76 It’s A Long Way from Lancashire to Here, Part 3: 31 October 2024
After a period at General
Motors, Cliff worked as a sheet metal worker at Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation
(CAC) building Australian versions of the French F 86 Sabre jets. Cliff also worked at the Government Aircraft
Factory.
Josey initially worked at
Government Aircraft Factory (GAF), which was next door to CAC. Unlike CAC, the GAF was owned by the
Australian Government. It manufactured
Beaufort fighter planes and Jindivick pilotless aircraft. Josey then began work at General Motors.
Houses
in and around Port Melbourne are now very highly
sought after and astonishingly expensive.
It
wasn’t like that in 1952; then, Port Melbourne was a home for the poorer working
classes. Back in 1952, you could
guarantee if you found any people with money in Port Melbourne, they had lost
their way.
****
Fisherman’s Bend Migrant Hostel was located in the middle of a large number of factories, an abattoir, an airfield where the newly made planes took off and the docks on the River Yarra. The Hostel was surrounded by a chain mesh fence with three strands of barbed wire on top pointing inwards. If the barbed wire was supposed to keep us Hostel kids out of the swamps, it was a failure. Shortly after arriving at the Hostel before Christmas 1952, I scaled the fence and joined the other kids playing in the swamps. I was 3 years and 7 months but the Hostel fence was barely a minor obstacle.
The raft shown in the photo above is more unstable than the rafts we made to navigate the swamp. The hostel in this photo was not Fisherman’s Bend, but a different one in New South Wales. Our rafts were made of wooden planks nailed across 40 gallon petrol drums left lying around in the swamp from the local airfield. The swamps were a great place to play – although I doubt any of us could swim.
Fisherman’s
Bend was one of a host of hostels operated by Commonwealth Hostels Limited, a
company owned by the Australian Government.
CHL shamelessly overcharged for its subsistence level services. The hostels made money for the government.
****
No trace
of Fisherman’s Bend Migrant Hostel has survived but I remember where it was; it
was a very close to the Melbourne Central Business District.
Access
to Fisherman’s Bend Hostel was via Lorimer Street, which still exists.
Lorimer
Street runs east/ west along the south side of the Yarra. Going west, Graham Street formed a T junction
on the left side of Lorimer Street and led directly to Bay Street, Port
Melbourne. Bay Street was the main Port
Melbourne street.
Continuing
along Lorimer Street after Graham Street, in 1952, the next “street” was a nameless
dirt track. The dirt track formed a T
junction on the left side of Lorimer Street.
Turning left into the track, the track ended next to the Hostel fence facing
Melbourne. Before getting to the Hostel,
the track passed factories on both sides.
The track is now called Hall Street and it is no longer a dirt
track. Nowadays, Hall Street forms a T
junction with Turner Street, which runs east/ west across the southern end of
Hall Street. Turner Street did not exist
in 1952. Turner Street now runs along what
was in 1952, the southern boundary of the Hostel.
The
West Gate Freeway is now south of Turner Street and it carries many thousands
of vehicles daily. The Freeway didn’t
exist in 1952.
West
of the Hostel and next to it, was a disused Army Camp. The Hostel huts were significantly poorer
quality than the Army Camp ones. We Hostel
children used to play in the Army Camp.
****
Most
migrants at Fisherman’s Bend were housed in “Nissen Huts”. Every Nissen Hut was divided lengthwise, and
the two halves were then also divided into 2 separate “apartments”. Each “apartment” had a central “living” room and
the only door to the outside. There were
“bedrooms” to the left and right of the living room. Our “apartments” had no running water, no
toilets and no cooking facilities, but there was electricity.
We moved
into Hut J 3, just before Christmas 1952.
Hut J 3 was on the extreme south easterly Hostel boundary and our front
door faced the swamp.
The
Hostel provided cooked food in a separate Canteen. The food was vile and almost inedible.
Sometimes
we made toast in our hut by putting slices of bread onto the bars of a kerosene
heater. The toast tasted of burnt
kerosene, but at least it was edible. The
kerosene heater was our only heating. The
kerosene heater was definitely NOT provided by CHL. The kerosene heater had an almost
overpowering stench and was ineffective unless you huddled very close to
it. Insulation had not been invented in
1952 so the huts were putridly hot in summer and frigidly cold in the winter.
****
The
weather was good for the insects. Flies
and mosquitoes bred gleefully in the swamps.
They were always trying to get our attention by swarming over any
uncovered food and by biting any uncovered body parts.
Washing
for people and clothes took place in dedicated ablutions blocks.
There
were 2 separate ablution blocks and one was located in the row next to our row
of huts. The separate ablution male and
female ablution blocks contained toilets, “bathroom” sinks and showers, but the
male block did not have any baths.
Officially, male children could use the women’s ablution block only if
they were under 5 years of age. Although
my brother Bill was already 5 when we arrived at Fisherman’s Bend, Josey used
to take us both into the women’s block so we could have baths. We used the bath together. At some point, Josey stopped taking us into
the women’s ablution block for our baths.
Some of the other women must have complained that we were too old to be
there.
None
of the ablutions had any privacy. They had
concrete slab floors upon which the blocks were erected with galvanised iron
walls and roofs, but the walls started not at ground level but about 2 feet
above the concrete slab. I remember one
occasion when I peeked through the gap between the floor and the walls of the
women’s block. By then I had been banned
from the bath.
