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Soon after Merle Hathaway’s parents, Lucy and Stanley, met and fell in love in the Midlands, UK, Stanley told his sweetheart he wanted to migrate to Australia one day.
“He asked Mum how she felt about that and she simply said ‘OK’,” says Merle, 77, from Buninyong, Victoria. “It was a courageous decision.”
On November 17, 1951, Merle, then three, her parents and older sister Hazel, 12, boarded the New Australia in Southampton.
“I had to choose between my doll’s house or a tin horse with wheels, and I chose the tin horse!” recalls Merle.
“It took six weeks via the Suez Canal and Sri Lanka. My main memory is watching my colouring book get blown overboard and not understanding why we couldn’t turn around and find it!”
How many Ten Pound Poms came to Australia?
After World War Two, many Australian wartime survivors were incapacitated or ill, resulting in a depleted workforce in an already low population of 7.4 million.
Here family were ‘Ten Pound Poms’, sailing under the government’s Assisted Passage Migration Scheme with trunks of household goods, 100 pounds in savings – and their dreams.
The creation of the ‘Assisted Passage Migration Scheme’ and the phenomenon of the ‘Ten Pound Pom’ was the grand plan to get the Australian workforce back on its feet.
More than 1 million Brits took the leap of faith and came to Australia.
Most who came readily adapted, even if the jobs they were promised never materialised. Those who did get to work found Australian wages around 50 per cent higher, with specific tradespeople more in demand than others.
Aussies jokingly named those who stayed ‘Ten Pound Poms’, because of the £10 in processing fees to migrate to Australia.
A life-changing journey to Australia
The Hathaways planned to settle in Bathurst, NSW, but when Stanley’s job fell through, they travelled to Wendouree in Victoria. There, they lived for six months in a migrant hostel.
“There were rows of Nissen huts with corrugated iron rooves and a communal laundry with concrete troughs,” says Merle. “I remember the porridge at breakfast – thick and grey!”
Lucy and Stanley built a weatherboard home in Wendouree.
Merle went to the local kindergarten and school, Stanley worked for engineering companies and joined the church choir, while Lucy became supervisor of McCallum House, a centre for children with disabilities.
“They pushed me to succeed and whatever I chose to study, they were supportive. By migrating to Australia, we had opportunities we’d never have had back home,” says Merle, who spent her life working in the arts.
She was a director of Horsham Regional Art Gallery and is now an owner of Buninyong Brewery.
Despite embracing Australian life, some English eccentricities remained.
“On warm evenings, Mum put a table on the front porch where we had ‘tea’ – not dinner. She filled the table with cold meats, salad, jelly and fruit, which our neighbours thought weird,” she says with a laugh.
Even now, Merle’s curiosity and energy remain undimmed.
“I still love to learn – something Mum and Dad encouraged from when I was little,” she shares. “This year I’m learning Auslan and I still go to classes whenever I have time.”
She adds, “My home is in the old brewery I helped restore – it looks like a French or Italian farmhouse, but it needed a lot of work.
“A lot of who I am comes from their genes. I still have the energy to do lots of things and to keep learning, and that came from my parents.”
Honouring a piece of history
The Bradford Mint is proud to present The Ten Pound Poms .999 silver commemorative set.
The finely etched images show the enormity of the journey from Britain to Australia at the time and the joy of two newlyweds and their ‘permitted to enter Australia’ border stamp.
The obverse features portraits of His Majesty King George VI and his daughter, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned during the era of the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme.
To purchase, call (02) 9841 3324, or visit bradfordmint.com.au.
