Royston (Roy) Wood

Ship name / Flight number: Arcadia

Arrival date: 30/06/1960

I was born on 24 June 1944 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. My Scottish father was serving with the Royal Signals Corps in Burma during World War II when he met my mother who came from Sri Lanka (or Ceylon as it was known then). They married and returned to England when I was six weeks old. As a woman of colour, my mother experienced discrimination but she dealt with it with strength and grace. In England, they added to the family with two beautiful daughters and another son.

I grew up in a council flat in Loughton-Slough, north of London. I was quite a nervous child and suffered from eczema and asthma. Some of the sirens that blasted from the local factories signalling that it was time for the workers to have a break were the same as the ones that rang out during the war and I was frightened of them. The sound still affects me today.

I didn’t do very well at school. There were 45-50 students in the classes after the war and as I had undiagnosed dyslexia, I found it hard to keep up with the work and didn’t get the help that I needed. Some of the teachers had PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from the war and they were very tough on the students. I remember one teacher threw a blackboard rubber at me for talking in class. Another time, I was caned six times for not paying attention in the school assembly. I played truant sometimes, but never when we had art or woodwork – I liked those subjects and enjoyed working with my hands.

When I finished school at the age of 14, I tried to join the army like my father, but I didn’t pass the entrance exam. I got a job in a factory making transformers and worked there for a few months. Everything still felt grim in England in the aftermath of the war, and I didn’t have much hope for the future. When I saw the advertisement from the Big Brother Movement, I was keen to make a fresh start in Australia.

My Boys Brigade leader was astonished that I wanted to leave home at the age of 15 to go and work on the other side of the world on my own. I was excited about the adventures I’d have – working on the land, riding a horse and chasing kangaroos. After much discussion and deliberation, my parents reluctantly allowed me go. The whole family came to see me off at Tilbury Docks and when the time came to say goodbye, I didn’t know whether I should shake my father’s hand or give him a hug. He solved the problem for me by putting out his hand. Back in those days it was not the thing to hug and kiss your father. My mum gave me a huge hug and kisses and there were lots of tears. Celia, my youngest sibling, was only nine years old when I left. Later, my sisters told me that the family never felt the same after I left.

I walked up the gang plank of the Arcadia in my best suit carrying a suitcase and a lot of emotional baggage. All of the other 26 ‘Little Brothers’ who sailed on the Arcadia were older than me. They found opportunities for drinking and messing around but I was too shy.

The boat trip was like one big holiday, albeit a lonely one. I kept my head down, so that I didn’t get teased too much for being the youngest and enjoyed all the good food and sunshine. I think I put on about half a stone, despite being horribly seasick for part of the journey.

My group of ‘Little Brothers’ on the Arcadia, 1960. I am in the centre, in the middle row - directly beside the right shoulder of the shirtless Little Brother in the centre.

When we docked in Fremantle, my mother’s sister met me and I spent a day with her and my cousin.

My cabin on the Arcardia looked like this.

As soon as we arrived in Sydney on 30 June 1960, we were taken to the BBM training farm at Cabramatta. I spent two weeks there learning how to drive a tractor, care for pigs, and milk a cow. A few of the older boys got up to mischief, but I settled into the routine of early rising and early to bed.

After two weeks I was given a train ticket to Parkes (in the central west of NSW) and told to wait at the station to be picked up once I arrived. I put on my formal suit, which was now too small for me because I’d grown so much in the past two months. I must have looked like a little, lost English boy, standing in my short suit, holding a suitcase and waiting anxiously for a stranger to come and collect me. I was astounded at the dry brown land that stretched for miles after coming from the green countryside in England.

After what felt like an interminable length of time, an old utility pulled up in a shower of dust and gravel and a burly man in a big hat stained with sweat wound down the car window and asked: ‘Is your name Royston?’ I nodded nervously and he told me to jump in. There were about half a dozen dogs in the back of the utility and I had to share my seat with one in the cab.

We drove for miles down a dirt road and eventually pulled up at a large old homestead. I was taken inside to meet the farmer and his family over a cup of tea and then shown to my quarters. I was shocked to be taken to a tin shed about 100 yards away. There was no electricity or running water and if I wanted to have a wash, or a drink, or clean my teeth, I had to carry two, five-gallon buckets from the homestead every day – one with hot water and the other with cold. The toilet (or dunny as they called it in the outback) was a ‘long-drop’ in the back yard – that was an experience!!!

