How long have you lived here?
Forty-four years [with an air of pride and satisfaction].
That's a long time. Can you tell me about where you used to live before you lived here?
I used to live in Mount Isa in Queensland and in Sydney and of course in Austria. I was born in Austria, in Vienna. When I was 22 years old, I decided to go for a trip but because there was not much money around in these days for the young people. And so these migrant things came up. And so I applied for that and in a very short time I got accepted and I remember still when I was at the
immigration office, it was cold, it was February/March, I had the opportunity to go to either Australia or Canada but it was such a cold winter I thought, oh no, I'd better go to Australia. So I had to make a statement that I would stay for two years and I thought all right two years, I will learn a bit of English and then I will come home again.
But you didn't come back.
No. And in one week I had to report to Salzburg and on the boat on the first year I went to Australia, first to Sydney. We were five single girls on the boat. All other ones were already brides to be because there were many young men here and they all went, 50 percent went back because they couldn't get ...
A female partner?
No girls! And the food was, the worst thing for the young was, and especially for the Polish people too, that they didn't get the rye bread. This white bread wasn't for them. This was a big obstacle.
I prefer rye bread. I don't like white bread at all. One of the best things for me about Denmark was the bread. It was just the sort of bread I liked.
You had a lot of rye bread too there.
Yes the black bread.
So they encouraged the young girls to go there but not so many young girls by themselves wanted to go so far as Australia. So, we was so quick.
Was this just after the war?
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And then I ended up with a Jewish family actually from Vienna. I should have come in a children's home because I used to be a kindergarten teacher. But this lady found out I came from Vienna and they were rich people in Vienna and they had housemaids and cooks and everything. And she wasn't a good cook or whatever, and she thought I was a good cook, everybody what comes from Vienna, but I never was cooking much at home either because, you know, my mother cooked.
But you are a good cook aren't you?
I don't know. I don't know.
You cook!
I have to cook! I have to cook! Now for the first time I don't have to cook for anybody, it lasts two months. So I just cook for myself. And of course I met my husband to be on the boat already, and then in Sydney, I got my first baby in Sydney, in Queensland. We went, from one day to the next, we said all right, we're going to Mt Isa. There was a lot of money there and we stayed in a tent [laughing]
there was no houses available.
With the baby?
With the baby in a tent, and you know when the cyclone comes and the water comes, over night it was flooded, oh yes, I had to put everything up. My husband couldn't get job in the mine, so he had to go to Darwin. And I stayed in Mt Isa, but there were only houses available for the people who worked in the mine and so I couldn't get one, no private houses, nothing; so I stayed with the baby on the verandah in the YMCA hostel and only in the verandah because everything was full up. It was the wet season. And we had to, people who lived in the farm when they were pregnant, they couldn't get a doctor go to Mt Isa, so one month before the baby was due they had send them to Mt Isa and that hostel, so they could stay until the baby arrived because there was no flying doctor much or something around, you know when the flood is you can't go through, so that I stayed there nearly for two years.
So there was a special hostel for people who had babies?
Had babies or expecting. You know they put me in because I had nowhere to stay.
And how old was your baby?
He was born in November and that was about March. I used to think [inaudible] in the tent first, but it was in the single men‟s quarter I stayed in the tent, but I done the washing in the single men‟s quarter and once the shirts and the supervisor came around and chucked me out, said you can't stay here. I wasn't allowed to stay in the tent, so I had to go to Mt Isa and I stayed in that hostel, so I got through that.
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Yeah, and then we came to Sydney and again we went down to Sydney again but the housing was so expensive and I was pregnant again and with the baby and with a two year old boy nobody gave you accommodation at this time. And it was already very expensive also. So my other brother he lived here, just down the road and he said, oh in Tasmania there are so many shacks because the Polish people they built those shacks here and then they built a house next to it. And that's the shack here and that's where we lived [indicates the shack outside].
Okay. Show me later.
Yah, and so actually, we were happy. I was on my own the block of land and the shack and later on we started to build without money and I know I had to borrow $9 for the foundation for the concrete because we needed one yard more. They had exactly the money but I had to borrow nine pound. So that's why we didn't built very big. We had only four children.
So it sounds like you had all your children quite quickly.
I had six in seven years and then I had a break. And then I had [name removed], the youngest, just after.
So you have seven all together?
But I lost one drowning in the sea [voice drops] … just, we had just finished it in the New Year, and then eight days later we went to the beach, Roaring Beach. It was such a great beach and nobody there. It's a very dangerous beach isn't it?
But we didn't know this.
So which boy was this?
It was the first boy after the three girls.
So the one who was out here [in the flat out the back]?
No the eldest boy one. He moved over there. He was already 12 years old, and then we had another one ... We thought we'd build on the kitchen and make a big sunroom and everything but then we didn't.
So you had four boys and three girls?