Communicating across the world

I remember the same, it was difficult and expensive to phone the USA in the 1950s/60s, a special treat but not satisfying at all. Still, spare a thought for our ancestors. In 1913 my great grandmother had to wave goodbye to her 20 year old daughter when she emigrated to Australia. She then had to rely on letters which probably took weeks to arrive, and never saw her again. We have come a long way in 100 years and are very lucky to have such amazing communication.

What a wonderful prize for your granddaughter and partner to have won millymouge

We have a book of letters written by relatives who emigrated to Victoria/Melbourne in the early 19C, to plant the first vineyards. By the time they wrote to say they were fine- and the letter got back home, they could have all died or other terrible things happened. And the same back home.

Got letters from my uncle and aunt, who both emigrated to New York and Montreal - in the late 1920s- single tickets on 2nd class ship- just go, we can't afford to feed you- and again- by the time letters got home- anything could have happened.
My Uncle always signed off 'the emigrant' - it was at least 10 years before he visited his family again.

Even in the 60s and 70s- flights were very expensive and phone calls 2 x a month and just for a couple of minutes.

Fifty years ago, while youth hostelling around Germany, I phoned my mum from a phone box in Hauptbahnhof München and it swallowed up my precious Deutschmarks at some rate. It was so expensive.

The line was very clear and on hearing the trains, my mother asked: "Oh are you phoning from Glasgow Central. What time will you be home?"

In the early 90s my daughter was travelling. Our only communication was by airmail letters from her.
One day I answered the phone and it was her calling from a phone box in Darwin.
I said give me the number of the phone box and I will try to get the GPO? to connect us.
I made that call to them. They were a bit, ooh I don’t know but we’ll try.
My next call was them telling me they had connected me. 😂

I was at school in Singapore in the 60's, where my Dad was a Civil Servant working with the RAF. Just two phone calls home per year for us... one at Christmas and one at Easter, which had to be pre-booked, and took a fair bit of arranging with family at home. All other correspondence was via Air Mail, with that lightweight blue stationery. So very different now with Facetime, Zoom etc., but I do wonder if those live images somehow underline the "so near yet so far" feeling, and emphasise the fact that you still can't give them "big hugs".. Still great to have such improved comms, though.

Nearly 40 years ago DD went on a week's trip to Belgium with her gym club and later had a holiday in Germany with a friend's family. In both cases she was pretty much out of touch until she came home. A couple of months ago she was on a business trip to Philadelphia. She went to Walmart to do some shopping for me and we had a video call. She was picking thing off the shelves "Did you want this one?" "What about one in this colour?" It was as if she was in our local Tesco. Quite amazing when you think about it.

interesting post.
Would any one know the cost of a boat trip to Perth in Australia back in the early 1960's?

I recall when I was in Australia for the first time in the early 1980's,I thought I could receive a phone call at the public pay phones from the U.K.,no such luck.
The cost of a U.K. to Australia then was approx £1.00p cheap rate and £1.25p peak rate.

Our youngest went out to India to work for 6 months at 18.
There was no mobile phone signal where he was living.
We got a text message probably once a month.
There was an emergency landline number we could ring, thankfully we never had to use it.

When we lived abroad in the 70s (was it really 50 years ago?) we didn’t phone home once - I think if we had the family would have thought something was very wrong, and they’d have been right! Regular blue airmail letters were the thing.

It’s wonderful that people can keep in touch so easily these days. Though I must say that’s not what I’m saying when our 2 year old decides he wants to say good morning to Nanna when I’m still in bed and not looking quite my best.

What a fabulous prize for your daughter, millymouge!

Even in the mid 90s, when dd1 went travelling/working her way around the world for 2 years, it was long before smartphones so the odd email, and a rare phone call was about the size of it.

The only time it really upset me that she was so very far away, was when she phoned in tears from the S of New Zealand, because her boyfriend - someone who’d been on and off since university - was being an arse.
Thank goodness she did then finally dump him - and good riddance.

I remember in the 1950s how emotional my Mum would become when a letter arrived from my maternal grandparents in the west of Ireland. She’d read the letter and dab her tears and slip it into her apron pocket to read again later. It’s no distance now but back then it might as well have been thousands of miles. We could only afford to visit once a year. Then the only contact was by letter until the next year. No phones in the family but one of my uncles in Ireland had our neighbour’s phone number for emergency contact. It was only ever used for bad news.

Today’s technology is wonderful. My 2 youngest grandchildren are a 3 hr drive away but I see them several times a week on video calls. I love when they make a spontaneous call to show me something they’ve drawn or even just on the way to school if they’re ahead of time. I count my blessings.

Most of my family emigrated to Australia on the £10 pom scheme and I remember a call was £1 a minute so it only happened for about 5 minutes at Christmas.

