1. Why and when did you migrate to Australia?
We came out to Australia in 1967. We left Scotland on the 3rd of May and arrived on the 5th of May. The reason we come out to um, Australia is that, although I had a good job over in the UK, we were finding it hard to make ends meet. So we come to the land of milk and honey, Australia! 2. Did you have a job when you arrive in Australia?
Well my main qualification for work was, I was a qualified mining engineer so I thought I would continue with that in Australia so I had a job with the Belamby Co. Company in New South Wales. But on the way over we stopped in Whyalla in South Australia to see my wife’s parents and in a couple of weeks we had sort of run out of money so I went down to the BHP and they gave me a job as a Project Engineer on the construction of the coal ovens there and the wage was quite good, it was three times what I was getting before. So we stayed in Whyalla longer than we thought we would an I phoned the Belamby Co. Company up and said that we weren’t taking up the job and were going to stay in Whyalla for a little while, which we did and we made a lot of friends there and eventually there was a job in the paper for a production Engineer with Alcoa, which is an aluminium producing company in Geelong and I applied for that and got the job so we moved to Geelong.

3. Who was waiting for you when you arrived in Australia?
When we arrived here, we came via Qantas and we flew into Brisbane and had all the immigration staff there. Yeah then we flew through to Adelaide and there was no one there to meet us so we were going to be shipped off to a sort of immigration centre where we stayed for about four hours and my wife’s sister’s husband, Jimmy Duncan, appeared there and we got in the car and he took us up to Whyalla.

4. What were your first impressions of Australia?
We were quite happy with the whole country when we got here/ I think my wife, Margaret, she thought it was more like a small house and liked the pretty stuff but it was quite good and I remember on the way to Whyalla we stopped and I had my first beer in um, Australia in a place called ‘Bucks Waterhole’ just north of Port Wakefield, but I forget the name of the town. But anyway I remember the price of the schooner was 13 cents, which is not about, in the present day, about $3.60 or something, so things have really gone up since then. But in Whyalla, we had a pleasant lifestyle; I raced speedway. I played tennis, I played squash, we used to entertain a fair bit and had great parties. We had a pool there down on Wallace St and yeah it was a good life

5. How old were you when you migrated?
Well we left Scotland in 1967 so I was 27 years of age, and we travelled by train and then yeah, boarded Qantas flight at Heathrow airport in London.

6. How was the weather different here?
Well I think that the weather in Australia was completely different from the weather in the UK. The seasons were different. The first of September in the UK is the first day of Spring where here, it’s the first day of Autumn, I think? No, it’s vice versa. But in Australia, the weather is never really cold whereas back in Scotland, I remember when we used to go out on a Saturday night and had to hide behind a bus stop to try to keep out of the snow and the cold. So I find that the climate here is miles better than that in the UK.

7. Do you miss Scotland? Have you ever been back?
Yeah I do miss Scotland, yeah, um… I went back a couple of years ago and did a tour of Scotland and and Ireland and I also spent a couple of weeks in Scotland just travelling around and now at the ripe old ago of 72 I think I’d like to do it again.

8. When did you leave Scotland and was the trip difficult?
We travelled to Australia by plane and as I said before we left on the 3rd of May 1967 and arrived on the 5th of May and our two kids Mark and Pauline who were, uh, 2 and 3 at the time and it was a matter of trying to organized sleep time, eating time and travelling time and it was quite difficult.

9. Who did you stay with?
When we arrived in Australia we had temporary accommodation with I think it was, um, Jim and Rena I can’t quite remember, it was a long time ago. And yeah not long after that we found a council house in Whyalla and after that as I said, I had a job at BHP as a Project Engineer when they were building the coal ovens. But we then moved to Geelong where I was a production engineer for Alcoa, and we were only there for about a year and I moved back with the kids from Geelong where we moved to Whyalla and I was a manager there for about 7 years. In that time the kids grew up and went to Nicholson Primary school and then to start with the Whyalla High School. So then we had 6 or 7 years of a very good life up in Whyalla where the kids played sport and I drove speedway, played tennis, squash and we had lots of meals and then when the shipyard closed down in 1977, we decided to move to Darwin and start our own business up there.

10. Are you happy in Australia?
Yeah I’m really happy to uh, to be living in Australia, before we came here we didn’t have any real financial position and now that we are quite financial, my family, Pauline and her kids are all quite financial and living happy in Largs Bay, but yeah I am very happy to be living here.