Ship name / Flight number: Flight BA

Arrival Date: 15/05/1968

b. 21 October 1950

I was born in a Yorkshire town called Skipton but grew up five miles away in the heritage-listed village of Gargrave. My brother, Rodney, was four years older than me and Phillip is three years younger.

I enjoyed growing up in the Yorkshire dales but for a teenager, there’s not much to do and it didn’t have the appeal. When I go back on holidays, I think to myself: ‘why did I leave this place?’ Visiting Gargrave now feels like stepping back into the early 1900s but most teenagers think that’s boring.

My family had a dairy farm and all of us were up at sparrow’s fart seven days a week to milk the cows. It was a busy life. As I grew up, I wanted to take off with my mates in the evenings and resented my dad telling me that the cows still had to be milked. When you’ve got mates and young ladies calling you – the last thing you want to do is milk a cow!

I caught the bus to Barnoldswick Secondary Modern School (new West Craven High School) in Lancashire, every day. It was fun and I made a lot of friends, some of whom I still keep in touch with.

Steve (front row, red shirt) with his mates in Gargrave, 1968.

Once I turned 15 years old I left school. I didn’t sit for any certificates – I wasn’t the academic type and I wanted out. I knew there was a job on the farm, if I wanted it.

Both my brothers learnt a trade: Rodney became a carpenter and Phillip a master stonemason. I got an apprenticeship as an electrician but didn’t finish it.

I heard about the BBM through one of my mates in Gargrave. I remember there was a group of about twenty, 15-17 year olds in the village who all wanted to ‘go somewhere’. We heard that Canada and Australia wanted young men and we thought, ‘Canada is cold; let’s go to Australia!’ I was ready for a two-year adventure and knew that it wasn’t a lifetime commitment.

I applied to Australia House and came out with Bevan Tenant. We were the only two from that group of 20 who emigrated. The others pulled out or couldn’t get their parents’ permission. If Bevan had pulled out, I would probably have still come on my own. Once I discovered that there was more to life than milking cows, I didn’t want to stay in Yorkshire.

I quit my apprenticeship and did shift work in a factory making mattresses for six months because I could earn three times what I was paid as an apprentice and I thought I’d need the money in Australia. I think I saved 100 pounds to bring to Australia, but it wasn’t enough, as I was always writing home and asking for more money.

My Australian adventure started in England – just catching the train to London with Bevan felt intrepid! I’d only been to London once before and that was for my interview at Australia House. We flew from Heathrow to Zurich, then Rome, Karachi, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Manilla, Darwin and finally landed in Sydney. I still have the flight menu of the food that was served on every leg. I couldn’t believe how hot it was in places like Karachi and Darwin. We landed in Darwin close to midnight and I’d never felt humidity like that before. It was like walking into a wall. I was all dressed up in a suit and tie and started sweating as we walked across the tarmac.

We landed at Mascot Airport in Sydney on 15 May 1968. I had chosen to go farming – it was what I was used to – and Bevan wanted to work in the city. Our choices meant that Bevan and I were separated at the airport and I didn’t see him again for a year or more. We wouldn’t have chosen different work if we knew we would be separated straight away.

Steve’s certificate for crossing the equator with British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC)

I didn’t see anything of Sydney because I was taken straight to the training farm by bus. There was no proper training – all we did was ride the horses around the hills at Fairfield. When the farm hand tried to show us how to milk a cow, I stepped in to show the lads the proper technique. Unfortunately, I ended up in Liverpool hospital because the cow kicked me in the head and knocked me out! I’d milked hundreds of cows and never been kicked before. It’s another badge you wear.

The food was atrocious at the training farm, or maybe I was used to my mum’s good cooking. To fill our bellies, we would go and buy takeaways at the service station on Cowpasture Road. This is when I started smoking because I bought cigarettes, too.

Every morning at the training farm, the superintendent would tell us to congregate under a big rubber tree in the middle of the yard where we were told what paid employment available. After a week at the farm, my funds were getting low, so I took the first job that came up.

I caught the train to Albury and then another to Jerilderie – getting there was an adventure in itself! I fell asleep on the second leg and thankfully the guy who was sitting behind me knew that I was going to Jerilderie and woke me up in time to get off. I wasn’t going to work on a farm, but at a service station; filling cars with petrol and checking tyres. Mr and Mrs Cavanagh owned the servo and they were lovely people. I slept in a caravan at the back of the servo but showered and ate in the house.

When I took the job at Jerilderie, I had no idea where it was and what it was like. I soon learnt that it was in the middle of nowhere and not much bigger than Gargrave. Initially it was a new experience but after a while it felt no different from small-town England. It was the middle of winter and there was not a lot going on in Jerilderie! The novelty of pumping gas soon wore off.

After about a month I did a moonlight flint! Unbeknown to the BBM or the Cavanaghs, I did a runner in the middle of the night and caught the train back to Sydney. I’d met a young lady, Maureen, in Sydney at the service station and milk bar in Cowpasture Road. We’d been writing to each other. I told her that I wasn’t happy in Jerilderie and asked if she could help me find somewhere to stay if I returned to Sydney. She said I could stay with her family in Cabramatta.

Once I received that news, I left the next night and caught the train to Albury. It was freezing cold in the drafty train carriage – I’ve never experienced that type of cold in all my life. I remember we stopped at a small station and railway workers put two steel containers full of hot coals into the train carriage. There were two old ladies in the carriage with me and they asked me if I would mind if they used the containers. I didn’t know what they were for, so I said yes. When I saw them put their feet on the steel containers, I realised that they were going to have a much warmer night than me.