In 1967 I had an invitation to visit relatives in Canada, but I had to stay in North America for longer than I could stay there. So my mother wrote to a friend of hers in Boston to see if she could put me up for a week. It was a student charter flight with fixed dates.
The relevance of this is that the friend phoned us to make all the arrangements . It was amazing to receive a clear call from another continent. So much so that I have never forgotten it.
BTW I had a fantastic time that summer and even spent a day and a half in New York with some girls while we were all waiting for the time of the return plane

FaceTime in between visits to see them in oz was how I saw my GDs grow up. Marvellous invention. I’d be sitting on my sofa in my dressing gown they would be playing on beach in Noosa. Lovely prize for them.

I was a university lecturer and I remember trying to explain to a group of students the difficulties in communication when I was a child in Singapore in the 60s, no phones (Singapore was fabulous but still a third world country) no satellite technology and if you asked a question in a letter back to uk it was probably 4 weeks before you had a reply, to this day I don’t know if they believed me!

I worked for Voluntary Service Overseas in Papua New Guinea in the mid 1970's. The school I worked at was out in the bush and had a radio telephone which we were only allowed to use at Christmas and for special occasions and events. It was so stilted having to say "Roger" etc that it made real communication very challenging but at least we heard familiar voices occasionally ....over 2.5 years of absence.

Yes the wonder of video calls we take for granted nowadays but at the cost of no more letter writing. My gran working in Germany 1911 to 1915, wrote many letters none of which survived but we do have all the postcards she wrote in between the letters so very interesting. I even find old emails written over 20 yrs ago now that are worth rereading but how will they survive?

I remember the excitement of waiting for my Danish grandmother's Christmas phone call in my childhood.

Having to find a public call centre in Spain as a 20 something year old, so I could phone my mother in Denmark and reassure her that my dance course and accomodation were fine.

Having a phone call home from Hamburg cut off when the money dropped down in a public phone and having to go away for change then phone up again.

Between 2013 and 2016 when we were out of the country for three years, I could just write e-mails to everyone at home I wanted or needed to be in touch with, access my and DH's bank accounts over our Internet banking service and mail the bank at need over their end-to-end encrypted mailservice, access the Danish state homepage to check our income tax returns, renew health insurance etc. and just use my mobile phone to phone anyone I wanted, irrespective of whether they were in one or another country.

When I think back to the homesick 16 year old me, anxiously waiting for letters from home for days on end when first I left home, and my mother just as anxiously waiting for mine, I really feel the blessings of modern technology.

The only drawback is that I suspect, we grew up faster when we left home than a modern 16 or 18 year old does because we couldn't get hold of mum and dad at the drop of a hat.

Newly married, at the age of 19 I accompanied my husband to sea on an oil tanker for sometimes 5 or 6 months. No phonecalls but each port was excited to get 4 or 5 letters from family. Those blue airmail letters were read and reread. Till pay-off day and a surprise home-coming! These days I live in Spain and I love mobile phone conversations with GD as she shows me her toys and new shoes

My father's sister and aunt used to send us parcels from New Zealand in the 40s. Sometimes there was rich fruit cake and chocolate. I remember them being posted In October and frequently not arriving until April. Letters and cards took at least 8 to 10 weeks to come to Scotland then.

Just a month after leaving school in 1970, my parents took me to the airport and put me on a flight for Rome where I spent the next 6 months. I was supposed to be being looked after by a distant cousin of my father, who had married an Italian, but she had recently had to take in her mother-in-law so there was no room for me at their home and I was left to find my own accommodation. I was just 18 and had to learn quickly how to survive in a foreign country without any parental support and only a couple of (very expensive) telephone calls to them whilst I was away. I did, however, send weekly letters - suitably edited so they did not worry about what I was up to! The whole experience gave me with 2 valuable skills (apart from learning Italian): a strong sense of independence and taking responsibility for myself at an early age, as well as a life-long love of writing letters (nowadays long emails). I probably wouldn't have acquired either of these if I had been constantly on the phone or Zoom to my parents during those 6 months.

In 1976 my husband was asked to work in Sudan for eighteen months. We took our three children and our dog with us. We lived in the middle of nowhere, and there were no telephones anywhere near us. The Company office had a telex machine. Our only means of communicating with family at home (UK) was by letter, and letters were taken to the office in Khartoum when the Company plane came to site. We ended up staying for five years!

I was in Malaysia then Hong Kong in the 60’s only contact was blueys (service blue air letters ) which took a week or maybe two to arrive
I just once rang UK but we didn’t have a phone at home so I had to ring the grocers opposite our house and they went over and got my mum to come to answer their phone
I didn’t appreciate how difficult it must have been for my mum and dad at that time I m glad they had each other my poor Nan who I had lived with since my grandad died was left alone for mum and dad to keep an eye on