David Reid

Ship name / Flight number: BA 591

Arrival date: 21/01/1971

I was born on 23 April 1954 in St John’s hospital in Keighley, West Yorkshire. It was a Friday. I was 11 pounds 12 ounces – the size of an average six month old baby. My poor mother was only just over five foot tall.

I have two younger siblings – a sister born just 17 months after me, and then a brother born four years and four days after me. Tragically, my father died in 1958, just one month before my brother was born. He had served in the second world war. When he joined the army, he was deemed to be very healthy according to his medical report, but when he came home, he had a bad heart, which contributed to his early death. My mother was given a War Widow’s Pension.

Even with the pension, money was tight at home. I remember we shared an outside toilet with eight other families in our cobblestone street. In the early 1960s we moved from our terrace house to some new high-rise flats that the council had built for public housing.

I enjoyed school and was good at carpentry but, like most working-class boys, I had to leave when I was 15 years old to support my family.

I had four unskilled jobs in quick succession – firstly I worked at a textile mill earning £4/10 per week, but I didn’t like getting out of bed before dawn, so I tossed that in for a job at the supermarket. This had better hours, but after a disagreement with the supervisor, who was only 12 months older than me but liked to lord it over people, I went to work for a papermill making cardboard tubes to roll the textiles around. It was a very formal workplace where you had to address everyone by their surname – I felt like I was back at school! Finally, I worked at Enduro re-moulding tyres where I earned good money, but by then I had been accepted by the BBM to go to Australia. The boss was sad to see me go and gave me a good reference.

In the 1960s, it seemed like every other ad on TV was about how good life was in Australia. I tried to convince my mum to immigrate with her three children, but she wasn’t keen. My Scottish neighbour encouraged me to go by myself. He showed me some info about the British Boys Movement (which is what the Big Brother Movement was sometimes called I the UK) and I applied and was accepted. I was 16 years old and I’d never left west Yorkshire, so even going to London by train was an adventure! I stayed in the YMCA in London before boarding British Airways flight 591 with 18 other ‘Little Brothers’. I was surprised to find another lad from Keighley on the same flight. We didn’t bond over our shared geography as he was three years older than me.

We landed in Sydney in the middle of summer on 21 January 1971. Mr Mansell met us at the airport and we went to stay at the hostel in Burwood for a few days. The manager there insisted that we were out of the hostel by 8am and didn’t return until after 5pm. We had nothing to do, so we rode on the old red rattlers (trains) all day, never paying for a ticket.

After a couple of days, I was sent to the Calmsley Hills training farm. I thought the Scottish employee there was a bully and a conman. He wanted us to gamble playing cards in the evening and since we didn’t have any money, he’d take anything that was valuable when we lost. I had a gold ring that was given to me by my aunty that he took. If you challenged him, he threatened you. I was a big lad, over 6 foot tall, so I tried to stand up to him, but I lived in fear of walking around a corner and finding him ready to pounce.

The following week, Mr Mansell visited the farm and I asked to talk with him. I didn’t want to be a dobber and I knew I’d cop it if the Scottish employee thought I was grassing him up. Luckily, Mr Mansell was sensitive to this and made up an excuse about forgetting his briefcase so we could get away from the farm for a quiet chat. When I told him what was happening, he arranged for me to be quickly transferred to work on the Camden Park Estate at Menangle. This was the largest dairy farm in the southern hemisphere (at the time). It had a new rotary machine which could milk 900 cows in record speed, twice a day. However, it felt more like working on a factory than a farm, as I had to punch my card and clock in and out every day.

At Menangle, I stayed at a local guesthouse run my Mrs Burton. A couple of other ‘Little brothers’ were boarding there. I met Peter Wrinch who hated Australia and was saving his money so that after his two years, he could afford to go back to the UK. On the other hand, Keith Moran loved it and we were soon fast friends – in more ways than one. He had recently acquired his driver’s license and a car and he’d drive us too fast into town.

