81 It’s a Long Way from Lancashire to Here - Part 5: 4 November 2024

Fisherman’s Bend Migrant Hostel housed a diverse group of people.  The biggest thing they had in common, was poverty.  They lived on the Hostel because they didn’t have the money to get out.  The Australian Government created a self-perpetuating poverty cycle.  Poor migrants had no alternative to life in the Hostel.  The charges for living in the Hostel kept them poor., making it much harder to leave the Hostel.

Fisherman’s Bend contained a large number of “Displaced People”.  Australia provided refuge for hundreds of thousands of people whose previous lives had been destroyed by World War II.  Mrs Morris, a friend of Josey’s, was one of them.  Mrs Morris had a son about my age, whose name may have been Daniel.  After leaving the Hostel, we visited Mrs Morris in Altona and I noticed Mrs Morris had the tattoo on her arm.  Mum refused to tell me why Mrs Morris had the tattoos.  In 2013, I visited Auschwitz (it is in Poland) and the guide through this place of horror said tattooing only took place in Auschwitz and tattoos were given only to those deemed useful by the death camp authorities.  If Mrs Morris had numbers tattooed on her arm, she had been in Auschwitz.

We never visited Mrs Morris again.

Bless you Mrs Morris.  I hope life in Australia treated you well.

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I also remember a man called Seeto.  He was a kindly soul, and even at then, I knew that something terrible had happened to him.  I have no idea what Seeto went through.  He was a boiler attendant on the Hostel.

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The River Yarra docks were on the northern side of Lorimer Street - immediately opposite the Hostel.  During school holidays, we Hostel children would cross Lorimer Street and wander through the docks.  No one tried to stop us.  The stevedores often gave us money so we could buy lollies.

There were many factories within easy walking distance of the Hostel.

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Lorimer Street intersected with Salmon Street just after it passed Hall Street.  It ended there.  General Motors Holden car factory was on Salmon Street at the Lorimer Street intersection.  Further south on Salmon Street was the Kraft Foods Factory.  One of the streets in that area is Vegemite Way; Kraft make vegemite.

Behind the General Motors Holden factory were the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation and the Government Aircraft Factory (GAF).  Dad worked at all three factories.  CAC and GAF built Sabre jets for the Australian Government, so there was an airport for the planes to take off and land.  The airport had 2 runways running north to south and east to west.  The planes used to swoop very low over the Hostel. 

South of what is now Turner Street, there were swamps littered with abandoned 20 and 40 gallon fuel drums from the airport.  We children formed gangs and often played in the swamps.  We nailed planks across the abandoned fuel drums and used poles to raft across the swamps, although none of us could swim.  The swamps contained the usual array of deadly Australian snakes.  We survived the snakes.

Parts of the swamps still exist.  Westgate Park is the Melbourne side of the West Gate Bridge.  where the CAC and GAF and some of the airfield once existed.  This is from the West Gate Park website.

Westgate Park offers a range of attractions and activities within close proximity to the city. It is located along the eastern banks of the Yarra River under the Westgate Bridge and offers spectacular views to the mouth of the Yarra and the city skyline… The area was originally part of the saltmarsh that extended north from the Yarra River up the Maribyrnong River to the present site of Flemington Racecourse. Sand mining commenced in the 1930s and continued for at least a decade. Part of the excavated land was filled with water to form the southern saltwater lake. The remainder of the park was used as a rubbish tip, which operated for 23 years. During World War 2 an aircraft factory and airfield occupied the site.

 

The Vauxhall Factory - Australian Motor Industries - was south east of the Hostel on Graham Street.  We called it the Vauxhall Factory.  Vauxhall cars were imported in wooden crates and assembled at the factory.  The wooden crates were often left lying on the factory grounds.  In November each year, we children walked to the factory, climbed the fence and threw the crates over the fence to cart back to the Hostel.  Where it became fuel for our Guy Fawkes bonfires.  There were no crates at GMH because GMH made its cars rather than assembled them.

Because of the acute danger of fires in the Australian heat – November can often see temperatures in the 30s – bonfires have been banned for many decades.  It is also many decades since it has been legally possible to purchase the fireworks that we used to light on bonfire night.

The Fisherman’s Bend area has changed beyond recognition in the decades since the 1950s. 

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We went to the movies on Saturday afternoons at he the Eclipse Cinema on the corner of Crockford and Pickles Streets Port Melbourne.  Crockford Street is a continuation of Bay Street. The Eclipse disappeared many decades ago, but before the start of television, it was a regular haunt for children of all ages.  One of my favourite movies was The Desert Hawk - a swashbuckling piece of nonsense.

The Hostel inmates staged a costume ball in Port Melbourne Town Hall in 1954 or 1955.  Cliff and Josey wrapped a white sheet around me, stuffed a cushion down my front and painted the sheet with black dots.  They wrote “Hostel Plum Pudding” across my front. 

Bill’s costume was more dignified.  He was clad in swashbuckling Desert Hawk clothes and hung with a sign proclaiming “Desert Fox – Ladies Beware”.  The Desert Fox was the nickname of German General Rommel but I had no idea why ladies had to “beware” of the Desert Fox.

In the years before television, the many migrant hostels created opportunities for entertainment.  Hostel concerts travelled from one concert to another.  I was in the Ragamuffin Boys’ Choir.  Just before one of the concerts, I complained to dad that one of my baby teeth would not come out.  Cliff pulled a pair of pliers from his toolkit and pulled the tooth out.  I sang in the Ragamuffin Boys’ Choir immediately after the tooth was pulled.

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This photo is of the Hostel kindergarten.  I spent 1953 in the Hostel kindergarten.  The hostel toilets had no toilet paper.  If I need to do a poo, I had to ask for toilet paper from one of the kindergarten staff members.

This is the menu for Christmas dinner on 25 December 1955.  Hostel food was dreadful - much worse than Josey's coking and Josey's cooking was truly abysmal.  I was thin and emaciated when we finally left the Hostel.