Ship name / Flight number: BA 934

Arrival Date: 26/09/1968

b. 31.07.1952

I was born in Peterborough, England on 31 July 1952. I came to Australia with my older brother, John, who was originally due to leave before me, but when I decided that I wanted to come to Australia with the BBM too, he chose to wait for me. This left my younger sister and brother at home with our parents, who had separated. My mum worked for Marks and Spencer, a big British department store, selling furniture. However, she met my father during the war where she served in the armed services as a truck driver. My father was in charge of her training unit as a motor transport examiner.

I left school as soon as I could. I had a paper run and then a milk run, so I was used to working from a young age. Once I turned 15, I had a job as a kitchenhand at a local five-star hotel. If I hadn’t gone to Australia, I would have taken up an apprenticeship as a pastry chef.

I liked horse riding and would muck the stables out on a nearby farm in exchange for free riding lessons. This added to my desire to go to Australia – I could imagine myself riding horses in wide open spaces. I heard about the BBM through my brother and he heard about it from our aunty who lived in Melbourne. My whole family had considered emigrating to Australia, but this fell through.

John (centre) and Bob (right) leaving Hastings Road, Peterborough, England, 1968.

I was 16 years old in 1968 when we flew to Sydney. It was my first time on a plane and my first time away from home. It was very exciting. I hadn’t travelled outside of Peterborough, so when we landed in Sydney, it was like: ‘wow!’

After a short stay at the BBM Hostel in Burwood, my brother and I went to the training farm near Liverpool. It was like a holding pen while we waited to be placed on a farm. After getting up early to milk the cows and shovelling cow manure for a week, I decided that dairy farming wasn’t for me.

John and I were both sent to farms near Goulburn, but he wanted to work with machinery and I wanted to work with stock. I was based on a large sheep and wheat property called ‘Australind’ owned by Mr Eric Sykes. One day, I was digging a trench to run an irrigation pipe to the creek, and I was wearing one of the white collared shirts that I’d brought from England. I was told that ‘only the boss wears white shirts’, so I had to go and buy some khaki work clothes.

Bob on a horse at Pelican Farm, Goulburn, 1968.

I rode an Arab Stallion, which was only partly broken in. It was a challenge and I was thrown off a couple of times. There was one cow that I had to milk every morning, and then separate the milk to make butter from the cream. The cow had a calf, and I used to ride him around the paddock. I competed in rodeos but despite my self-confidence, I fell straight off.

I did general farm duties such as feeding the cattle and sheep, moving the stock around the paddocks, ploughing the fields to plant wheat, and riding around the farm boundary to check the fences.

I learnt to drive on the property in Mr Sykes’s Toyota Crown ute. My dad had shown me the basics, but I wasn’t old enough to drive on the roads when I left England. The first time I was left to drive the ute by myself, I gave it too much juice and drove straight into the only stump in the paddock! I bent the front bumper bar so much that I had to cut it off with a hacksaw. Mr Skyes wasn’t pleased when he heard about this, but he didn’t make me pay for the damage from my wages.

I earned $25/week but half of that went back to Mr Sykes to pay for food and accommodation. I slept in the shearer’s quarters. To shower, I had to boil the water in a copper, remove it using a bucket, and then pump it up to the shower head. I learnt to wash my clothes in the copper too. I’d go up to the farmhouse for meals but my brother and I weren’t invited to eat with the Sykes family. This was the first time I tasted tripe – I’ve never eaten it since!

I felt lonely on the farm. I arrived in October and my first Christmas was hard. I wasn’t invited to join the Sykes family on Christmas Day. My brother was at another property called ‘The Pelican’, so I wasn’t able to see him either.

Eventually I started spending my spare time at the foreman’s house with him and his family. He lived about five kilometres away from Australind and I would ride a horse and or drive the jeep over there. I remember one morning I saddled the horse to go back to the homestead and the horse mucked up and threw me off. I sat on the gate with some bread to tempt him back. I carefully climbed back on and off we went with no problems.

One day I was mustering the cattle and I had to get ahead of the steers to open the gate. I was riding full pelt when the horse took a fall. I was thrown off and I thought I was done for. I thought the horse would run off but when I recovered, I found him standing and waiting for me. I checked him for any injuries, gave him a quick rub and re-mounted. We made it to the gate in the nick of time. The gate opened onto the road and I needed to stop any traffic and direct the cattle in the right direction.

