Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

[DJC]

were the battlers then earning 80k a year wage (seeing only about 50 in their pocket) spending half of that on rent and the rest buying the basics with minimal hope of saving for a home?

I'm a migrant child.  They fled civil war and lack of opportunity and came with not much.  Often working as taxi drivers, dish washers and yes they struggled but not like the young folk who are 15 years old today are going to.  As far as having no idea I reckon I've got a bit more than you think. There was a better sense of community back then too.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, my father umpired four games of football a week and cooked hamburgers at night in his cousin's shop to make enough money to put food on the table.  He rode a pushbike from Coburg to the railway workshops in Newport and eventually saved enough money to buy a Ford van just before I was born.  My three older brothers walked or travelled by bicycle and public transport until then.  We had an ice chest until my parents saved enough money to buy a second hand fridge in the mid 1960s.  My father fought against the Japanese in WW2 "up in the islands" as he would say.  We didn't recognise PTSD in those days but it now explains the violence my siblings and I experienced.  I was able to stay at high school beyond form 4 only because I won a scholarship.  Many of the kids at high school left as soon as they turned 16.  I had a paper round before school, sold the Herald on the corner of Bell Street and Sydney Road after school and I worked as a brickie's labourer and carrier's jockey during the summer holidays to help pay my way,

We were one of three protestant families in a catholic street and I had to walk past the catholic school to get to my primary school.  There was no sense of community, but you learnt how to use your dukes at a young age.

I can't imagine how tough it was for many "New Australians" as we earlier migrants called the post-war immigrants.  The Italian family at the end of our street was certainly more well off than we were but we were roughly on a par with the Polish family.  Everyone else had English or Irish ancestry and only one of those families had emigrated from England.  The Polish kids at school seemed to be doing it tougher than the Italians, Greeks, White Russians, and folk from the Balkans.

My oldest grandson just turned 15 and I'm sure he'll be fine.  He's smart, applies himself, has very good values and will be well-equipped to face the challenges the future may hold.  Challenges that will be different to those I faced but not necessarily more or less difficult.