Maureen’s mother helped me to get a job at Betts & Company factory as a storeman and then a forklift driver. They were based at Milperra (Bankstown), which was a pain to get to using the only private bus service. This motivated me to get my driver’s license and buy a car. My first car was a green, 1968 HD Holden.

Maureen wanted to take our romance further, but I was only 18 years old and not ready for marriage. I’d re-connected with Bevan, so I went to live with him when I realised that I needed to get away from Maureen’s family. He was living in Burwood and had his own circle of friends. I gradually became part of his group but my friendship with Bevan was not the same as it was before we emigrated.

I stopped living with Bevan when he started going out with Maureen! Maureen came to our house one day and Bevan answered the door. He was all dressed up to go to a 21st birthday party. Bevan knew that I was going to turn down her request to get back together, so he invited her to the 21st party – she went and they got married about six weeks later! That could have been me! Hence, I had to move out of Bevan’s place.

I didn’t go to their wedding because Maureen didn’t want anything to do with me. I heard in a letter from my mum that they got married – my mum and Bevan’s mum were friends and neighbours.

I was still working at the factory in Milperra and I moved in with a mate from work who was lodging with a family in Liverpool who had another spare bedroom. Mr and Mrs Harborn became my surrogate mum and dad. When I did get married, they stood in for my parents.

Steve and Ellie on their wedding day, 1971.

There were three Italian sisters who lived across the park from the Harborns and they would come to visit. I was a novelty; an English bloke with an accent that made them swoon. The middle sister got together with the middle brother, and we are still together to this day.

Eleanora (Ellie) and I were married on 15 May 1971 in the Church of England at Liverpool; three years to the day after I landed in Australia. My best man was my mate, Ivan, from work. His wife was Ellie’s best friend.

We bought a house in West Hoxton when it was semi-rural, nice and quiet but only ten minutes from Liverpool. Now there’s thousands of houses that are cheek by jowl on small blocks and it’s hard to move around because the roads were not built for a large number of cars. By October 2023 we’d had enough! We sold our house, which was on acreage for a good price, and bought a lovely house in The Oaks with uninterrupted views over the hills to Camden. We still had some money left over to enjoy retirement. Camden is like a small village but bigger than Gargrave.

In the 1970s, I got a job with IPEC (Interstate Parcel Express Company) Transport, the biggest transport company in Australia. I started as a driver and worked my way up to foreman, supervisor, operations manager, manager, account manager, sales manager, and then we all got fired! I was there for more than 20 years and had a company car and corporate credit card but when the company was bought out, we got the boot. I took them to court appealing against my lousy payout. They hired a QC, which I couldn’t afford, so I negotiated a better redundancy package through mediation.

I started my own transport company delivering parcels in Sydney and regional NSW for trucking companies based in Melbourne that didn’t have a depot in Sydney. I had a warehouse in Wetherill Park and would pass the BBM Training Farm on Cowpasture Road every morning. I haven’t moved far from the farm!

When I was about to issue my first invoice, I realised that I needed a business name, so I came up with something quickly: ‘SEM Transport’. Steve, Ellie and Matthew (my son) Transport. We ran the family business for about eight years and made a profit when we sold it.

I’ve always loved driving trucks. Even as a manager at IPEC Transport, I envied the guys driving out of the depot in the morning. After I sold my business, Kelvin at Blackhill Transport, who used to share the warehouse with me at Wetherill Park, rang me up and said he needed a casual driver. I went back to driving trucks, doing what I love. I was as happy as a pig in the proverbial.

I left Kelvin’s business to retire, and then he rang me up about 12-18 months later and asked me to work for a couple of weeks, so I went back behind the wheel. There’s nowhere in Sydney that I haven’t delivered parcels; however, I couldn’t live in the city – it’s too claustrophobic.

My son lives in the inner-city – he’s a chef at 5-star hotels and runs his own business. He doesn’t like the country – each to their own.

One of our daughters has an earthmoving business with her husband, and sometimes I drive their trucks for a day. She lives at Oakdale (near The Oaks) and has given us three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Our other daughter lives in Campbelltown and has two sons. I’ve done my bit to populate Australia!

Mum and Dad visited me in Sydney three times by themselves and twice with my younger brother and his family. Mum also came to visit with my younger brother, Phillip, after my dad died too early at the age of 67 years. Phillip still visits, especially during the English winter! Sadly, my older brother Rodney died in 2023. Other relatives from England and Italy have also come to stay. Ellie’s mother is still alive; she was 96 years old in 2026.

I’m still not an Australian citizen; not because I have any loyalty to Mother England but because I’m just too bloody lazy. My wife was born in Italy but is an Aussie citizen. I’m as Aussie as can be, Dinky-Di. If England is playing Australia, then Australia has to win. I’m 75 years old now, so I might have left it too late.

We’re not millionaires, but we’ve bought up three kids and I’ve always had a good job. We’ve had little luxuries like caravans and going overseas. We’ve had the money to spoil our kids and they are all doing well – better than their mum and dad! At our house in The Oaks, we have enough room to host visitors, sit outside in the sun, and enjoy the spa, bbq and gorgeous views – that’s all I want in life.

What began as a two-year adventure in 1968 turned into a 50+ year adventure. I have had a ball; I wouldn’t change it for the world. England is nice to visit but this is home to me. I haven’t made a lot of fantastic decisions in life, but coming to Australia was possibly the best decision I’ve ever made.

Stephen (Steve) Lambert

Ship name / Flight number: Flight BA

Leo Leonard Scott