Ten pound Pomx

Yes, I’d rather have had a good documentary too. I don’t remember ever seeing one advertised on this subject.

They could easily do a whole series and look at how several different families got on and where they are now. Would be fascinating.

Aveline

They could easily do a whole series and look at how several different families got on and where they are now. Would be fascinating.

There have been films, documentaries, about the orphans sent out to Australia, about the orphanages where some children, including Australian children, were sent, about Aboriginal and Island children removed from their families (the Stolen Generation and happening still recently), about £10 POMS, racial tensions etc.

This series can't hope to cover all the topics, it will merely skim the surface of too many subjects and because of that, it could leave a feeling of dissatisfaction.

Currently watching and enjoying it - onto episode 3 or 4.

I went out as a £10 Pom to get married and the programme brought memories flooding back. People here are given such a rosy view of Australia but we were treated then as second class citizens. Was so glad when we returned home after a couple of years and would never go back.

Suzykyoo is the drama true to life as you remember it? Australia must have seemed such a striking contrast to the UK. I can understand why people might have taken up the offer but also why they were so unhappy there. What an upheaval and dislocation of life. I bet your extended families were glad to see you home again.

Another personal reflection : friend who accompanied me daily on the bus {see above} was looking for a more suitable position. There was one such available in our company, so I was suggested she come for an interview.
Answer from personnel chief "we doan want anymore of your South African friends heya". Fairly typical in our experience

Gosh that's awful. I do remember signs in windows of boarding houses saying 'No blacks, No Irish' here back then. Such discriminating times including in SA then too.

We went to South Australia in 1949.We were in a camp on the banks of the Torrens river in Adelaide where we stayed a short while to learn about Australia. Then we went to a small town 300 miles from Adelaide. I thought this programme was not representative. Aborigines were not a large feature in the life I led as a teenager. School friends ribbed me about my Liverpool accent but I soon settled and made good friends. Many women missed their mums and could not settle. Australians did not like “whinging Poms” and made it clear you could leave if you did not want to.

I watched 2 or 3 episodes but thought this series was not true to life.Husband and I made two trips back and returned to England in 1975 when Papua New Guinea achieved inderpdndence. My 3 children are all Australians and I love the country and the people. This series does not tell my family’s story and I did not recognise my reality.

Thanks Annie1 interesting to hear.

CountessFosco

Another personal reflection : friend who accompanied me daily on the bus {see above} was looking for a more suitable position. There was one such available in our company, so I was suggested she come for an interview.
Answer from personnel chief "we doan want anymore of your South African friends heya". Fairly typical in our experience

Yes, but that was happening here in the UK too, it happened to me and I was only relocating within England!
I've never forgotten it.

It may have been just the one bigoted person, like the one who interviewed me.

Lots of South Africans have relocated to Australia recently. There are people from countries all around the world who have settled there, very few of British origin in many areas.

Just binge watched on iplayer. Really enjoyed it. Just give it a chance x

Not bonded with any of the characters. I don’t think Annie would have landed a supervisor’s job on her first visit to the store. Dean is awful, supposed to show us what being a tough Aussie is like. Just a bully really.

I shall keep watching, mainly because there is not much else on.

I saw episode 2 last night, and am enjoying it. I'm looking at it as a drama set against the backdrop of 50's Australia, rather than a documentary though.

Anniel

We went to South Australia in 1949.We were in a camp on the banks of the Torrens river in Adelaide where we stayed a short while to learn about Australia. Then we went to a small town 300 miles from Adelaide. I thought this programme was not representative. Aborigines were not a large feature in the life I led as a teenager. School friends ribbed me about my Liverpool accent but I soon settled and made good friends. Many women missed their mums and could not settle. Australians did not like “whinging Poms” and made it clear you could leave if you did not want to.

I watched 2 or 3 episodes but thought this series was not true to life.Husband and I made two trips back and returned to England in 1975 when Papua New Guinea achieved inderpdndence. My 3 children are all Australians and I love the country and the people. This series does not tell my family’s story and I did not recognise my reality.

Thank you, Anniel, for your review and for sharing your experience. I have given up watching the series after two episodes as I did not feel it would have reflected the real Australia of the time. For me personally, we seem to have a penchant in the UK for over doing the drama in a production, rather than letting the characters and landscape and wherever possible skilled camera work and production do the work.