One day, in February 1971, a load of hay was delivered to the farm. I pitched in to help unload it, and, like the other workers, took my shirt off in the heat. After 30 minutes of working in the sun, I had second degree burns on my back. It was agony. I couldn’t work until the blisters healed, and the manager told me that he would ‘have to let me go’.

After that, I got a job at the Fireworks Factory in Menangle Park. When the manager caught me and another bloke smoking around the back of the shed, I got the sack.

The BBM helped me to get a job at Narellan on the Kirkham and Pastoral Estate. They owned racehorses and raised beef and dairy cattle. Mr Mills was the manager, and I boarded at his house with two other employees. When he gave me a pay rise, I was chuffed. When he took it away again within a week, I was pissed off, so when my mate Roland, who worked with me at the rotary dairy, said he’d qualified for his driver’s license and invited me to come for a drive to Queensland with him, I didn’t hesitate. I had no idea how far away Queensland was!

We drove up the coast to Brisbane, had a look around and decided that we didn’t like it. We started driving back and stopped in Coffs Harbour for a while. At the Golden Mead guesthouse, I got a job as a labourer for an electrician through one of the other guests. Roland decided to keep driving back to Sydney but then changed his mind after a day and came back to Coffs. We both picked up a week’s work in Grafton with Tom from the guesthouse, who wanted us to dig out a big tree and chop it up for him. He gave us a caravan to stay in.

After that job, someone suggested that I go and ask the Dean of the Cathedral in Grafton for some work. St John Edwards paid me to clean up the yard, do a bit of painting, and polish the brass on the altar. I was being paid $1/hour but it was another job that was going nowhere. I had a distant relative in Melbourne, and decided that I would go and see him and ask for work.

I left Grafton with $5 in my pocket and started hitch-hiking to Coffs Harbour. When I got there, I met up with some mates from the guesthouse and spent $4.50 with them at the pubs. I continued my journey at 7pm with only 50 cents to my name. A hippie picked me up in an FJ Holden and also put me up for the night. My next ride was in a VW Campervan, and the driver let me sleep in his van and then gave me tea and toast in the morning. Next came a VW Beetle with a young mother who said I could have a lift if I held her young baby in the front seat. When I made it to Wagga Wagga, I got a ride on a truck which travelled through the night to Williamstown in Melbourne. There are some really nice people out there.

David Reid c.1974

It was still dark when I found the address of my relative and knocked on her door. An old lady opened the door cautiously and asked who I was. When I told her my name, she said that her husband, who was my Scottish Grandmother’s brother, had recently died and there was nothing she could do for me. She made me breakfast and suggested that I go to the Salvos, as they would give me a bed and maybe help me get work.

I didn’t know what to do. I’d been in Australia for about nine months and had at least that many jobs. Then I had the bright idea of joining the army – at least I’d be guaranteed regular work, a decent wage and a place to live. My mum was happy – she thought I’d be safer there than living like a hobo, and it might straighten me out!

I signed up in Melbourne and caught the bus back up the Hume Highway to the Kapooka Basic Training Camp near Wagga Wagga. Technically, because I was under 18 years of age, my mother should have signed the application papers for the army, but someone waved me through.

The Vietnam War had reached another impasse in 1971 and soon after I was sent to the infantry camp at Ingleburn (south of Sydney), Australia stopped sending troops.

I bought an instamatic camera to take some photos but got into a scuffle with another soldier who wanted to look at my camera. I was knocked out from behind and hit the floor, dazed. When I came around, there were four Aussie soldiers standing over me, kicking me and calling me a ‘Pommie Bastard’ to provoke me.  I knew this would end badly, so I got up and walked out. I decided that I’d hitchhike back to Coffs Harbour, sleeping on the side of the road.

Back in Coffs, I got a labouring job in a road gang, doing curbing and guttering and pouring concrete. I went with the gang to Grafton, and I was downing my hard-earned at the pub with my mates one Friday night when I heard that there would be no work for us next week. Once again, I was down and out in Oz.

