Communicating across the world

Roddi3363 your post was a surprise as i did not know there were other grans who lived in Papua New Guinea. We live there ftom the late 50s to 1975. Daru, Ksvieng and Port Moresby were our homed. My husbsnd was Clerk of the Parliament and got the job because he know Sir John Guise the Speaker earlier in his career and he spoke fluent Motu. I loved my time there!
As my family were in Australia i really recsll our weekend calls. Now with Whatsapp and Messenget it is free but the time differences are a ptoblem. In St Lucia we are 5 hours behind UK snd sbout 16 hours behind Australia! Just now my elder son is in Costa Rica and he has been seriously ill. Time difference is huge to Australia and i have been ringing his travel insurer a lot to get their help. I embrace new technology as our family is able to be in touch daily.

BFPO was quite a quick service but phone calls had to be booked.

My DP didn't have a phone either so the next door but one neighbour would run round to fetch one of them before we all clubbed together to get a phone installed for them.

My husband was in the merchant navy and at first in the 70s phone calls to a ship were via Portishead Radio. Later they could phone home via Inmarsat, the maritime satellite. I joined him for trips sometimes and phoning home was, I think, £7 a minute then

Annie1 Best wishes for your son’s recovery. My daughter has been very ill for the last few years in Australia and is now recovering but it has been hard to be so far away.

What an exciting life you have had! We lived a year in Japan and travelled round Asia by local transport and back home overland and I thought that was exciting and adventurous. 15+ years in Papua New Guinea in the 50s and 60s and now St. Lucia is far more exotic.

I wrote long letters to family and picked up replies at Poste Restante along the way but it would never have occurred to us to phone parents. I did send mine a telegram when we reached
Agra, India, the day the Indo-Pakistan war commenced, to tell them not to worry and all was quiet, which was far from true.

Infoman - if you were young you could get to Perth for £10 in 1963 as
Ten Pound Pom.

In 1947 my S African Mum left to come to the UK to marry my Dad . They had met when he was on leave during the war . Her parents didn’t come over to the wedding as my grandfather was a GP and couldn’t get cover . They came over when I was born a year later and then we went to Cape Town when I was 4 . My mum never saw them again as they both died a year later . Airmail letters took weeks and phone calls were brief and indistinct.
Today I had a 20 minute FaceTime call with my cousin and it was as if she was in the room . Amazing technology.

In the early 60 s I was 15 and had travelled to Germany alone, by train, fir 6 weeks . We didn’t have a phone and as far as I recall I probably wrote to let mum know I had arrived safely but it would have taken a while for it to arrive.

When her mother died in Germany a few years earlier it took two weeks fir a letter to arrive to let her know and by then the funeral had already taken place. Over 65 years ago and I still remember her distress.

I was a £10 POM ( though I am not sure children had to pay)It took 6 weeks to get there and no chance to communicate internationally. Life was not all it was cracked up to be and we returned home paying our own passage of course. I am looking forward to the BBC drama about this topic.

We loved it here from the moment we arrived early in the 1970s. We didn’t go back to visit the UK for 10 years because, with 4 children, it just cost too much. The beautiful greenery is what struck us all when we did go back to visit parents. We had forgotten that and had never appreciated it when we lived there. That and the history and old, old buildings blew our minds. We had just taken that for granted. We don’t FaceTime now because we don’t have any close relatives left but it certainly would have changed things.

My grandparents didn't have a phone for years and in the 60's I remember that we would occasionally speak to them on their neighbour's phone. Fortunately when the neighbours moved they got a phone of their own, but considered it a great extravagance.
My husband always travelled for work, sometimes being away for three months, and never wrote to us although we did get the occasional postcard, usually after he got home!
He used to go to the back of beyond (remote parts of Oman, Saudi, Indonesia and India) and if he wanted to speak to us he'd have to book a call which always seemed to happen when I couldn't speak to him as I was taking the children to school or whatever. I used to find a message on the answerphone when I returned home.
However our lives were changed once we got a fax as he could let me know when he was likely to be back.

Greenfinch

I was a £10 POM ( though I am not sure children had to pay)It took 6 weeks to get there and no chance to communicate internationally. Life was not all it was cracked up to be and we returned home paying our own passage of course. I am looking forward to the BBC drama about this topic.

Many people from my husband's family were "£10 Poms" in the sixties, whole families went, across the generations, and never came back to live here though I think that some did visit.
Most of them have had very good lives there, much better than they would have had if they had stayed working in the Greenock shipyards, or in Paisley and Glasgow. The older generations also lived much longer.

During the pandemic, zoom calls and facetime etc were the lifeline that kept us sane, especially Christmas 2020, my first ever spent alone. My son and his family were living abroad and my daughter was in Scotland while I was in the SE of England!
Now my DD lives with me and DS and DiL live in the North of England. We regularly have video calls but at the moment we are all together in their home as they have just had another baby so we are here to help while DS is at work. Returning home tomorrow and I'll miss the cuddles, but we'll still be connected reasonably often.
DD currently interviewing for a job in Dubai! At one time I'd have been really worried about that but modern technology really helps!