I didn’t tell my family all these hair-raising experiences when I wrote to them. The postman would collect and deliver the mail from ‘Australind’. My father died in 1969. I didn’t know when I left Peterborough that it would be the last time I saw him.

Once a fortnight on a Saturday, I’d go into Goulburn with the family to go shopping. Or drinking. We’d hit the pub with the shearers and have to hitchhike back to the farm.

Bob (left) and John Walker with their Holden Toranas in Bexley, Sydney, 1973.

Neither my brother nor I stayed on the farms for more than a couple of months. John left first and got an apprenticeship as a mechanic in Goulburn and by February 1969, I found work in the kitchen at St Patrick’s College. The catholic boy’s college was based in Goulburn and I had accommodation there as well.

Once I had my driver’s license, that changed my world. I decided that driving was my thing and started delivering spare parts for tractors, harvesters, and other farm equipment. I worked for a spare parts company doing deliveries and some paperwork. Then I moved on to driving small trucks for the Shell depot in Goulburn. I wanted to drive the bigger trucks, but needed a special license for this.

When I stopped working at St Patrick’s, I moved in with my brother and his mate into a one-bedroom flat in Goulburn. When my brother joined the police force and moved to Sydney in the early 1970s, I moved into a residential lodge in Goulburn.

I decided to move to Sydney too and worked for a chemical company as a chauffeur and courier. Then I got my trucker’s license and worked with H.S. Birds and Allan’s Sweets doing food deliveries. I also got a taxi license so I could do more driving when there were no deliveries.

I lived with my brother in Botany Bay at first and then boarded with an Irish family. Once I’d saved some money, I found a flat by myself in the Bondi area and met my wife at an English-style pub called the Cock ‘n’ Bull in Bondi Junction. We married in 1975 and have been together ever since.

A traxcavator clearing a fire trail in the Blue Mountains, c.1990.

Anne’s parents lived in Hazelbrook in the Blue Mountains and invited me to come and join the family earth-moving business. We moved to a small house on their property and I learnt to drive earth moving machinery. Unfortunately, there was a ‘clash of the titans’ and it wasn’t good for family relationships for me to continue working for my father-in-law, so I started a job at the local Hazelbrook nursery as a landscaper.

I was landscaping a garden in Hoxton Park, when a bushfire swept through the Blue Mountains in January 1977. My father-in-law called me to come home and help protect the houses. He had already re-built the second story of his house after it was destroyed by an electrical fire. This bushfire swept through the gully at the back of his house, so he got in the bulldozer and drove through the flames to push all the fences and trees near the houses along the ridge into the gully. His brave action saved about nine or ten houses from burning to ash. A neighbour had the cheek to complain that his fence had been destroyed, even though my father-in-law had saved his house! After the fire, no one wanted to plant gardens around their houses, so I moved to work in the railways.

I started as a fettler in an upgrading gang based in Katoomba, but I decided to take advantage of the NSW Railways’ training opportunities and rose through the ranks to become an inspector. I was teaching others to drive trucks but I was based in an office in Granville, which was a long commute of over an hour.

Interestingly, my brother was also a driving instructor, but for the police. Our parents had worked in transport during World War II, and we both did this as well, but earlier in our careers. We felt like we had achieved everything that our father had accomplished in his life, but we still had many years ahead of us.

I wanted to get back on the rails, so I went back to being a ganger and managed an upgrading team. We prepared materials for the weekends when we would recondition the tracks. Swinging an 18-pound hammer and dragging the wooden sleepers was hot, heavy work. My gang had migrants who didn’t speak English well but were skilled engineers in their countries of origin. I helped them to enrol in English classes within NSW Railways so they could progress.

Maintaining the railway line between Lithgow and Bathurst, c.1990. Bob had a special license to drive the Pettibone tractor on the left.