My accommodation on the farm outside Parkes, 1960.

I started work the next day. Breakfast was at 7am each morning, but before that, I had to help with milking the cows and feeding 40 pigs. Even though I’d done some of this on the training farm, I still felt like a novice. I was in trouble when a cow kicked over the pail of milk I’d just squeezed from her udder. I also had to learn how to make butter and cream from the fresh milk. It was tricky turning the handle of the separator just enough to get the right result.

Breakfast was like a huge main meal – there were chops, eggs, bacon and fresh bread with jam and cream!!!!! I’d never seen so much food. I soon learnt that I’d need it, as I was doing hard, physical labour, seven days a week, from dawn to dusk.

I was often given jobs to do with minimal instructions and just told to get on with it. I learnt to fill hessian sacks with exactly three bushels of wheat, sew them up and then manhandle them on and off the trucks!!!! There were no fancy machines to do the heavy work. My young body wasn’t used to lifting and carrying this weight, and I was so sore after a few days that I could barely stand.

Another job I was given was digging holes for fence posts with a crowbar and a shovel. The main strainer post had to have a huge hole, 1 metre wide x 1 metre deep, and after digging it the earth had to go back in and be pounded around the post. My hands would be blistered and bleeding but I dared not complain. I didn’t want to be teased and I knew I wouldn’t get much sympathy.

Me on the farm, c.1962.

Sometimes I’d have to do a 12-hour shift driving the tractor on my own. There was no cab, like there is on tractors today, so you were exposed to the weather. The paddocks were huge and sometimes you only did two laps before morning tea. I remember falling asleep from sheer exhaustion on the tractor and when I woke up I discovered that my furrows were not straight and I had to do it all again!!!!!!

Learning how to kill and butcher a lamb was another ‘character-building experience’. I had watched my boss countless times butcher a sheep and one day he just said: ‘OK Roy now it’s your turn’. I was not prepared for this but jumped in and was mortified when it all went terribly wrong and my boss had to snatch the knife and finish the task. I eventually got it right, which was just as well, as there was no butcher shops down the road!!! I remember one time when I was cutting down the sheep’s brisket with a sharp knife and it slipped and badly cut my thigh. I did not want to tell anyone and just wrapped it up and got on with things. Three days later I had a serious infection that required going to town for antibiotics. I still have that scar today.

My first Christmas in Australia was not a happy one. The farmer gave me a lift into Parkes but said that I’d have to find my own way back. I went to the swimming pool and then bought some fish and chips and a milkshake for my Christmas lunch. Not long after I started walking the eight miles back along the dirt road, a huge storm blew in and it bucketed down. I was drenched and covered in mud. I couldn’t even look forward to a hot bath or shower when I got back!!! I felt so lonely and forlorn that I started to cry. I’d turned 16 on the Arcadia, but I hadn’t told anyone it was my birthday as I did not want to be teased. Birthdays and Christmas are supposed to be happy occasions, but this was another sad and lonely time for me.

My parents wrote to me and they tried to telephone me but there were no mobile phones or email back then, so communication was harder. Letters took a long time as they had to be airmailed and the odd phone call on the party-line was so bad you could barely hear each other. When my mother finally found out about my living and working conditions she was appalled and upset.

I knew I had to stay in Australia for two years before I could move on. It was hard physical work, and I earnt every shilling of my wages. I learnt to drive while I was on the farm and had to drive trucks and other vehicles. I saved up and bought an old Ford for £20 so that I could go into Parkes on a Saturday night instead of walking, if I could not get a lift.

In addition to labouring on the farm, every Friday I was expected to do the housework. I felt like a servant doing the dusting and vacuuming – I hated it and it’s one of the reasons that I left Parkes. However, before I left, I met the owner’s niece when she came from Sydney to stay for a few days. She was engaged but did not want to stay in Sydney as she loved the country. She broke off her engagement and moved to Dubbo. We started to court each other and in 1964 we married in Sydney at St. Phillip’s Anglican Church. I was just 20 years old.

