Ship name / Flight number: Fairsky

Arrival date: 10/08/1964

I was born in Hereford, England but I moved to Queensferry, Scotland when I was five. My mother was a supervisor of McCalls Lollie Shop around Edinburgh and my father was a Customs Officer at Leith Docks.

I was top of the class at school, but they decided to put my up a year which became bottom of the class as they had algebra as one of the subjects that I knew nothing about! I left school at fifteen in my second year and worked for a research station as a lab attendant.

In 1964, at seventeen, I left for South Hampton with another Scot, Maurice Bell where we boarded the Fairsky with sixteen other Little Brothers. An OZ expat teacher was our chaperone.

*Bar Shot, Left to right- Stuart Prosser, Arthur Pinnington, Ernest Grant a BBM member from Blackheath and Maurice Bell,1964*

I arrived September 1964. We did our training at the farm at Cowpastures Road, Green Valley. After our training we were sent to farms all over NSW. Because I had worked at an animal research station – I was offered a job at Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney, which I turned down and was sent to a sheep property at Armidale NSW, (a 1,200-acre property owned by an ex submarine Commander Kersey). The farm in Armidale was called Invergowrie which is now an area outside Armidale. At the farm I and few others where in the hills behind the farm cleaning up the area when I found a snake in a log, I put it in my T shirt and took it back to the farm where the boss threw it on the ground and said it was a poisonous Black snake and proceeded to kill it!

I got my Driver’s License via the local Police Sergeant in a Willeys Jeep. I went to Sydney after one year, where I worked for Gibson and Patterson, a supplier of glassware to pubs. After that I then got a job at a sheep station out at Mullangugery near Nygan on a 6,000-acre sheep station. About a year later I went back to Sydney where I got a job at a private hospital called St Luke’s at Kings Cross. I was what was called a ‘general useful’. This role covered all jobs when people took leave i.e. gardener, storeman, accounts clerk assistant, cleaner and theatre boy (orderly).

Later I moved to Brisbane for about a year working for Westons Biscuits as a delivery driver but moved back to Sydney and worked at the NSW Uni in the Physiology Medical School. In 1969 I went overseas to London as an Aussie on a touring holiday, working as a guard on the District Line in the Underground and traveling to Europe and North Africa.

I came back to OZ in 1971, travelling overland through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Malaya and on to Singapore where they took my passport off me as I had long hair and they only gave it back to me when I secured a flight to Darwin. From there I hitchhiked to Melbourne, worked for a friend for a few months before I went back to Sydney.

I had met a girl in London, she went on holiday to Germany and while she was gone, I headed off back to OZ. She arrived in Sydney a while later, and together we moved to South Chittaway on the Central Coast. By that time, I had acquired a few building skills, so I built a double story house on the waterfront.

We had a son in 1980 but split up 1982. After that I lived with a lady with five kids until 1995. All that time I worked for Telstra as a Cable Jointer. I had done a two and half (2½) year training stint traveling all over NSW. At that time, she and I had won Lotto $200,000 so we bought a house at Matcham/Holgate where I did extensive building additions. I managed to get a transfer to Erina Telstra line yard 5 kms away.

In 1995 I left for the Gold Coast where I teamed up with a friend buying and selling cars. I moved to Coffs Harbour, NSW and opened-up a business (Concrete FX Pty), a decorative concreting supplier to builders and concreters. I bought my partner out two (2) years later.

At that time I met a lady named Rhonda at Sawtell RSL – she used to work half a day for me one day a week. I bought a twenty-seven-acre property at Pillar Valley near Grafton, and Rhonda moved into the property with her son while I stayed at the business through the week. We got married at the farm in 2003. We sold the property in 2012 and went our separate ways.

I bought a 100-acre bush block north of Glen Innes on the New England Tablelands – the reason being that it was too hot on the coast – but, it can get to well below freezing up here, minus nine (9) at times! The summers are just right.

I had good variety in my life which would not have happened if I had stayed in Scotland.

My son lives in Sydney, my sister lives in Scotland, so there is only me and my dog here in OZ. If not for the BBM I would not have had such a life experience, so I thank them.

Arthur Pinnington

Ship name / Flight number: Fairsky

Arrival date: 10/08/1964

Peter Smith

Brian White