by Liz Harfull
Meanwhile, adding to the chaos of an expanding family were the number of serving men who frequently stayed with the Turners while on leave, camping on the lounge room floor. They included distant cousins from the United States and Canada, who were stationed nearby. At times the children had to bunk in together—two facing one way, and three the other in the one bed. For a month or so, Doris even took in two children evacuated from London’s East End to escape the intensive bombing that decimated much of the city and killed thousands.
Food was scarce in Britain because of the difficulty getting supplies past enemy patrols and the rationing system introduced to make sure the populace didn’t starve, but the Turners had a productive home vegetable garden, chickens, rabbits and their own house cow. Ted was not above supplementing the table with the odd deer or pheasant poached from the old royal hunting grounds, and every now and then there was some illicit pork.
Government authorities continually checked how many pigs farmers stocked because under wartime regulations every animal had to be sold direct to the Ministry of Food. But whenever a sow delivered piglets, Ted would hide one before the inspector came round. Once it had grown, the pig was taken to a neighbour’s farm to be killed and smoked, and the meat was shared. One day the inspector came to the house and stood in the open door of the kitchen, chatting to a nervous Doris, little realising that half a pig was hanging on the other side. The story entered into family folklore, but it was a sign of the ever-expanding British bureaucracy that eventually pushed Ted into making a momentous decision.
6
THE NEW CHUMS
Ted Turner had contemplated emigrating to Australia since he was a young man. Now married with a large family, it wasn’t just about seeking adventure. His landholding was small, money was always short, and he had his childrens’ futures to consider. War, and all the rules and regulations that came with it, proved to be the tipping point.
As a farmer Ted found himself responsible to a new Ministry of Food and a county War Agricultural Executive Committee that told him how and what to farm. They even threatened to give his land to a neighbour when he found it difficult to increase production while working nights as a spotter. There were no signs the bureaucracy was decreasing after the war ended—if anything it seemed to be getting worse—so Ted submitted an application to Australia House in London.
One of the first obstacles he had to overcome to qualify for the Australian government’s new emigration scheme, and assisted passage for his large family, was finding a sponsor or guarantor. Salvation appeared in the form of relatives who wanted to sell their dairy farm at Manjimup in Western Australia and retire. They would act as guarantors if Ted agreed to purchase their farm, house and livestock for the princely sum of £2000. For an additional £1000 they would even stay on and look after things until the Turners could get there.
Ted accepted the offer and sold the Wootton house and most of his land, only to discover it was going to take more time for the bureaucratic processes to run their course than he realised. The older girls moved in with Iris, who was living in a cottage some distance away, but Ted was desperate to find temporary accommodation for himself and Doris, and their six youngest children, so he called on mates at the Wootton Working Men’s Club. In a single weekend, volunteers laid cement foundations and put up a Nissen hut on a small patch of land that Ted still owned. It was very basic but at least it was a roof over their heads. Privacy was limited, with curtains strung on lines the only partition between various living spaces, and the children all slept in the same bed. Their belongings had to be kept in cardboard boxes because there was no storage, and instead of the modern kitchen Doris was used to, there was a coke-fired stove in the middle of the hut to cook on and keep them warm.
The Monday after the working bee, officials from the local council turned up and told Ted to pull the hut down—he didn’t have the required planning approvals. Over the coming weeks as Ted tried to straighten things out, five different officials showed up at various times just to check the foundations. Fortunately, his solicitor managed to hold the line for the year or so that it took for the Turners to be allocated tickets aboard one of the government ships heading to Australia. Ted spoke freely of his frustrations to a reporter from the local newspaper who wrote about the family shortly before they set sail. ‘Only yesterday someone said it would be rather odd to go to Australia in order to get a house, but at least that is one way of doing it!’ he is quoted as saying. ‘At least I have the consolation of knowing that we shall be far away from building inspectors where we are going . . . We shall have room to spread our wings there.’
