Jack Marland

Ship name / Flight number: Strathnaver

Arrival date: 04/10/1961

I was born in Ashton-Under-Lyne in the greater Manchester area on 21 July 1944. My parents both worked in the cotton mills that Manchester is known for.

I had a ‘normal’ childhood, growing up with an older sister and a younger brother and spending lots of time with our aunties, uncles and cousins on the weekends. I was an average student at school but good at subjects that involved using my hands, like woodwork, metalwork and art. When I was about 13 years old, we had to research and write an essay about Australia for school. I liked learning about its convict history and it sparked my interest in the place. However, I never imagined going there.

After elementary (primary) school, I went to Stanford Boys School in Mosley. Like most students in 1950s England, I left when I was 15 years old and Dad got me an apprenticeship as a baker/pastry chef. I worked there for a couple of years but I was also keen to see more of the world than Manchester. When my friend Terry told me he was going to apply to go to Australia with the BBM and asked if I was interested, I jumped on board. I had my interview and left in August 1961, soon after my 18th birthday. My intention was to stay for two years, see the country (I had no idea how big it was!), then come home.

My friends joked that I’d have to give way to the kangaroos hopping down George Street – we all thought Sydney was more like a country town than a capital city. I thought I’d need a safari outfit but I got rid of those khaki shorts soon after I arrived, as most men still dressed quite formally in the 1960s.

Travelling on the SS Strathnaver with about 25-30 other ‘Little Brothers’ was fun. We spent most of the days and nights on H-deck. It was stinking hot in our tiny cabins, so we preferred to sleep in the deck chairs.

Below L-R: Terry Zajer, Dave Usher, Paddy, and Jack Marland, first day in Sydney, October 1961

When we arrived in Sydney, we were taken to the BBM hostel in Homebush. I chose to work in the city and was soon assigned to a job at a bakery in Enfield. I was meant to start work at 11pm, but I couldn’t work out how to get there at that hour using public transport. I really couldn’t fathom where I was going.

After three weeks at the hostel, we were told that we would have to move out as another group of Little Brothers were arriving. I decided to rent some rooms in Stanmore with a friend I had made on the boat. I found a job at a pie and cake shop in Enmore, which was much closer to Stanmore than Enfield. While I worked most nights, he worked during the day on the railways.

Every week, I gave him my half of the rent and he paid the landlady. Or so I thought. One Saturday morning, I arrived home after my night shift to discover that he’d run off with all my clothes, in my suitcase, and hadn’t paid our rent. The next thing I knew, there was a 100kg Hungarian woman in the doorway demanding to be paid the rent she was owed. I wasn’t going to argue with her, so I left as quickly as I could, with only the clothes I was wearing. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to the BBM office in Sydney but, being a Saturday, it was closed. I walked around Sydney in despair, trying to find a safe place to sleep.

With nowhere to go, I slept in a small park near Central Station. During the night, I was woken by two police officers who took me to the police station. They asked me lots of questions about why I was sleeping rough, gave me some food and let me sleep in one of the cells. The next thing they did probably changed the course of my life. They rang the Salvos (Salvation Army) who collected me from the station and gave me some clothes, a suitcase and a place to board in Enmore. The following Monday, they organised an interview with the Sunshine Bread Company for me, and I started work the next day. I am very grateful to the Salvos for helping me to get back on my feet.

I was boarding in Enmore with an old couple who did all my washing for me and cooked my meals. This was much better than when I tried to do it myself in Stanmore. My parents didn’t teach me how to cook – it wasn’t something that boys were expected to do in the 1950s – so I had lived on boiled eggs and fried spam. I paid the old couple, who treated me like I was their son, £6/week for this, which left £5/11 for me. I opened an account with the Commonwealth Bank and saved £2/week.

I wasn’t sure what I was saving my money for, but a letter from Terry, my friend whom I’d come to Australia with, soon gave me the answer. Terry said that he’d joined the army and invited me to visit him while he was stationed at Watson’s Bay. I did this, and we decided that when we both got some holiday leave, we’d catch the train to Port Augusta in South Australia to visit his family who had emigrated there. His parents had bought a service station called ‘The Hitching Rail’ in the main street of this regional town. Now I was living my dream of seeing Australia.

The trip was a fantastic adventure and whet my appetite for more. When I got back to Sydney, there was a letter from my parents telling me that an uncle and aunt had moved to Morwell in Victoria. Terry and I agreed that on our next holiday, we’d go and visit them, which we did.