While I was working on the railways my wife was working as a nurse in a nursing home in Hazelbrook. We bought our own house in Bullaburra, in the Blue Mountains, and raised our son there. Adrian was born on the 8th day of the 8th month in 1980. As he grew up, he took up BMX bike riding and came in the top five riders in NSW. Most of my spare time was spent driving him to training and competitions. We were proud of Adrian when he represented Australia for BMX riding at a competition in New Zealand.

Landscaping the backyard in Bullaburra, Blue Mountains, with Adrian, 1983.

My brother John moved to Penrith at the foot of the Blue Mountains with his wife and two children. He took up flying and got his commercial pilot’s license. He worked for Talair and other airlines and medivac companies within Papua New Guinea for about 25 years before being forced into retirement by a motorcycle accident.

In the early 1990s we had a sea change and moved to Brisbane’s bayside. We had some friends in the Blue Mountains who moved to Brisbane and we’d drive north every long weekend and meet them at their house in Cleveland, near Moreton Bay, or go camping on Stradbroke Island. We liked Brisbane and found a block of land in Cleveland to buy. Adrian and I moved north first so we could do some work on our new house. Anne waited until she was eligible for long service leave and then moved up and got a job as a nurse on the north side of Brisbane.

On the railways, I was a ganger-inspector, but also a union rep. I was speaking up on occupational health and safety (OH&S) matters and started one of the first OH&S consultative committees, but it ruined my career because I was fighting against my employer. In that era, OH&S was regarded as a union matter and it was only after the Hawke Labour government’s intervention that it became a matter for employers. I had a good rapport with the workers, and the bosses, but I couldn’t progress.

When we moved out of the Blue Mountains, I took up truck driving again. I also did tree-lopping and taxi driving. I love driving – big rigs, bigger rigs – always on the road. I avoided the overnight work but we were allowed to drive for 14 hours a day. The last job I had before I retired was with Russell’s Transport and I was there for 16 years. I was driving a bogie axle truck with a crane on it to lift off heavy equipment and averaging between 400-800 kilometres a day. I’d go up to Maryborough about once a week and deliver equipment or steel to farms. I had a few regular customers and it was great to get to know people. I ended up back in the OH&S circle again, and I loved it.

Anne and Bob Walker in their garden in Cleveland, Brisbane, 2010.

Both Anne and I were now working on the northside of Brisbane, so about 11 years ago we decided to move from the south-east to the north. We chose a block of land in a new estate and built our own house and it’s still serving us well. After starting work when I was 15 years old, I finally retired when I was 72 years old. We have one grand-daughter who lives with Adrian and his partner in Gavan, on the northern Gold Coast.

My Mum has come out to Australia twice to visit John and I. I’ve never felt the need to go back, but when my sister-in-law invited us over for my younger brother’s surprise 60th birthday party, I decided to make the trip. I hadn’t seen him since he was 15 years old. To ramp up the surprise factor, I rang my brother on his mobile phone while I was walking into the pub where we were to have his birthday lunch. He thought he was talking to me in Australia until I sat down at the table next to him and put my phone down but kept the conversation going. My mum and sister didn’t even know we were coming. It was incredible to see them all again. We’ve been back twice since then and seen some of Europe too.

When I went back to England, I visited Peterborough. It hasn’t changed. It’s just as daggy as it ever was.

COVID was a big problem for my brother, John. He moved to PNG in the 2010s after his marriage ended and found a new partner and adopted a daughter. To give her a good education, he moved back to Australia and did short stints back in PNG as a pilot. In 2018, he had a bad accident on his motorbike that smashed up his leg and took six months to heal. When COVID came, he couldn’t come and go from PNG as a pilot. He’s semi-retired now and driving buses, which gives his family some income and gets him out of the house. He’s 74 years old and lives on Bribie Island, which is also on the northside of Brisbane.

Even though I’m retired, I still drive a truck occasionally for a friend who has a steel works. I taught his main driver how to use the crane on the back of the truck. Otherwise, I keep myself busy with gardening, some travel, and visiting my family.

Coming to Australia was the best move I ever made. I’ve never really missed England. It’s lovely and green, but it’s too cold. The beaches are just pebbles!

I’m a self-made man. Everything I’ve learnt, I’ve done myself. I’ve never really had restrictions in my life. I don’t think I’d change it.

Robert Walker

Ship name / Flight number: BA 934

Chris Hart

George Alexander