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The is a story about how a family (my family) moved to a very different country with a very different culture and lifestyle and people and language.
A move from an Asian country (The Philippines) to a Western country (Australia) and how we adapted. A lot of humor, a lot fun, also a lot of angst for my mom especially.
My father is Spanish, born in Spain but lived and grew up in the Philippines most of his life. We called him Papa.
My mom is Filipina but has Mexican and Chinese heritage...go figure. Her father's name was George Castro...mexican name (?)...and he married a Chinese/Filipina lady.
Mom was always Mama...she did not like mom...or mum..as the Aussies say.
We were four children...Christian, Maria (me), Susan and Dondi....real name Manuel.. but mom loved the cartoon strip "Dondi The Orphan Boy so that became his nickname.
I am writing a memoir of what I can remember of this very huge upheaval in our lives and many things I will always remember...and they were indeed the best years of my life.
It is easier to write this as if I am talking to someone in person...so just pretend I am talking to you.
It was never my intention to publish this memoir or even to have anyone else read it, I started writing it when I was going through a very bad patch in my life, to put things into perspective and remember how blessed I was in other ways. It is unfinished...I dont know if I will ever finish it. This is an excerpt only of the first few years as seen from a child's view (mine back then).
Papa had a very close friend in the Philippines, an American guy who owned a huge property just south of Darwin. I don’t know if he was an Australian citizen, I think he had a dual citizenship, American and Australian. Anyway, he owned this huge (I mean mega huge) property which Australians call a cattle station, but being American he called it a ranch. It was called the "Triangle B" ranch. The logo was a triangle with a big red capital letter B inside...surprise, surprise....lol.
Walter Barnes, I’ll never forget him, he was a big jolly man and very funny. His wife was quite big too, I remember that, and they had two kids Walter junior and Debbie. (My very first bra was a hand-me-down from Debbie, it was years before I was allowed to try it on....its amazing how I can remember that.....lol)
Mr Barnes helped us immigrate to Australia by sponsoring us...meaning he would provide Papa with a job, a house and take care of us so we did not end up in Australia's welfare system if Papa couldn't find a job.
Our journey started from Hong Kong...I dont know why...I never found out either, but it's not really a big deal, we were only there a couple of days.
From Hong Kong we flew down to Darwin which is the capital of the Northern Territory of Australia. I remember staying in Hong Kong for a couple of days and it was freezing cold there. I only remember a little bit about the flight down to Australia because I remember receiving a certificate for crossing the equator, isn’t that something?
I think we spent the first week in Darwin City and then Mr. Barnes took us down to his ranch which is about 66 miles south of Darwin. It was an awesome experience for us, bearing in mind that we always lived a confined sort of life in the Philippines. We had nice biggish houses but we were always confined and never allowed to go outside to play.
We always had fences or walls and gates and now all of a sudden we were out in the open with nothing but miles and miles of open land around us.
Triangle B Ranch was not a working property. There was no farming or stock raising or anything, just a big old property with a lot of wild horses, buffaloes and wild pigs, and wonder of wonders….millions of kangaroos!!!
There was a single building very roughly put together, corrugated iron roof and corrugated iron walls open to the elements. The floor was a big slab of cement and it was one huge single room. No partitioning walls with only curtaining to privatize the sleeping area.
There was a shower stall for the bathroom and I can’t remember where the toilet was. It had one single occupant in this shed, an oldish lady (back then to me she was old, around middle to late 50’s) from the Philippines. I don’t exactly know how or why she was there, all I remember is, the Barnes’s were very fond of her.
Gosh I can’t even remember her name, I think it was Gertrude, but we called her Miss De Vera. She lived there alone with a yellow Labrador dog named Allah.
(Dont ask me how he got that name...lol...it would be something quite disrespectful these days because of the Muslim stance on dogs).
He was a wonderful dog, our very first pet!!! I fell in love with him instantly, he used to go everywhere with us when we walked into the bush and always led us back home when we got lost.
Mr. Barnes and sometimes his wife and kids (teenagers) would come down to the property about once a month or once every two months and only stayed for the weekend here and there.
Usually it was only Mr. Barnes and he would stay in the shed with Miss De Vera (I used to wonder where he slept because there was only one double bed in there) and she used to prepare his meals and clean up after him.
He and a handful of his friends used to come to the property and take us out hunting at night for wild buffalo or wild pigs (I used to hate that) which they would slaughter there and then, and we had a supply of meat for a month. I remember poor Mama having to cut up all this meat and she used to also mince up meat by hand with a knife, used to take her ages.
I think it was back then I started feeling for these animals. I hated that they had to be killed so we could eat. I used to go hungry rather than eat the poor things and Mama used to get really angry with me and made me sit at the table until I finished everything on my plate.
All I could think about was the poor thing crying after being shot and Mr. Barnes putting the final bullet into its head. It still gives me the shivers!!!! I tried to avoid these outings as much as I could, but I remember Christian and Susan always being very excited about it.
Because there was only this one shed on the property, we had to have our own place to live so Papa had to build us our own “shed” out of the same materials, corrugated iron roof and walls around a slab of cement, not as big as Miss De Vera’s place, and for privacy the girls (Mama, Susan and me) were given an old trailer to sleep in, which was attached to this building that Papa built.
We had to build our own sewer system for the toilet. The men dug this great big huge pit about 12 to 15 feet deep and we had to go up to the hills on the property and collect trailer loads of rocks to put in this pit. It took weeks and it was really hard work and so horrible. The sewer pipe from the toilet was then connected to the pit and covered up and that was our toilet.
Our “shed” was almost on the bank of a creek where we pumped our water from, for showers, washing, cooking, drinking and everything else you need water for. I remember Mama boiling gallons and gallons of water for drinking but it tasted okay. This creek is where we learned how to swim.
It was only a few feet from our shed and we used to invite kids from the nearest town where we went to school, to spend weekends with us swimming and fishing and catching fresh water prawns in this creek. We tied a rope to a tree and used to swing off this rope into the water which was about 10 to 12 ft deep. Great fun...and scary at the same time.
We had no television at the ranch back then but Papa always listened to the radio every morning before “going to work”. I didn’t really know what his job was; I guess he was what you might call a station or ranch manager. Basically Mr. Barnes employed him to take care of the property.
The nearest town where we went to school was about 10 miles away, a place called Rum Jungle, a uranium mining town. The town itself was called Batchelor and it was owned by Territory Enterprises, the owners of the uranium mine.
It was a pretty little town where everybody knew everybody. It was a bit daunting at first, we were the only “Asians” in town and some of the kids there had never even seen an Asian before. Our English was good but the accent gave us a lot of trouble at school, you know how awful kids can be with teasing. It took a lot of getting used to, I can tell you.
(Part 2 coming up)