The article appeared with photos of the family taken outside the hut. Forty-six years of age and used to physical labour, Ted is leaning against the wall, blond head bare, cigarette dangling from the fingers of one hand while the other rests in a trouser pocket. He is looking straight at the camera, wearing a determined expression. Just one year younger, Doris stands alongside him nursing Mavis. About five foot six, still slim despite having given birth to so many children, with dark brown eyes and hair, it’s hard to distinguish her in age from her oldest daughters—people often mistook them for sisters. Her ready smile isn’t apparent in the photo, but the rest of the family make up for it in a separate image. The eldest child, Lorna, is the only one missing—recently married, she and her husband had decided to stay. The rest are crowded together in the garden, looking happy about the prospect of a new life in Western Australia, especially thirteen-year-old Peter who is wearing a cheeky grin.
News of the Turners’ impending arrival was soon picked up by several papers in Australia. As one of the largest families to migrate under what was known colloquially as the Ten Pound Pom scheme, they were ‘pin-ups’ for the success of a concerted effort by the post-war Labor government to attract a minimum of 70,000 immigrants every year by offering free or assisted passage. The government had even set up a new, separate ministerial portfolio for immigration to help drive the initiative and placed it in the hands of Arthur Calwell. He promoted it relentlessly, pushing the slogan ‘populate or perish’.
A staunch advocate of the White Australia Policy, Calwell was particularly keen to attract people from Britain. Just twelve months before, he had issued a press statement announcing that the government had organised extra shipping, including the Empire Brent. Built in the 1920s as an ocean liner, she sailed the Atlantic before being requisitioned by the Royal Navy. After the war she was sold to the British Ministry of Transport, who set her to work ferrying war brides to Canada. By 1948 she had been reassigned to carry migrants to Australia.
The Turners were allocated berths on the first of four trips made by the Empire Brent in 1949. They were scheduled to sail towards the end of winter, from Glasgow on the east coast of Scotland. That meant travelling first of all to Waterloo railway station in London where they caught the famous Flying Scotsman to Edinburgh, more than 600 kilometres away. Another train took them to the port where they found themselves among 967 passengers being shepherded aboard, carrying just enough clothes for the journey and a few personal possessions.
The Turners’ household goods were packed into large wooden crates and stored in the hold. They weren’t taking much because they didn’t think it possible. They gave away most of the contents of their house, keeping mainly household linen, some kapok mattresses, a cherished set of Willow pattern china and some cooking utensils. ‘Mum found out when she got here that she could have brought a lot more with her, but she didn’t know that, you see. Actually, Mum and Dad didn’t look into things enough—they just assumed,’ Wendy confesses.
The Empire Brent set sail for Australia on 8 February. It took six weeks to cover more than 14,000 kilometres to the Western Australian port of Fremantle, travelling no faster than sixteen knots (thirty kilometres) per hour, which was the ship’s top speed. On board, the family found themselves split up to accommodate the logistics of squeezing in as many people as possible. Along with all the other males,
Ted and the three boys, including four-year-old Richard, were assigned bunks in the hold, a huge open area that looked little different to when the ship had been a troop carrier. Doris and the six girls found themselves in a small cabin above the waterline. They shared it with two other families, separated by temporary partitions. Wendy counted herself lucky because she scored a top bunk with a porthole. ‘I was spoilt,’ she admits.
As they settled in, the Turners realised most of their fellow passengers were Scottish, which influenced the journey in ways they hadn’t expected. Porridge was served for breakfast every morning, with the Scots eating it the traditional way, with salt, much to the children’s disgust. In a concession to their English tastes, they were allowed honey and sugar. The distinctive sound of bagpipes often drifted through the ship too. While most of the children failed to appreciate this musical bonus, over the coming days they unwittingly absorbed the rolled R’s and burrs of the voices they were surrounded by, leaving the ship with distinct Scottish accents.
