The Cullen Café

[chapeaugris]

Your conversation made me think of a man I met in London this summer. He was painting my sister's house while I was visiting and we got to chatting. He'd lived in Australia for two years in the late 50s when he was a small child (3-5 years old) because his family's passage over there (or rather down there) had been paid by the British government. Apparently it was a scheme to offload the unemployed while boosting the Australian population. If you agreed to stay for at least two years the government would pay your passage back. He said when they arrived, his mother took one look and immediately signed up to return on the same date two years hence.

When they returned to London two years later, they took advantage of another government scheme to relieve pressure on housing in the city and were paid to move to a new suburban town (whose name I forget). He still lives there and so do his grown children, who are unemployed and still living with him. He said he wished there was another scheme to send the jobless to another country but reckons every place is full up now!

[brianr]

I know many people who came to Australia under that scheme. They are known as 10 pound poms as they had to pay 10 pounds for their passage. One couple are close friends and they went back after 2 years but regretted it immediately and saved up and returned. They have lived in Australia now for probably over 30 years and have children and grandchildren there. Another couple worked with me and wanted to stay but they were both only children and when Maureen was expecting they had great pressure from their parents to return. They told me they regretted it at times.  I stayed with them in Bradford several times and plan to visit Tony again next year although unfortunately Maureen died of bowel cancer about 10 years ago.
I can see how difficult it would be in those days and at such a great distance. I have moved this year 3000 km. The countries are not that different. It is only a 3 hour flight back (but $400 return) and I skype with my sister regularly as well as email other friends. I will be going back for Christmas. However there have been a few times when I  have wished I could just get in the car and drive back for some event.

[chapeaugris]

I can see how difficult it would be in those days and at such a great distance. I have moved this year 3000 km. The countries are not that different. It is only a 3 hour flight back (but $400 return) and I skype with my sister regularly as well as email other friends. I will be going back for Christmas. However there have been a few times when I  have wished I could just get in the car and drive back for some event.

I take it you moved 3000 km within Australia? People who live in small countries often have a hard time grasping the scale of the geography of big ones. When I was discussing with my husband (who is English) my plan to fly to the States to visit my step-mother in Washington, D.C. in January, he asked if I was going to "swing by" to see our daughter who is living with my brother in Colorado (and a 3 hour drive from Denver through high altitude mountain passes). I just laughed.

ETA: 10 pound POMs is indeed the expression the painter used.

[brianr]

No
While I could have moved 3000 km from Sydney to Perth and still been in Australia, I moved the other way (across the ditch as we say  ) to New Zealand. Although very similar countries. I did have to open new bank accounts and arrange new health, insurance, social security etc etc.  Even food shopping, getting use to different brands, can be unsettling. Strangely as a permanent resident I gained the right to vote in NZ immediately but I have the letter on my table telling the Australian Electoral Commission I do not intend returning in the next 6 years and therefore will be taken off the electoral roll in Australia despite still holding Australian citizenship.
When I flew from Toronto to San Francisco last month the US customs official was very interested in what I had to do to gain residency in NZ and amazed when I said I just had to get on the plane and go. (if I had a  criminal record it would be different)

[tonydude]

  Am picking up on the subject of dialects, which has been on the "Hot Topics" thread, but since my own tale is not-so-hot, maybe even boring, I thought I would post here. The general topic was remnant dialects from the early colonists.
   To start, I was always greatly embarrassed by my father's dialect, from the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina.  He spoke fairly well, petty-gentry country (the South has always been brainwashed by social classes).  But, especially when buying a car or an appliance, he would slip into saying "Ye" instead of "you".  And as a little child, I would turn beet-red as I thought that was so backwards.
  Boy did I have a lot to learn!  In an American History class in college, the professor was an expert on the very area of my father's family home.  And the "Ye" was a dialect remnant from the early colonists, when the dual words for "you" were just then fading.  So, when my Dad said "Ye", it was a very old formalization, and no shame to it at all.
  Then, I had thought our last name derived from German heritage, as it dates to a Hessian soldier from the Revolution who settled there.  But, nooooo, the predominant ethnic group up there, according to the professor, and a later book I read, was Scottish.  In fact, that is where the Protestant Scottish clan chiefs, and their followers fled, or were exiled, after the Battle of Culloden, losing the Stuart cause to the Hanoverians.
  Duhhhh.  Then it all fit.  My father's dislike for the English.  And the Jacobite lullabies he sang, when fixing breakfast for me as a child. "....you take the high road, and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland afore Ye, and me and my true love will never meet again, on the bonnie, bonnie shores of Loch Laven."  Further duhhhh....going down there, as a child, I had completely ignored the clan gatherings on Grandfather Mountain, in full regalia, kilts and all (which continue to this day). I thought them a little, well, odd.
  It was a journey, then, as an adult, understanding my father, and my relatives down there, and their remnant history. And this was all the more important, as there are no surviving relations on my mother's side. They are all I have.
  My father has passed on, but I have learned to respect his remnant dialect, his dislike for being around people (the Jacobites had to hide out, at first), and those beautiful, beautiful old Scottish songs. (and I also respect him for his service to our country: he was at the Battle of Midway, which was planned by his own cousin Admiral Eller, from the same town, and that he was on two carriers that sank in WWII).
  Small remnants of people from long ago, then, did keep their culture, their speech, and their ways. And then finally, when I saw one of those DNA origin tests on my brother, several years ago, there it was: Celtic.  I'm here because of a tiny group of refugees who lost their battle and had to hide.  And kept their culture as best they could. Somehow, I need to go back to them, to visit.  They ask me every year.  When I can, I will.
  Finally, I am not myself, anti-British.  Not at all. But, with stubborn impudence and fully aware of the absurdity, I sometimes call myself the last remaining Jacobite, and therefore a clear and present danger to the government....of 18th century Great Britain.
  I hope I haven't been too personal.  Others on the forum have told of their origins (Fritz comes to mind), and I wish others would as well.  We're all somewhat muttskies, but, often, there is some sentimental trail, back into the past, that is a part of who we are.

