Hopes and Fears: Oral histories

Elba Cruz-Zavalla: …the following weekend we decide with my husband and um to took the chil, ah take the children for a walk. And we went to, we walk about, you know, like two or three kilometres away from where we were, we were, or maybe a little bit more. And we found a suburb around there. And we saws an oval. And it was on a Saturday. And he ah saw people playing soccer. And we walk there and there they were. All the Latina people playing soccer. There! Oh my god, it was such a beautiful thing to... We, you know, we got there and they couldn't believe it that we were there and nobody knew about us. It was only two families, one from Argentina and one from Chile were in, in the hostel from Latin America. The others, they were all Vietnamese and English. So anyway um they got us under their wing, everybody. You know, welcome us. And they were happy to see us and very supportive. And, and this family, this Chilean family, you know, you can tell she, they were from a very were, working class. They had no politics or anything. They just got to Australia because they had opportunity to come. They um they ah took us to their house. And they were living in front ah one of those drive-in ah theatres. And they said, 'Oh come to us and spend the night with us in our house. We got a um a screen in front of us where we can see pictures and stuff.' And we had a lovely night there and we feel like home. You know, very welcome. 

Hamish Sewell: So um, Everest, where would you like to start?  

   

Everest Pitt: I guess my arrival. So I arrived here as a twenty-one-year-old. I actually celebrated my twenty-first birthday here in 1974. Um, having married, met and married my husband Ted Pitt—who was on holiday in Fiji and instead of the regular tourist item bringing back home, he brought me back home.  

   

[laughs]  

 

Hamish Sewell: As the ... yes. Yes, what are your first memories?  

   

Everest Pitt: Ah, everything. The green, the vast ... how big it is, yes. Like everything is just so big. Because Fiji's small. And so the first thing I saw about this place was: oh my God, this place is so big, even the sky is so big. Just, because there's just so much space, I guess. The space. There's just massive amounts of space. Um, the people are so friendly. The people were so friendly. Just maybe over-friendly because they love to tease, yes—up here. They have this teasing thing. Which sometimes I take and other times I just like, ahh. And Ted knows, he goes, 'She's not always seeing funny. Unless you know her really well, don't.' Because I get my, I put, put up little barriers. It's like, M'mm. No, no, no, no. Not yet.  

   

Hamish Sewell: So the kind of, the Australian sort of sense of humour.  

   

Everest Pitt: Yes.   

  

Hamish Sewell: Went over…  

   

Everest Pitt: Grates, yes, with me. It's just, ohh. I'm not sure why because I love it. I do love it. It's not something I take part in. Ah, unless it's like, I've got two or three really close Aussie friends and we do it to each other all the time. So it's like close, you, to me it's like ... what is it? Permissible. Yes? But outside of it I'm hesitant. It's like, m'mm. I don't know.  

   

Hamish Sewell: So people need to earn the license to do that.  

   

Everest Pitt: I think. Just, just, maybe I'm just being touchy.  

  

Hamish Sewell: Would you describe yourself as a Fijian-Australian?  

   

Everest Pitt: Yes. Australian-Fijian. Fijian-Australian. You can turn it round. [laughs] yes.   

  

Hamish Sewell: Well I suppose you've lived most of your life here, haven't you?  

   

Everest Pitt: Yes. I've lived in Australia more than I lived in Fiji. I was twenty-one when I came. So the bulk of my life has been here. So I'm Australian. Um, yes. 

Anna Zhu: … and can I get you to describe if you remember the first time you stepped on Australian soil. When you got off that ship. 

Margaret Yung Kelly: Oh, well ... 

Anna Zhu: Those experiences, I would love to hear. 

Margaret Yung Kelly: Well, we were on the ship for ages and then we stopped off at Cairns or somewhere, some place where it was all stilts. All the places were on stilts. We thought ye gods, that's really strange. When we came to Sydney and what we couldn't believe, from Shanghai, Sydney in 1950 was, well, we didn't think it was a civilised city at all. We couldn't believe it. We came through and our house, of course, we stayed with auntie in Merrylands. And at that time there was no flushing toilets. No sewerage then. We had to go from the house out to the dunny at the back with the choko vines, you know. Now you can say, 'Oh yes, it's sort of fun.' But going in the middle of the night to go and go and sit on a toilet and then the manure people come in the, you know, once a week to get the cast* and take it out. We couldn't believe we had to sit on a thing with ... and, and there might be frogs in there as well. You have to check and things. 

That was really, really culture shock to us. So when people would say to us, 'Oh you come from China. What do you think of Sydney?' We couldn't say anything. We said, 'Oh lovely.' To ourselves we thought what an uncivilised, where, where's the city we'll come to? We have to sit on top of a pot with all this sort of ... the manure's in there. And then of course there were not many restaurants. No French or German bakeries and, you know, there were some but we didn't have to go there. It wasn't, there were, the Chinese restaurants, the food was so awful. There were only about two in ah, Sydney in Dixon, Campbell Street that was reasonable. All the rest was just, was for the Australian palette. So it really wasn't what we were thinking of really good Chinese cuisine. Um, so we just thought, wow. You know, everything is, where are all the big buildings? I think the tallest building was Caltex House—10 storeys. And when you think of Aus-, Shanghai with the Bund with all the architecture from all over the world. We were so used to, ah, you know ah, beautiful buildings. 

