#migration museum

As the J1 airport bus weaved us through the Adelaide City labyrinth of pleasant streets, we suddenly felt quite sad to be leaving Adelaide behind. We have both had friends from school who in the 60s came out to Adelaide as ten pound poms, and individually we have often wondered how they settled into this new, hot land on the other side of the world. We feel quite comforted to know that this Adelaide that became home to them is actually quite a nice place. We have enjoyed our stay here very much and have found we have dispelled many previous negative opinions.

After checking out, on time, and returning the apartment key to a local convenience store, we took the opportunity of a free morning to first have breakfast in the little cafe by the river, and then to visit the Migration Museum. Happily at the very same time a local secondary school chose to share a visit there. I think on balance the extremely high pitched class teacher nasally screaming like an Australian banshee at her charges just managed the highest decibels over those of the entire class who were by her standards rank amateurs. We tried not to let this spoil our learning experience in the museum, although without doubt what we did learn was not to go to a museum at the same time educationalists are present.

We have visited this place on a previous occasion, and found it to be as inspirational as before. Adelaide has indeed had an enormous role to play in receiving so many peoples and nationalities from abroad. Founded in 1836 and named after Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of King William IV. From 1901 to 1973 Australia had a white only policy on immigration, and until as late as 1984, Australians saw themselves as British citizens due of course to Empire. In the 3 decades after WWII, more than 1.5 million people arrived here as ten pound poms. All were bravely seeking a new life, and propaganda depicting lovely homes, sunshine, good jobs on offer, encouraged an awful lot of people to come here. Sounds familiar? Indeed if you had the right attitude, the relevant skills required, as well as a bit of security in the form of 500 quid in the bank, or an altruistic sponsor, you could have been on your way, as indeed our school friends were. Many succeeded beyond all expectations in this fantastic new land. They quickly moved across into factories and defence work, bought houses and prospered. Some, however, found themselves in hostels for quite a long period of time before jobs could be found enabling them to move into more modest private accommodation. But at least it was sunny.

Today, two thirds of permanent visas are granted to skilled occupations. The top source countries remain as UK, India and China, although India, now, sends by far the most immigrants. It was a most interesting museum, and one with a message of hope for many as Australia continues to need people for particular roles. Their immigration policy positively filters applications for only the required professions. Curiously through much of the 20th century, Britain sent some 10,000 disadvantaged children to Australia in the hope of a better life for them. This policy continued until 1970! Opportunities were not always so great for them, and some were abused, and a lot ended up working in agriculture; a hard life.

The Australian story is fascinating. Fundamentally, if you are not an Aboriginal, you are by definition an immigrant, whatever generation you might be, and life has evolved to where we are now in just 250 years. This is a fantastic country. The Australian calls it the Lucky Country, and I completely understand why. The difficulty remains though, how to make it a truly one nation country, and nobody seems to know how to do that.

Jetstar provided an Airbus A321, and true to form, was late taking off for Melbourne. As usual, there was the incumbent severe allergy to nuts person on board. There's always one. Theoretically, it should take approximately 1 hour 15 minutes to fly Adelaide to Melbourne. Then add 30 mins to account for a clock time change.

Then it was a bun fight to catch the airport express into the city, then the tram to Port Melbourne basically before the fish and chip shop decided to close. Oh and the bottle shop for the SB.

Made it just in time.

ps. We noticed a large fire from our apartment window last night just before 11.00. Apparently it was caused by an arson attack.on a photographic studio causing $2m of damage.

Goodbye to our apartment in Adelaide

Migration Museum

This was the story of a Hungarian family who escaped Hungary in 1957 and how they learnt English by attending drive in movies.

Three cats about to get on the tram in Melbourne.

The Blackest Face

For the opening of the Migration Museum