After living in Narromine for a while, where I worked as a farm labourer, we decided to move to Sydney. I got a job as a forklift driver at the Kellogg’s Factory in Botany and we rented a house in nearby Mascot. I worked from 7am-3pm with an hour off for lunch and I couldn’t believe how much time I had on my hands. It was such a contrast to the 12-hour days of physical exhaustion on the farm. I was able to do overtime at the factory and earn some extra money. Within six months I was promoted to Foreman and then Leading Hand. I went to night school and got a certificate in Industrial Supervision.

My wife was working but keen to start a family. After four years of hard work, we’d saved enough for the deposit on our first home. We bought a place in Pennant Hills in 1968, which was then on the rural fringe of Sydney. We both preferred it to Mascot, as it felt like the country. The only drawback was that it took me an hour and ten minutes to drive to work at Kellogg’s in our Volkswagen.

I was working the night shift, and when our son was born in 1969, it was hard for me to get any sleep at home during the day. Kellogg’s wouldn’t let me swap to the day shift, so I started looking for other work. I saw an advertisement in the paper for a floor sander, so I decided to give that a go. I liked it, as it gave me flexible hours, so I borrowed against our house and bought a share of the business. When the owner retired within 12 months, I bought him out and started working weekends to pay off the loan and was able to make a good living.

Soon after this, my family decided to migrate to Australia after living in Canada for a while. My brother, had already immigrated with the BBM in 1967 and was working in Narromine. My parents decided to live in Adelaide as it was the closest city to Harts Range, where my father got a job as a radio technician at the tracking station. We visited them in Adelaide and liked it – Adelaide was much quieter and cheaper than Sydney and had a country feel. We decided to sell our house and business and move south. We then welcomed another beautiful son and daughter into our family.

I bought a business delivering orange juice, but within six months I hurt my back. All the previous years of back breaking work on the land had finally caught up with me and I needed a laminectomy on my spine. The surgery was my body’s way of telling me that it was time to find a less physically demanding job.

My neighbour worked at the Juvenile Training Centre in Adelaide. He suggested that I do a trial shift there and I found that I liked to the work. I got a permanent job as a Residential Care Worker and they kept promoting me until I was the security manager for the whole facility. Perhaps it was my own experiences of being lonely and having learning difficulties as a child that helped me to empathise with the teenage boys. I partially completed a social work degree while I was working there, which gave me a theoretical framework to better understand the boys. I worked there for 40 years and retired when I was 75 years old.

To help me recover from the back surgery, I went to the gym and took up running and aerobics. I loved it so much that I trained to be an aerobics instructor, which is how I met Julie. She was working as an instructor at another location and we both entered the first aerobic marathon at the Adelaide Grand Prix. After eight hours (with just a ten-minute break every hour), we were still standing with 10 other people from our gym. Through our exertions, we earned a citation in The Guiness Book of Records!! We fell in love and after much soul searching and lots of emotional pain, we divorced our partners and have now been happily married for 36 years.

Our garden that I enjoyed working in, c. 2014.

We’ve been through some testing times. On 3 January 2015, we lost everything in the Black Saturday bushfires that swept through the Adelaide Hills. We were away on holidays and could see the smoke from the coast, but we couldn’t get back to save anything. We had insurance, but it was soul destroying to have to start all over again at 70 years of age and we still bear the emotional scars. Not long after the fire, I was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and had to have radical surgery. It would seem that the extreme trauma and stress from the fire may have had some bearing on my illness. With lots of help and love from family, friends, and even complete strangers, we set to work to get our lives back together again.

Our home and part of our extensive garden in the Adelaide Hills after the bushfires, 2015.

When I was 77 years old, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. There is some medical evidence that the chemicals I was exposed to on the farm might have increased my risk of getting Parkinson’s.

After the fire we moved into a beautiful retirement village near the Adelaide Hills. I still enjoy working in our beautiful garden and playing with our dog. My children and two step children have all done well in their chosen careers and I have seven grandchildren and one great grandson. I never felt the need to go back to England, particularly once my family moved out to Australia.

There’s no cure for Parkinson’s, but with medications and my Julie by my side, I’m able to manage the symptoms. Looking back, I’m glad I made the decision to come out to Australia when I was just 15 years old. It’s been a hell of a journey but I am grateful for all the experiences that have made me who I am today.

My wife Julie and I at a BBM reunion in Adelaide, 2025.