Exactly so LRavenscroft

I actually enjoyed the second episode. Not enough to watch the rest on iplayer though - I can wait till next Sunday.

It's just too much!
Every character is exaggerated.

My "best" friend and her fiance emigrated in the mid 1960s. I did consder going as I was a qualified librarian and professional people were much in demand. However I discovered I would only be paid 2/3 of a mans wage and that put me off big time. At least I was paid the same in UK.

My friend and her husband did well. I know they had to work hard but they ended up with a good life and their own business - an emu farm. They came back for a visit in the mid 1980s when I had just begun at uni as a mature student. I was surprised at just how Australian they sounded and they confessed to having gone to classes to lose their accents.

Being at a uni and surrounded by international students I did find their racist language off putting - they referred to the indigenous people as "abbos". But that was back in 1986 and I expect things have changed now.

I have rather lost touch with them in recent years and this program makes me want tolook them up again.

Aveline

Suzykyoo is the drama true to life as you remember it? Australia must have seemed such a striking contrast to the UK. I can understand why people might have taken up the offer but also why they were so unhappy there. What an upheaval and dislocation of life. I bet your extended families were glad to see you home again.

Having now seen the second episode, I agree it is veering more towards a soap. But the conditions immigrants were subject to is authentic. I was lucky in that I stayed with my fiance but the friends I made on the ship going out were housed in awful Nissen huts. The roll call of jobs each morning were only given to poms if no Aussie wanted them, which is fair enough, I suppose. One of the Aussie colleagues I worked with had a daughter who was unable to get pregnant and so was given an Aboriginal child. I often wondered if the child's parents had had a say in this but no-one seemed perturbed. The advertisements about all sunshine and cosy brick-veneer bungalows are totally authentic. I remember being told at the Migrant office before I left how rosy everything would be but the reality was different. How many times did I hear the phrase 'I hate you poms'. So many poor souls I met who had sold everything to get the money to make the trip could not afford to come back. (Let's not forget this was not long after the war and £10 was a heck of a lot of money then). Fellow poms often admitted to me that they had told their families back home how wonderful it was and how well they were doing so as to neither cause their families worry nor to be seen as having made a mistake. Of course I also met poms who were glad they had made the choice and were happy there, but interestingly I found them always to be of a certain type. This was my personal experience.

I watched about twenty minutes of it the other day. That was enough for me.

In the early sixties I worked with someone who had been taken by her family to live in Australia and they returned. One of the reasons she said was the general behaviour of the Australians. She gave as an example that they would visit the house and without asking would just help themselves out of the fridge etc. There were other reasons of course but that was what I remembered so cultural differences were obviously a factor.

suzikyoo

I do remember seeing all the glossy brochures with lovely houses etc from when my DB and SIL applied and learning that the truth was somewhat different.

I also would like to have found out about two little boys who were sent out by their mother against the grandmothers' wishes under the Child Migrant Programme, grandmother was a friend of our family and never got over it.
Australian children were sent to those homes too if family circumstances were difficult. ☹

I've only just started watching this. It is very like a soap and the plot lines are numerous and really over the top but I have to confess I enjoyed it.

The treatment of indigenous Australians at that time is, I believe, realistic - and shocking.

I have known two lots of people who went there in the 60's. My next door neighbour's two girls went there and I believe they got on OK but, nevertheless, returned. Another friend of my Mum and Dad's went there with a friend. They both hated it and returned as soon as they could afford to. On the other hand, someone in my son's girlfriend's family has emigrated there with her husband and they seem to be doing very well and appear to want to stay there.

I expect things have changed since the sixties but the Australian government's treatment of asylum seekers is, in my opinion, pretty awful. And their treatment of indigenous Australians isn't great either.

Franbern I do agree that many people in the UK had similarly disgusting views about other races at that time but I do not accept that it was everyone. Certainly my parents were not prejudiced in the sense that they would treat people differently. Although my Mum had some daft, stereotypical, views (black people have such a wonderful sense of rhythm, etc, etc.), she would never in a million years intentionally hurt or disrespect someone.