[fritzkep]

Not too personal in the least! Thanks, Tony!

[tonydude]

  Thanks, right back, Fritz.  I always enjoyed reading your family's background.  I hope others will consider telling their own stories.  For many of us, it's another way to understand our fellow forum members.  I would love to hear their family histories!

[donna]

That was a real treat, Tony.  One of my ancestors was Hessian, I've been told.  His last name was Innis.  Sort of like our Ennis.  Thanks so much for sharing that with us.  I do hope you get to visit your people someday.

[tonydude]

  Maybe we're 4th cousins, Donna   !  Meanwhile, on your hiking the Appalachian trail, next time, take a detour to North Wilkesboro.  I hear they still make moonshine thereabouts, and you and HeathyLuv can really stash some alternative relaxation therapies  .

[donna]

LOL!  That sounds like it might be worth the side trip!

Actually there's a saying that 'an AT thru-hiker wouldn't walk 50' off the Trail to visit his mother's grave,' so I'm not so sure!

[tfferg]

Tony – I enjoyed reading your post .

It prompts me to wonder about my forbears and what varieties of English they spoke, how they met and came to marry and so on.. My greatgrandparents migrated to Australia, I presume in te second half of the 19th century – the paternal side from Scotland (Fergusons) and Ireland (McGraths), the maternal side from Yorkshire (Glews) and Somerset (Meakers).

The Fergusons were Protestants and wouldn’t have been Jacobites, given that my grandfather was christened Albert Victor. They lived in Sydney, but my grandfather must have come to Melbourne and fallen in love with my Catholic grandmother and converted. In the bigoted sectarian atmosphere of the time, I suppose there was no love lost between their respective families. My grandfather died at the age of 38. Dad never talked about him or the other Fergusons – he would have been about 8 when he died. Dad rejected the Catholic religion and wanted nothing to do with the McGraths especially after his aunts stopped his mother from going to his wedding in a Methodist minister’s manse, telling her she’d be excommunicated if she did. He only went to Sydney once, in his youth, riding all the way on his motorbike in one day. His Ferguson aunt sent him 100 pounds in the late 1940s toward a block of land or a deposit on house with a stern letter warning him not to waste it. So all I know of Grandfather Ferguson is that he was an engineer and conducted a choir – my father’s sister, who gave me his baton, said he was a protege of Nellie Melba.

My mother was the one who was sentimental about things Scottish (in the post Culloden British version) although there was no Scottish connection among her side of the family. I know more about her side of the family because she talked about them and inherited various household bits and pieces and photos. Her older sister went to Yorkshire in the 1960s where she wanted to trace the ancestry of the Glews, but I gather she didn’t get far. There is a family story that they (because they considered Glew an unusual name) were descended from a shipwrecked Polish sailor.

My grandparents were all Australian-born and spoke Standard Australian English. I do remember Grandma Glew pronounced 'cross' to rhyme with horse.

I’ve never taken up genealogical/DNA research, thinking it would not be a high priority use of my financial resources.

I’m curious about my partner’s family background but he seems to know nothing even of his grandparents who he never mentions and doesn’t seem to be interested in the subject. When he was a child, there was no electricity.  Many people in the district of the northeastern province he comes from are of Lao descent. He says he knows little of his family history because he moved away from the village to go to junior high school in the provincial capital and then to Bangkok to live with his eldest brother and go to high school.  His aged father seems to have been a farmer and he was village head. His mother is illiterate.

[tonydude]

The Fergusons were Protestants and wouldn’t have been Jacobites, given that my grandfather was christened Albert Victor.

