Minutes from the beach, endless sunny days and fishing in the creek, the Illawarra may have been a playground some ten pound pom kids, but it was a very different story for adults.
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Stan's six-part series Ten Pound Poms explores the migrant journey to Australia for many Brits, and it's brought up vivid memories for those who came to the Illawarra.
The series, which features Fairy Meadow actress Sarah Furnari playing an Italian migrant, shows how many ten pound pom adults faced discrimination, racism and abuse after they arrived in Australia.
Andrew Best was just 11 years old when he migrated from Manchester with his family under the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme in 1969. They were sent to live at Balgownie Hostel in Fairy Meadow.
They might have been greeted by a huntsman spider and cockroach as they entered their run-down Nissen hut, but Andrew loved Australia immediately.
"It was great for kids, the next day we went to Fairy Meadow Beach and we were in the surf and it was just a beautiful day," he said.
"We had ice creams and it was just a nice welcome to Australia.
"It was good from a kid's point of view because there were lots of kids to play with and to hang out with. I made lots of friends there, some of them are still friends now."
Hostel food was "lower than hospital food" so along with his mates they'd catch eels in the nearby creek and sell them to buy better meals.
"We get about $1 for an eel and a hamburger cost 20 cents," he said.
The biggest difference between the UK and Australia was the sense of humour.
"Australians laughed at people when bad things happened and that was something that I had to get used to, but it didn't take long," Mr Best said. "Petty soon we were laughing at the same sorts of things that Australians laughed at."
He recalls loving how much space there was in Australia. His two-storey home in Manchester had no front yard, you'd walk from the loungeroom straight onto the road, and out the back there was only a coal shed and a toilet.
Also staying at the Balgownie Hostel was Eric Taylor who grew up in Guernsey in the Channel Islands, midway between England and France. He was 10 years old when he arrived in Australia as a ten pound pom with his family in 1954.
He vividly remembers how different the heat was compared to the UK.
"I can distinctly remember that we got a week on end of 100 degrees Fahrenheit [37 degrees Celsius], it made sleeping pretty difficult," Mr Taylor said.
He remembers some migrant kids being teased about their accents and called "pommy bastards" by Australians, but this lack of a strong accent and being a good bowler in his cricket team meant he missed out on the bullying.
"I probably escaped a lot of the comments that some kids would have got. The Scottish and the Yorkshire accents, they would have been targeted severely," Mr Taylor said.
One day, however, he wasn't so lucky and was surrounded by locals while he was riding his bike. They let down his tyres and threw away the valves.
At his UK school, Mr Taylor was learning foreign languages, but at Towradgi Public School he was told to improve his cursive writing.
Read more about migrants in the Illawarra at the Migrant Heritage Project.
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Nadine Morton
Nadine Morton covers emergency services and breaking news for the Illawarra Mercury. She takes pride in regional journalism which she believes is crucial to informing our towns and cities. Have a story? Email her at nadine.morton@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Nadine Morton covers emergency services and breaking news for the Illawarra Mercury. She takes pride in regional journalism which she believes is crucial to informing our towns and cities. Have a story? Email her at nadine.morton@austcommunitymedia.com.au