The novelty of ship life soon wore thin as the weeks dragged on, although the crew did their best to keep passengers entertained with concerts, fancy dress competitions and movie nights, even if it did mean showing the same small selection of films over and over again. One of them was The Overlanders, starring laconic Australian actor Chips Rafferty. It told the story of a family setting out from their cattle station with a large mob of cattle, trying to escape the imminent invasion of northern Australia by the Japanese. Along the way they faced extreme heat and water shortages, crocodile-infested rivers, horses dying from eating poisonous weeds and a stampede. Until seeing the movie, Wendy thought she was heading to a place remarkably similar to the New Forest. It came as a bit of a shock. ‘I thought, if that’s what Australia looks like, I don’t want to go there!’ she says.
Things became a bit more interesting for everyone on board when the Empire Brent reached Egypt and passed through the Suez Canal, offering exotic views of camels and sweeping sand dunes. Taking advantage of the ship docking at Port Said, Iris, who was twenty-two and the oldest sibling on the trip, went ashore with eighteen-year-old Doreen. They were accompanied by a couple of male passengers, who had to rescue Iris from being led away by a stranger. If that wasn’t heart-stopping enough, they only just made it back to the ship before it sailed. But it is the moment when her baby sister Mavis was almost lost overboard that is seared into Wendy’s memory. ‘They used to stack the life rafts on the deck, level with the rail,’ she explains. ‘Someone took the baby off me to show her to a friend, and they sat her on a raft. The boat dipped into a wave and she started to roll off, over the side. One bloke grabbed her by the clothes—if he hadn’t, she would have gone in!’
Meanwhile, the captain and crew of the Empire Brent were having adventures of their own. In the Mediterranean, a passenger became seriously ill and the ship had to make an unscheduled stop at Gibraltar so she could be taken ashore. Another family had to depart at Suez after a five-year-old boy fell from a top bunk and broke his arm while trying to catch a glimpse of the native hawkers pulling alongside the ship. Then in the Red Sea, the vessel made a detour to rescue a lighthouse keeper on the volcanic island of Jabal al-Tair. According to newspaper reports, the Maltese man had been there for twenty-four years and was due to be relieved when he suffered heart trouble. The over-worked ship’s surgeon was sent ashore in a lifeboat to see what he could do.
The various delays meant the Empire Brent sailed into Gage Roads, the main shipping lane leading into the port of Fremantle, later than expected and had to wait overnight until a berth became available. The delay must have been frustrating for those on board. Anxious for the first glimpse of Australia, the Turners stood at the railing, looking towards the coastline. One of the first things they noticed was huge clouds of smoke, which John thought looked like plumes from an atomic bomb explosion. The cause was a series of bushfires, some started by accident and others part of an official burn-off season that began earlier in the week.
The Empire Brent finally docked at Fremantle on 11 March 1949, thirty-two days after leaving Glasgow. Most of the passengers were staying on board for ports on Australia’s east coast, but 122 others joined the Turners in going ashore that day. Wendy remembers there being ‘a lot of fuss’, with the media anxious to catch up with them because of the size of the family. They had just been pipped to becoming the largest family to arrive in Australia under the Ten Pound Pom scheme. That honour went to the Davis family, with thirteen children and a couple of son-in-laws, who had passed through Fremantle on their way to Melbourne in late January. But the Turners were Western Australia’s own, and local reporters wanted to tell their story.
From the docks, the new band of migrants were taken by bus to Point Walter, where a migrant holding camp had been set up the year before, overlooking the city of Perth and the Swan River. Wendy loved it. There was a beach nearby and palm trees, and people bought the children ice-creams, quite a luxury in Britain because of ongoing food rationing. ‘We had a great time,’ Wendy says.
