It was April 1981 and my mother and father had taken the great decision they thought at the time to up sticks and take the family to Australia. We were a family of 7, 5 children, my mum and dad. My eldest sister, Patricia was at university at the time so she stayed on. So it was up the remaining 6, we were to make the journey to Sydney. I had an uncle e had been out there since 72 and so in April 81 was the time that we left. I always remember we left at a time when there was a load of civil strife and unrest in Northern Ireland and there was a backdrop of the hunger strikes, we were right in the throws of it. We left Ireland in April and we stayed in London en route and got to Australia in the start of May and we were there three or four days when Bobby Sands the first hunger striker died, so I can always remember that really well. And every time there’s a hunger striker anniversary I always remember that was the week or time period that our lives changed forever, whenever we emigrated as a family.
Went out there, I was 13 years of age. I had a younger brother Sean and he fitted in fairly quickly. I had an older sister Margaret who was 17, she could adapt anywhere, and the fact she is still out there is testimony to that. But I had an older brother Colm, who was 15. And Colm for all intensive purposes was not a happy chappy, all of a sudden waking up one morning in Sydney. To the degree that he really struggled to fit in and make an effort. I suppose it was a pretty bad time, it’s a horrendous time in anyone’s life at that age, in terms of puberty and maturing. But Colm had the added factor that he was ten thousand miles away from where he wanted to be, which was Derry and Northern Ireland.
So we were at school and he was tolerating anybody and everybody but he got a part time job on a Saturday in a supermarket. And if you know Colm you’d know work would be the last thing he would have wanted but I think he was under pressure from my mother and father to take this job. In Australia back in those days, Thursday was the late night shopping and Saturday morning, so if you were still at school those are days you worked. So on a Thursday after school he would have gone to the supermarket and on Saturday morning he would have got up and got himself down to the train station.
So one Saturday morning he went to the train station and queued up. The stop was three stops away from where we lived and it was a place, and I’ll have to spell it; M I NT O, minto. But as you’ll here that’s not the way the natives pronounce it. So Colm landed down to the train station, 8 o clock in the morning. Colm would not have been the best in the mornings anyway and still isn’t but was not very good this particular morning. So he queues for his ticket and the ticket clerk is behind the window and he asks can I help and Colm says, Can i have a child return to Minto. And the guy behind the desk, in an Australian accent that I’m not the best at doing but he says, Pardon mate? And again Colm says Can I have a child return to Minto. Now at this stage there is a bit of a queue starting to form behind them and theres three or four people looking to see if the trains on its way, knowing if you miss this one you’re going to have to wait an hour for the next one. So the ticket guy is shaking the head saying Pardon?...Sorry?... and so again Colm, as thick as you like said, Can I have a child return to Minto? And the guy ends up losing the head and there’s 30 people behind them in the queue and the guy picks up a map of the railway system in Australia and says to Colm, point to where you wanna go! So Colm reluctantly pointed to Minto. To which the ticket guy replied, Oh Minnno, Why didn’t you say that mate?! To which Colm threw him a couple of dollars, turned on his heels and walked away.
So if there’s an abiding memory of mine, of emigration, and moving to Sydney and 1981 and being somewhere you didn’t want to be its story of Colm and Minto.
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