My fortunes changed when I started helping some teenagers whom I’d met to move house. They asked their Mum, Ellen Lockhart, if I could stay with them and she said yes! This kind family were moving into a housing commission place with their three children and two foster children, and they invited me to come and live with them. I’ve always loved the generosity of Australians.

We lived in South Grafton, which was the cheaper side of town – the one that flooded when the mighty Clarence River burst its banks. I hooked up with some local Aboriginal lads, and they showed me this paddock with old, wrecked cars, about 12 kilometres to the south. I went out there once to help them put an abandoned engine in the body of an old car. I didn’t think we were breaking the law, but the police caught some of the Aboriginal boys and charged them with theft. They dobbed me in when they were questioned. I would have spent my first Christmas in Australia in a police cell if Mrs Lockhart hadn’t bailed me out.

Now that I was known to the police, I knew the fact that I was AWOL from the army would soon surface, so I told them my army number: 314908. I was summonsed to go to court in early January 1972 along with five other boys for pinching car parts. Five boys were given good behaviour orders; I was singled out and sent to the Mt Penang boys home in Gosford until I turned 18 years old, because the magistrate said that I didn’t have a legal guardian in Australia. I didn’t realise that the BBM were my legal guardian at this time.

It was a mess, because the army shouldn’t have allowed me to join without the written consent of my mother or the BBM. My mum said she wrote to the army about this, but they either lost her letter, or ignored it, because in April, just before my 18th birthday, the military police came and took me firstly to the Watson’s Bay Naval Station, where I was on open arrest and had to sign in every hour until 10pm, and then to Victoria Barracks for a court-martial.

I was found guilty of being Absent Without Leave and sentenced to 28 days jail and to ‘carry on soldiering’.  They put me in a tiny cell in Holsworthy Barracks. I lost it. Why did I deserve this when I’d done nothing wrong?! I tried to hang myself off the bars in the cell. They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die, and mine certainly did. Luckily, the noose slipped and the prisoner in the next cell heard me struggling and called the guards. They cut me down and decided I’d be better off at Watson’s Bay. After this, the army decided that I was not suitable to be a soldier and fined me $40 and let me go. I was free.

I made my way back to Grafton and stayed there for the next eight years. I lived with the Lockhart family for some of that time, and also in a caravan that Mrs Lockhart provided on a property where I was helping with poisoning and clearing trees.

I met Jessie Perkins, who was a truck driver. He helped me to get a licence to drive vehicles with heavy goods. I collected scrap iron with him, but got ripped off.

I got a job out west near Moree with the Dalgetty Co.  The Midcinall farm, was 129,000 acres with 120,000 acres under wheat (cultivation).

I hitchhiked to Bourke in far western NSW for a job on a travelling show with Noel, the second son in the Lockhart family. When we finally made it there, we discovered that the show had moved to Lightening Ridge! We went back to the highway and stuck our thumbs up and some Aboriginal lads picked us up. When they stopped to kill a snake, I was in awe of their fearlessness.

We finally caught up with the travelling show, and I worked for Sid Flarity, who had been born into the business. I earned just $30/week and saw a bit more of the outback travelling with the show.

After a while, I was sick of travelling, so I made my way back to Grafton and got some work pulling down the Eversleigh guesthouse, which I’d stayed in a number of times. One job led to another – working on the saw mills, driving trucks and clearing bush. I’ve had too many jobs in my life. I tried to count them all, and once I got to 70, I gave up. The longest time I’ve ever stayed in a job was 3.5 years. I’m a hard worker, but believe if I’m not happy somewhere why stay, why would you want to be miserable where you’re at working each day. I’d always give it my all, however if they don’t appreciate you, you don’t appreciate them.

Around Christmas 1978, the Beggs Family, whom I’d met in Grafton and become very close with (still keeping in contact with Ira and her children all these years later), suggested that it was time to go back and see my mum. I saved up my wages and flew back in 1979. When I turned up on my mother’s doorstep with my suitcase, she didn’t recognise me! I stayed in Britian just shy of three years, because I knew that after three years, I’d need to get a new visa to re-enter Australia.

