Windsor Davis

Ship name / Flight number: Oronsay

Arrival Date: 09/01/1953

I was born in Tredegar, south Wales, on Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1935. My parents met in London, but my mother was from Wales and they moved back there before I was born. The house her father built is called ‘Parkview’ and it’s still there. We grew into a large family – I had three older sisters and two younger brothers.

In 1939, my older sister Marion and I were playing outside on the train line. I went inside to go to the toilet and a coal train came along. Marion couldn’t get out of the way in time and she lost three of her fingers on one hand. After that accident, we moved to London and I started kindergarten at Teasdale School.

In 1940, when London was being bombed by the Luftwaffe, I was evacuated with thousands of other children and went to stay with families in the country. My sister Marion and I were sent to live in Peterborough. We stayed with a nice family, but then Marion became ill and my mother came to take her back to London. I remember going to sleep with my mother and sister in the same bed, and then waking up in the morning and they were gone. I cried all day, because I wanted to be with them.

Later in the war, I was sent to live with a different family in Cheshire. There was a big army camp in nearby Delamere Park and up to 15,000 American troops were housed there. They would host dances every Friday and Saturday night, and I’d go and watch them waltz and jive. I learnt to dance as a teenager and loved it. When I went back to the UK on a holiday nearly 50 years later, I met one of the ladies who lived in the same street as I did in Cheshire. Even though she was now in her 90s, she remembered me and was so pleased to see me again. When I returned to Australia, I rang her every year until she died. I know she appreciated this.

I remember the end of the war – I was living in Bethnal Green, east London again, with my family, and there was a big party in our street. Someone dragged a piano out into the street and my father played and everyone danced. My father was deemed medically unfit for war service due to his poor hearing, so he joined the local volunteer fire brigade.

After finishing school at the age 15, I got a job in the upholstery factory where my father worked as a machinist. I was earning 37 shillings and sixpence a week. When I learnt that my mate was getting £5 a week at the Kensington Tobacco factory, I quit and got a job there instead! I worked on the conveyor belt, checking the tobacco leaves before they went into the hopper. The dust was awful, but it smelt beautiful.

Once I turned 16 years old, I was given a packet of ten cigarettes each week. I sold them to my father for a shilling and used the money to go to the pictures on a Saturday. I never smoked in my life. When I got my first annual bonus of £10, I took my mother to the pictures and bought her a bar of chocolate. She was a dear old duck.

I knew that I didn’t want to work in a factory for the rest of my life, and I remembered one of my school teachers, Mr Burns, telling us how wonderful Australia was with all its sunshine and wide, open spaces. I became really interested in it, so when I was 17, I went and enquired about coming to Australia with the BBM.

I sailed on the new ocean-liner, the SS Oronsay, in 1952. I arrived in Sydney at the height of summer and went to the BBM training farm before being sent to work for Mr. J.W. Woods in Narromine. I started work on his farm, ‘Bulga’, the day after my 18th birthday. It was not a good start to my new life in Australia.

When we got to his farm, he took me to the shearing shed to show me where I’d be living. I walked into the shed and there was nothing in there except for an iron bed frame with no mattress. There was a chaff bag and no sheets. This made me really homesick.

A couple of weeks later, a BBM officer called in to see how I was going, and I told him I was leaving. When he saw my living conditions, he understood. The BBM stopped sending Little Brothers to work for Mr Woods after that.

After a few days back at the training farm in Homebush, I was sent to work for Mr G. McAllister on his farm ‘Strathcona’, which was about 20 miles outside of Finley. It was a lovely farm, and I lived in a comfortable double room shed. After a couple of weeks, I was joined by another Little Brother, John Owen, and we have remained friends ever since.

Windsor on a horse, c.1964

I stayed at ‘Strathcona’ for about six months, but I really wanted to go dancing more often, and it was difficult to do that when the farm was so far from the town, and we worked 7 days/week. I told Mr McAllister I was leaving and John decided to leave too.

I found a boarding house in Finley, and I got a labouring job at the Water Commission. For the next ten years, when I wasn’t dancing or sleeping, I dug trenches and helped to build the irrigation channels to bring water from the Murray-Darling River system to the farms around Finley.

On 2 June 1953, the night of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in London, I went to a ball in Finley. I was a good dancer, having had lots of practice at the clubs in London. At the ball, a young local lass who was watching me waltz came up to me and said: “I haven’t had a dance with you yet”. She was hinting that I should ask her to dance, which I did. Her name was Heather and we’ve been together for the past 71 years. We were the first couple to be married at the new Methodist Church in Finley, on 7 May, 1954. We loved dancing together, and for five years we taught the debutantes in Finley how to dance prior to their ‘coming out’ ball.

After a decade with the Water Commission, I took a job as a builders’ labourer, helping to build the new high school in Finley. When that was finished, a couple of blokes from the local football club asked if I would like to erect a fence around the football ground to stop the balls escaping. I put up about 2 km of wire fencing. It was good to be my own boss on this job.

After the football ground, I moved to managing the local swimming pool. I looked after the grounds and kept the water hygienic with the right amount of chemicals. I learnt to swim in England and was always a good swimmer. In 1954 I competed in an army swimming carnival and beat the other swimmers by a full length in the 600-yard race.

My next job was as the green-keeper at the Finley Golf Club. I worked there for 27 years. During this time, I also raised and sold pigs that were given to me by John Owen, the Little Brother I worked with at ‘Strathcona’. John had married Mavis and bought a farm about 15 kilometres outside of Finley. I did everything for him – concreting the dairy, fencing, and setting up the pig stye. When John sold his farm, he gave the dairy cows to his son and the pigs to me. I had five sows, one boar, and lots of piglets. I’d fatten them up and sell them at the markets in Shepparton.

Windsor and his mother, c.1964

In 1995, when I was riding a motorbike around the golf course holding the hose to spray fertiliser on the grass, part of the hose got stuck in some trees, and I was jerked up into the air and landed on my backside. I hobbled home, took some Panadol, and went back to work. The pain didn’t ease up so my wife drove me to the doctor and he ordered some tests which showed that I had shattered three discs in my lower back. The orthopaedic specialist said that I wouldn’t be able to continue in my job, or work on machinery again, so I was forced to give the job away. I was only 60 years old. I still have the watch they gave me as a retirement present.

I have some good days and some bad days with my back. I love working in my garden, but by lunchtime, I need to sit down. I grow flowers in the front garden and have some tubs for vegetables. It keeps me busy. I can’t walk that far now.

Heather and I have three children. Phillip, our youngest, was born ten years after our son, Tony; and daughter, Jenny. We are fortunate to have three children who all live in or near Finley, 10 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.

My mother came to visit from the UK when Phillip was born in 1964. She visited another four times and we’ve also been back to the UK on four holidays. My two younger brothers immigrated to Australia, along with one of my sisters.

I came to Finley when I was 18 years old, and I’ve lived here since then. In the 1950s and 1960s, everyone in town knew each other and there were always children playing in our street. Now, there’s lots of strangers in town and there’s no children in the street.

Once I moved on from my first farm job in Australia, I have never looked back. If I had my life again, I’d do the same.