Hi, Tony - FWIW, most Jacobites were Protestants, although they supported the direct lineal descent of the (occasionally) Catholic Stuarts.  And were to be found in England and Scotland.
    The risings in 1714 and 1744, to restore the direct Stuart line, in place of the grumpy German Hanoverian cousins, were total failures and repression in Northern England and Scotland was brutal (and the clan chiefs and their followers went to the North Carolina mountains, literally, to hide).
    Until the Catholic line died out, there was always a sordid, conspiratorial element to British history.  The last surviving heir to James II, was both a Cardinal and gay, and so, no threat there, of offspring.  When Napolean was pillaging in Italy around 1802 or so, the British fleet landed troops to evacuate that last, aged, other heir to their throne. After he died, there being no futher threat to the Protestant dynasty, there grew a romantic, very safe, renewal of interest and even Queen Victoria became woofy about her Stuart lineage and the displaced dynasty.
  You can't rule out, then, that your grandfather, even Protestant, and living very much later, did not have Jacobite sympathies. Having the name of Victoria's consort was no problem, as there would have been no further antipathy to the royal family, only to the government.  It's possible even for your grandmother.  That often could be a factor in emigrating elsewhere.  It's a wonderful history you have there, and thanks for telling us!

[tfferg]

Thanks, Tony for your interesting info.

I guess there are all sorts of possibilities for who my Scots forbears were.

I have read a couple of general histories of Scotland - and the history of most of the protagonists is pretty horrible. I also read a history of Gippsland, the area of Victoria east of Melbourne. In the 19th century it was colonized by Scots, many of whom were victims of the Highland Clearances. it was very disturbing to read the account of their ruthless cruelty in dispossessing the Aboriginal people of their countries and there were massacres. Mind you, people from the other parts of Britain on the pastoral frontier were as bad and I read of them much earlier.

All of that killed off any romantic identification with the Scots I might have had in my younger days. Not that I identify with the English ancestors except for what I know of the individual contributions of my grandfather and great-grandfathers. I also know something of their faults too.

As for the Scots, what there is to admire is the Scottish Enlightenment

[tonydude]

 I have been posting on Hot Topics about a local story in Norfolk that went national, but have thought it better to move any more that I have to say, here.  The Captain of the U.S.S carrier Enterprise has been removed from his command over goofy and vulgar in-house videos he had made 4 years ago, when, as exec officer, part of his job was boosting morale. For reasons I cannot understand, the skits were called homophobic by the local rag, the Virginian-Pilot, and this went viral.
 They were lewd, but not homophobic. I hardly think an officer who winked at two muscular sailors soaping each other off in a shower...is homophobic.  Or who posed in bed with a grin, having someone behind him cuddling him, is anti-gay. Or who doubled for himself, suggestive of performing a sex act under his desk on himself, is a gay basher. The worst I saw was his wryly referring to his aide, sitting demurely near him, as "that gay boy", said aide then shooting him the bird.
  It's crap like this that shows how low journalism has sunk. Just as in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the WMD's in Iraq. Shoddy reporting. Hidden agendas.

  I am now seeing more damage. To the gay community.  There are thousands of sailors, men and women, supporting the Captain on the USS Enterprise Facebook page.  The earliest allegations from them were that Navy chaplains wanted him out and got the newspaper to run the story. (Remember, this is Pat Robertson's fiefdom around here). But when the Advocate and Glenn Close made the anti-gay allegations go ever more viral, that bounced back here, to Norfolk.  IMO, the gay community was snookered.  By right wing Navy chaplains and a grotesquely incompetent local newspaper. But the generally tolerant Navy community here has, in the last 24 hours, begun to believe it is a gay smear campaign, and that is showing up in the sailors protests.
  Just great. Captain Honors has been tagged homophobic.  The gay community, to some degree has decided this is so, contrary to the many facts pointing otherwise. And now, tolerance from the rank and file, for gays, is plummeting. I have no doubt the chaplains are smirking.
  There has begun a move to boycott the Virginian-Pilot.  For playing fast and loose, with a four year old series of spoofs.  But there is a steadily rising antipathy to gays, who are now blamed, for what was originally a question of what is over-the-line and what isn't.  Many thanks to Glenn Close and her PR people, and to the Advocate.  You have transformed an extremely tolerant Navy community into one that now sees the gay community as extremists in political correctness.  As I said, the chaplains are smirking. And the original calls for investigation into their role is now fading away.
  These sailors are angry. The women are angry at allegations of sexism. The men at allegations gays were trashed. I have seen the videos, and my impression is that not only were they not anti-gay, they were, briefly, homoerotic.
  The Navy has a term for this kind of thing: a cluster f@#k.  I can only hope this does not set back the original tolerance that was there.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

I don't know a whole lot about this, except for some very short news reports, but right
from the start it has seemed much ado about nothing.  I am seeing in this whole thing
what you have been writing about.  The gay community or press should be wary of
jumping on anything "gay related" to try and make points.  Especially when they don't
know what they are talking about.