I met my future wife, Wendy, while I was back in Keighley. After several years and a slightly rocky courtship, we got married in England in 1985. We came back to Australia to live and Wendy got a job in a hospital as a cook. I got work in a nearby nursing home, doing cleaning and gardening. We saved really hard and managed to bank $46,000 in just two and a half years.

Wendy got her Australian citizenship before me in 1986, which enabled me to get mine. I was afraid that I might be denied citizenship because I had spent several months in the boys home in Mt Penang. We were happy in Sydney, but I wanted our children to be born in the UK.  We went back to the north of England and bought a house with our savings before Elizabeth Kate (called Kate) was born in 1989 and Victoria Jane in 1990.

We came back to Australia and found numerous new jobs. For a while, we lived in Bundeena near the ocean, in a house that was owned by my mate, Greg. I did work for him as a handyman and gardener and we stayed there rent free. But then Wendy got pregnant again! I wanted my third child to also be born in Britain, so we went back again, and Benjamin David was born in September 1995. He was 12 pounds 9 ounces – an even bigger baby than me!

Holding my first grandchild, Bradley, June 2010.

We spent another eight years in Keighley, before deciding to try our luck in New Zealand this time. It’s a beautiful country, but we found it very hard to save any money with three kids and the high cost of living. I was working at Mitre 10 Hardware Store on 12 month contracts and couldn’t get a permanent job. We decided to sell up and move back to Sydney but two days before we were due to leave, Victoria fell off a horse and snapped her ankle, which required surgery.  I stayed on to look after her.

After this, we came back to Sydney and bought a house out west in Emu Heights. It had been hard on the children, moving across the globe and starting multiple schools in a short period on time. However, over time they all settled into school and the Australian lifestyle. It took a little time, but all 3 of my children call Australia home now.  

When we were living in the UK, I put on weight and was 160kg at one stage. This led to Type 2 diabetes. I’ve always been tall, and a big person, but it was difficult to move around carrying that much weight. I applied to the National Health Service for a gastric bypass and they agreed to fund it at first, but then changed the rules. I eventually paid for the surgery myself in 2012.

I came back to Australia soon after my daughter, Victoria, had her second child, Chloe, in 2014, and upon my return to the UK I was surprised to find a letter from Wendy. After 34 years of marriage, she said she was leaving me – for a woman! She emptied our joint bank account and I struggled to adjust to living alone after so many years with someone. I thought about ending it all. I didn’t want to take anti-depressants, so the doctor suggested that I see a psychologist. I was given a phone appointment with a bloke from Jamaica. He listened to my story for about an hour, and then he said to me, something like: ‘David, there have been many times in your life when you have given in – if you end your life, you’ll be giving in again’. I decided that I didn’t want to give in to my negative thoughts and feelings and started to make some changes, moving back to Australia to be with my children.

Ben (my son), myself, Bradley (my grandson), Kate (my oldest daughter), marrying Dion, Chloe (my granddaughter), Wendy (my ex-wife) and Victoria (my youngest daughter), 28 October 2017.

Holding my grandson, David, November, 2024.

Kate met and married Dion, and have a son named Theo. Dion runs a trucking business in western Sydney, and I drive for him on some weekends. Victoria is a hardworking mum to two beautiful children that keep her busy. Bradley will soon be 15 and is taller than me, and Chloe who’s started high school this year. After completing a trade as a Plumber, Ben has since changed career and is excelling as a real estate agent in Penrith, he has since married Molly and they have a baby boy, David Rex Reid.

I now live on the same property in western Sydney as my daughter, Victoria, and her two children. Kate and Dion, and their son, Theo, live in the lower Blue Mountains. I’m very lucky to have such a close-knit family. I’ve managed to keep my weight around 85 kg and feel much healthier. My hobby is converting vans into campervans or mobile homes. When I’ve finished the one I’m working on, I might drive it around Australia. I love the Australian countryside and I don’t like to sit still.

Coming to Australia with the BBM was the best decision I ever made.