But of course we never said anything. We just said to everybody, 'Oh lovely, lovely.' We never like other, sometimes some, other immigrants say, always say, 'Oh yes, but we have better things at home.' We never said anything. We were grateful to be in Australia. 

Michael Harvey: In hindsight, what happened was, if you look at the history of child migration um it was done for political reasons, social reasons, religious reasons. And um one of the reasons was that Britian was in, there were a lot of kids in orphanages in those times and what they did was say ‘well were having a bit of a problem, lets see what we can solve, you know, what we can do regarding these kids’. So what they did, they just emptied the orphanages out, virtually I’m not saying at one hit. But what they did is in conjunction with the British government and the Commonwealth government Australia, well the Commonwealth government of Australian government, even Tasmania, they all decided that what they’d do they’d deport their children. And in hindsight the hardest thing about that was that I was under the assumption, or under the impression, that my parents were killed during the Blitz. And when I came out here to Tasmania um that was a sort of security blanket when people asked ‘where’s your parents’ and I naturally assumed they’d been killed during the war. 

Caroline Evans: Uh Michael are you still in touch with some of the boys you came to Australia with? 

Michael Harvey: Yes we’re in touch, we have been in touch for as many years as what we’ve been out here, which is uh sixty odd years. And we've all grown up together, we've had families, we’re uncles or we’re aunts, or they`re aunts, uh we’ve all adopted each other. If I, my children to my friends they’re family, I’m uncle or Kay is Auntie Kay. And it's evolved over the years because of circumstances. We had no one to turn to, and we stuck together. As I said, I was at a funeral the other day for, going back about six weeks ago, one of the boys who came out from England with me. He was at a different orphanage but went to the same school, and he died and unfortunately, he died of a massive heart attack, but he was suffering badly from senile dementia. He went before his time, he was only sixty-five. And, but over the years we’ve all mixed together, or grown up together, barbeques, met each other’s families, gone out together and played golf together, and basically, we call in on each other and uh keep in touch… 

Barat Ali Batoor: When the story was published in the Washington Post and after that that things… 

Fay Anderson: They were syndicated. 

Barat Ali Batoor: Went wrong and it started in discussion in the government or in Afghanistan that things got really worse and sensitive, and I started receiving threats. 

Fay Anderson: Death threats? 

Barat Ali Batoor: Death threats, yeah, people came to my house and uh I was not, as of that time, few times they came and then I had to quickly leave Afghanistan and went back to Pakistan.  

Fay Anderson: So, do you think the warlords started to… 

Barat Ali Batoor: Yeah. The warlords, yeah, they are now mostly in power in the government, so they’re… 

Fay Anderson: So, you left Afghanistan… 

Barat Ali Batoor: Yeah 

Fay Anderson: Was that in 2009? 

Barat Ali Batoor: 12 

Fay Anderson: 12 

Barat Ali Batoor: 12, right after the uh publication of the story. 

Fay Anderson: Right 

Barat Ali Batoor: Then I left to Pakistan. Um yeah, I was in Pakistan for a little while and then I came to Australia.   

Barat Ali Batoor: …then I found a smuggler and I said ‘I have cameras with me and I want to document my journey, I will only go with you if you allow my camera with me’ because uh the smugglers there in Indonesia are very strict and suspicious. They, before taking you on the boat they strip search you and take all your mobile phones and everything. 

Fay Anderson: Right. 

Barat Ali Batoor: And they do it because they are afraid that their trips will be tipped off to the police and they will be arrested or something so people spy on that. So they don’t let anything, so I, I agreed with him ‘if you let me, I will only go with you if you allow my camera’. They said ‘ok I will allow you, but don’t take any photos before we are all on the boat’, and I said ‘ok, I will not take photos before I am on the boat’. But, an then we agreed and I went on the boat and we started with our journey. The next day I started to take photos on the boat and uh and the first night went ok, the second, the day was ok, the following night the water got rough and uh our boat leaked and one of the engines stopped, so it was really dis- it was really bad situation, the water was really rough and like how the boat was floating… 

Fay Anderson: How many people were with you? 

Barat Ali Batoor: 93 on boat.  

Fay Anderson: 93! 

Barat Ali Batoor: 93 on a small fishing boat. And with the Indonesian crews, like 96 in total. Uh so yeah, we all really lost hope that this is it. And uh, I remember there are rumors that they`d recently died at sea… 

Fay Anderson: Is that when you discovered this? No, you already knew… 

Barat Ali Batoor: No no, I already knew. So, recently died, they were probably in the same situation like us.