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The news photos—the bulky container ship straddled across the straight blue gash cut through yellow sands—prompted memories of my wonder and curiosity when, as an eight-year-old in June 1956, I gazed down from the deck of the P&O liner Strathaird at those sandy banks along the Suez Canal. I knew little of the world beyond the urban slums of northern England. Knew nothing of the lives, cultures, languages of the peoples I saw on my family's journey aboard that migrant ship from England to Australia. Knew not that the opportunities awaiting us in Australia were inextricably linked to the color of my skin.
I have long since lost the insulated comfort of that naivete.
All of the passengers on the Strathaird were white, beneficiaries of the Immigration Restriction Act (a.k.a. White Australia Policy), the law passed in 1901, when separate British colonies became the independent Commonwealth of Australia. Non-Europeans would be barred from citizenship by a dictation test in any European language of the government's choosing. In 1945, in a push to “Populate or Perish,” Australia began the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme to encourage British immigration, providing passage for only ten pounds per adult. Postwar austerity, ongoing rationing, and extreme class rigidity led many British working families to uproot themselves and seek a better life on the other side of the world. Would-be immigrants were required to have a trade or profession, promise of a job, or a sponsoring family. My young parents, having no skills, money, friends, or family in Australia, found a sponsoring family in Geraldton, a small rural town on the Indian Ocean coast, three hundred miles north of Perth. There began our “better life.”