It’s still there, as you come off the Bridge heading south, now an insignificant minaret dwarfed by enormous skyscrapers.
My dad beamed at the sight of the Harbour Bridge, one of the world’s most recognisable landmarks, as it stretched its iron girth across the harbour. His family had worked in the mills that produced the steel for the bridge.
And of course, in front of it was the pride of Sydney Harbour tourist photography. There, majestically in the foreground it stood… a giant building site covered in scaffolding. It was only recently the tramyard with the best harbour-view in the world. Almost nine years to that day later, it would officially open and forever be known as the Sydney Opera house.
How majestic and awe-inspiring it must have all been that day in the morning sun.
We were all dressed for the occasion. My dad wore a suit with a thin tie and he had trimmed his moustache to its pencil thin best. My mother had on her tweed skirt and she had dressed me in a daffodil coloured nightie.
The Northern Star pulled up to the overseas terminal at Circular Quay.
It was my mother’s turn to be excited. After years of huddling around an oil heater and eating fat ‘n’ bread, she could at last experience the sun and fresh vegetables again.
My father was already complaining about the heat.
And it wasn’t even ten o’clock.
When they got down the gangplank, my dad dramatically removed my booties and placed my bare feet down for the first time on Australian soil. Technically speaking, it wasn’t actually soil. In fact, it was ashphalt, which the summer sun had heated to the consistency of molten lava.
My feet sizzled.
I screamed.
My mum took a photograph.
Then I vomited.
“Welcome to Australia,” said my Dad.
So they decided to move to my mother’s homeland and purchase a convalescent hospital.
As you would.
As you would if you were living in a scummy London flat with a newborn baby in the freezing dead of winter watching Coronation Street and eating fatty sausages and Yorkshire Pudding and suddenly you’d think, “Hey! Here’s a thought! Let’s move to a paddock in the colonies and take out a mortgage the size of a third world nation’s national debt and buy a big old thirty room mansion filled with old people.”
We left England aboard the impressively white and noble looking Northern Star. The Tokyo Olympics had just come to an end, and my mother was bursting with national pride at the recent conquests of Australians Dawn Fraser in the pool, and Betty Cuthbert and Ron Clarke on the track.
I don’t recall being breastfed in Durban, Capetown, Freemantle or Melbourne. Nor the several weeks of ship-board living, ocean crossing, deck-coits and dressing for dinner.
According to my parents I was front-and-centre rail as the Northern Star steamed through Sydney Heads that morning in the mid 60s. And as the mighty leviathan was pushed and pulled by powerful little tugs through the azure harbour channels, I’m sure all the passengers made quite a fuss over the sight that met their eyes.
It has to be said that Sydney is one of the best harbours in the world. It is wide, deep and breath-takingly blue, surrounded by elegant houses, bushland and waves breaking on rocks, peppered by seagulls and boats with white sails.
Coming in from “the Heads”, as the locals call them, ships at first turn to the left and head through a broad waterway towards the Eastern inland waterfront suburbs of Watson’s Bay and Rose Bay. And just as the innocent and unprepared tourist is packing their camera back in their bag with that disappointed look that disappointed tourists get, the ship turns right… and… there it is.
Sydney.
The Botanical Gardens swept expansively down and around the waterfront, like a garden of Eden. Behind it, the city skyline - now so tall and impressive - was hardly a skyline at all. The AWA Tower, a few meagre storeys tall, was the highest point in the city. My dad even took a photo of it. It’s still there, as you come off the Bridge heading south, now an insignificant minaret dwarfed by enormous skyscrapers.
My dad beamed at the sight of the Harbour Bridge, one of the world’s most recognisable landmarks, as it stretched its iron girth across the harbour. His family had worked in the mills that produced the steel for the bridge.
And of course, in front of it was the pride of Sydney Harbour tourist photography. There, majestically in the foreground it stood… a giant building site covered in scaffolding. It was only recently the tramyard with the best harbour-view in the world. Almost nine years to that day later, it would officially open and forever be known as the Sydney Opera house.
How majestic and awe-inspiring it must have all been that day in the morning sun.
We were all dressed for the occasion. My dad wore a suit with a thin tie and he had trimmed his moustache to its pencil thin best. My mother had on her tweed skirt and she had dressed me in a daffodil coloured nightie.
The Northern Star pulled up to the overseas terminal at Circular Quay.
It was my mother’s turn to be excited. After years of huddling around an oil heater and eating fat ‘n’ bread, she could at last experience the sun and fresh vegetables again.
My father was already complaining about the heat.
And it wasn’t even ten o’clock.
When they got down the gangplank, my dad dramatically removed my booties and placed my bare feet down for the first time on Australian soil. Technically speaking, it wasn’t actually soil. In fact, it was ashphalt, which the summer sun had heated to the consistency of molten lava.
My feet sizzled.
I screamed.
My mum took a photograph.
Then I vomited.
“Welcome to Australia,” said my Dad.