By now I’d saved £200, which was nearly enough to buy a car in 1964. I was able to borrow the rest of the money from the bank. My parents could never afford a car, so I really felt like I was making my way in the world. My first car was a 1958 Morris Major Series 2.

I also decided that I should finish the apprenticeship I’d started in England. While I’d been working in bakeries and pie shops for the past three years, my labour hadn’t been contributing to an apprenticeship as a pastry chef-baker. I found a place in Enmore that would recognise the first two years I’d done in England and completed my four year apprenticeship.

While this was happening I met Jan who, like me, had migrated to Australia in 1961. However, Jan only came across the ditch from New Zealand (not half way across the world) and she came to pick fruit. We were married in a catholic church in Lewisham on 30 December 1968. My mother came out from England for our wedding, and my aunt and uncle from Morwell were there, too.

Soon after our first son was born, we scraped together a deposit to buy an ex-housing commission house in St Mary’s in western Sydney. I was now a qualified baker and pastry chef, as I’d finished my apprenticeship, and I worked at a pie shop in St Mary’s. After a few years, I took a job as manager of the bakery for Coles at Blacktown. It was a busy supermarket with staff reporting to me.

Jan and Jack, 30th December 1968

By now, Jan and I had four sons and when they reached their teens, they started getting into strife in St Mary’s. We decided to remove them from those temptations and sold our house and moved to Warrimoo, which is in the lower Blue Mountains. This change of environment really turned things around for them. We started going camping on weekends and the boys took up soccer. I had played soccer at school in Ashton-Under-Lyne, so I coached some of the teams. I also took a job as bakery manager at Coles in Katoomba, in the upper Blue Mountains, which was closer to home.

We were paying off our house and life was going pretty well. Then our third son, Peter, got sick. He was born with a heart condition and needed a heart transplant in 1996. Sadly, he couldn’t get the operation quickly enough and he died in 1997. It’s still a painful memory for me.

In 1999 my father passed away and I flew back to Manchester for the funeral. My sister asked me to speak at the funeral but I hadn’t spent much time with him since I was 18 years old, so I just told some stories from the early days. People loved it and said it was one of the best funerals they’d been to. It was good to see Ashton-Under-Lyne again and my siblings, but it didn’t take me long to realise that coming to Australia was the best decision I ever made.

Jack and Jan’s motorhome purchased in 2000

My Dad’s funeral brought up some of the grief I was still feeling for Peter. Jan and I weren’t really connecting, so we decided it was time for a change. Two of our sons had moved out of home, and we told our remaining 25 year old boy that it was time for him to find another place to live, as we were going to rent out the house in Warrimoo and travel around Australia.

Jan and I bought an old motor-home and modified it so we could camp independently – we knew that we couldn’t afford to pay for sites in caravan parks for the 12 months that we planned to be away. We started travelling clockwise around Australia without any firm plans. With no newspapers, bills or television, Jan and I had lots of time to talk and it brought us closer together. I learnt how to relax again, which I’d forgotten how to do with the busyness of a full-time job, a house to maintain and four boys to raise. One year of travelling turned into four – Australia is such a beautiful country. Forty years after coming to Australia, I felt like I was finally fulfilling my dream of seeing the place properly.

We came back to Warimoo in 2004 and started a small cleaning business – just Jan and myself. After about four years running that, we decided that we’d like to move to southern Queensland, which we had both really liked when we were travelling around Australia. Two of our sons had moved to northern NSW to raise their families, so that was another incentive to move north. We renovated our house in Warimoo, sold it in 2010, and bought a property near Kooralbyn in the Gold Coast hinterland. We live on 1¼ acres of bushland and feel like we’re in our comfort zone.

I have a large shed on the property and I’ve started doing artwork and woodwork again, as it was something that I enjoyed and was good at in high school. I paint old handsaws with wildflowers and make wooden children’s toys and furniture. I have a friend who gives me wood and I have a lathe and all the equipment I need in the shed. I also go to the men’s shed in Kooralbyn, to socialise as well as work.

Jan and I have ten grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Most of them live about three hours drive south, so we can see them regularly.

I know if I’d stayed in Manchester, and not come to Australia with the BBM, my life would have been totally and utterly different. I also know that I matured by about ten years in my first year in Australia. I had never been outside Ashton-Upon-Lyne and never lived outside of the family home. Coming to Sydney was the beginning of a huge learning curve, but well worth it. If I had money to donate, I’d give it to the Salvos, as I think they saved my life in 1961 when I found myself sleeping rough in a park after all my money and possessions were stolen. I’d like to thank Australia and the BBM as it changed my life for the better.