Despite basic facilities, the migrant camp was luxurious compared with what the Turners discovered after climbing down from their new neighbour’s Maple Leaf truck on the farm at Manjimup in the isolated south-west of the state. The perils of buying a property sight unseen quickly became apparent. Most of the sixty-four hectares had not been cleared and were heavily infested with rabbits. The dairy herd was in a terrible state, made up of scraggly cows that were at the end of their productive lives and gave very little milk. And then there was the old weatherboard house meant to provide a home for eleven people. Although it had been spruced up in anticipation of their arrival, there were only four rooms, there was no electricity, no plumbing and the toilet was out in the backyard. According to John, it was all too much for his normally stoic mother, who indulged in ‘a good crying session’.
Wendy does not remember this, and by all accounts Doris’s tears didn’t last long. After the initial shock had worn off, she apparently decided what was done was done and there was no point in complaining. ‘She was a wonderful woman,’ Wendy says. ‘My mum always laughed, always joked, never got sad. She never got cross—she used to get disappointed but she never got cross. I never ever saw Mum cry in my life but she probably did,’ Wendy says. ‘My sisters were so upset when they saw the house, and I think Mum was, too.’
One of the first issues that occupied Doris’s mind was where everyone was going to sleep. There were only two small bedrooms. Ted and Doris took one of those, the other was assigned to the girls, while the boys found themselves sleeping under a tarpaulin on the front verandah or in the old creamery not far from the house. Less than three metres from side to side, the square timber structure offered just enough room for two small beds and a gramophone. Peter slept on an old wire bed with a horse-hair mattress, while John made do with a kapok mattress placed over some boards suspended between two apple boxes.
Covered in a huge rambling rosebush, the creamery looked picturesque enough, except that it had a gap at floor level all the way around to create airflow. The gap was originally covered with flywire but it had long since rusted away. The boys weren’t too worried about this until they discovered a large snake was living under the rosebush. Taking matters in hand, Doris decided she would tempt the snake out with saucers of milk and then kill it. About ten years old at the time, John was ready to help. When the snake appeared as it started to get dark, he armed himself with an axe. ‘When he got close, he changed his mind and he threw the axe, and it chopped the tail off. Well, the snake shot straight up in the air and we all ran for our lives,’ recounts Wendy. ‘It did these big loops and went back into the rosebush.’ Not surprisingly, the boys didn’t want to sleep in the creamery that night but the next evening Ted came to the rescue, catching the snake with a long length of wire.
The house had two verandahs, one at the front and another at the back which was partially closed in to create a tiny kitchen. There was just enough space to squeeze i
n a small working table alongside a green-enamelled Metters wood stove, and a larger dining table in front of a long bench, with a kitchen chair at each end.
At the other end of the verandah was another enclosed area, about the same size, that served as the bathroom. It housed a big tin bath but there was no plumbing except for a pipe to remove the waste water. The house had two small rainwater tanks to supply water for drinking and cooking; water for bathing and washing clothes had to be carried up from the creek in large milk cans borrowed from the dairy, and then heated in a copper. In summer, the creek would start to dry up so the water was collected from its deeper pools. It was not unusual for the children to find twigs, leaves, and even leeches and the occasional frog floating past them in the bath.
Six days a week, everyone would make do with a quick wash, standing in a small amount of water—an operation that moved into the lounge room, in front of a big open fire, during the winter. Bath night proper came round every Saturday. The youngest children would go first. Doris would put a small amount of rainwater in the bottom of the bath and use the best Lux soap to wash the babies. Creek water and a splash of Dettol antiseptic liquid were added in batches as the older children took their turns, making do with harsher Lifebuoy soap to wash their hair. ‘I used to have long hair, all curls, and Mum used to wash it for me and pour a jug of rainwater over my head,’ says Wendy. Ted came last. By then the bath would be full of muddy water smelling strongly of antiseptic.
The outside of the house was creosoted in an attempt to stop the timber being attacked by termites, but it was only partially successful. Doris ended up making a series of intricate rugs woven out of scraps of material to cover holes in the floors, where the damage was the worst. ‘Neighbours would come over to say hello and she would tell them not to stand on the mats,’ recalls Wendy. ‘They thought she was being house proud, but it was because there was a hole under every single one and she didn’t want them to break a leg!’