Keith Longworth

Ship name / Flight number: Otranto

Arrival date: 12/10/1955

I was born in St Helens, east of Liverpool, on 30 January 1938. Like many of the families in Merseyside, my Mum was a housewife, and my father worked in the coal mines. When I turned 15 years old, I followed my two older brothers down the pit.

In winter time, if you worked down the mine you didn’t see the sun. You’d go down at 6.30am in the morning and come up at 2.30pm in the afternoon and it’d be dark! I gave it away in 1955 when I missed out on a promotion that went to someone who didn’t deserve it. Even though my father was the deputy at the mine by then, he didn’t put in a good word for me, and I resented that. I’d enrolled in night school to study mining technology, as I wanted to be a mine manager. But when I didn’t get the promotion, despite my hard work, I fell out with the whole thing.

When I saw an advertisement for the BBM in the local paper, I thought: ‘bugger this! I’m going to Australia, I’m off!’ I applied to BBM on the spur of the moment. In hindsight, it wasn’t a wise decision, but life’s what you make it.

My Dad was hard on us, so I didn’t tell him that I was leaving until two weeks before I sailed. I came out on the SS Orontes in October 1955. Most of the other boys wanted to go to the country, but I asked to work in the city.

I got an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner at Sonnerdale Pty Ltd in Stanmore (it was later taken over by BorgWarner). I worked for them for six years, and also did night school to get my senior certificate.

I was working alongside qualified engineers from Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. They couldn’t get a job. We all got treated like dirt, but the migrants who didn’t come from England coped the most abuse.

It wasn’t easy paying the rent on an apprentice’s wage. I was paying £4 /week in board but only earning £2 18s a week.  At one stage I was working three jobs just to pay for the basics: food, clothing and shelter.

In 1956, everyone got evicted from the hostel that I was staying in. There were about 40 lads living there. Next door there were two teenage girls, and one of the lads took the girls for a spin in his brand new car. Their father objected and rang the newspaper up. I was on the front page of the Daily Mirror under a headline: ‘English lout hits Sydney’. The newspaper said that the foreign office was going to send us back to England.

The next two weeks were precarious as I tried to find somewhere to live. I was lucky that Endeavour House took me and two of my mates in. It was run by a retired police sergeant and his wife.

My first six years in Australia were the hardest. I went back to England in 1961 for a working holiday in Europe. After two years, I decided to come back to Australia.

I started back at Sonnerdales, but soon moved to work for a smaller engineering firm. After that, I sold accident insurance door-to-door on commission for about six months.

On the weekends I worked for Griffith Yachts, a charter boat company based near Luna Park on Sydney Harbour. We took people out on yachting picnics on the harbour. If I wasn’t part of a crew on a Saturday night, I’d go to one of the dances at Ashfield. On Sundays we went dancing at the Irish Club near Central Station. This is how I met my wife, Elizabeth. We were married in 1969. I wanted four children, but it turned out that Elizabeth could only have one child. Our son was born in 1971 and is a high school teacher in Adelaide.

In the early 1970s I started working for the Post Master General’s Department in the Telecom section as a fuse and tool maker.  In 1975-76 I moved with them from Sydney to South Australia and then I transferred to working for (what is now) Australia Post as a mail officer. I retired in 1994 when I was 65 years old.

My father didn’t get to retire – he died in 1956 as the result of a mining accident. There was no compensation for his family. He worked down the pit from when he was 14 years old until he was 51. What a life.

Three of my brothers migrated to Australia, but my two sisters stayed in England. My mother migrated when she was in her 60s and lived in Sydney with my brothers. She died when she was 88 years old. My brothers’ migration experiences were mixed – Gerald died penniless in Sydney and Peter went back to England after living in Australia for 52 years.

I’m glad I came here; I’ve had some wonderful experiences. I could never live in England now, never ever. I love Australia – I loved it the first day I landed here.