Remember the time

1955 – The one millionth post-WWII migrant arrives on Australian shores

It was an initiative born out of a devastating war. In the wake of WWII, Australia was desperate for workers and “populate or perish” became the catchcry. In Europe, meanwhile, a wave of displaced persons (or DPs as they were known) had fled the countries of their birth as a result of the conflict. And so the Australian government introduced the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme in 1945, hoping to boost migration Down Under. At first it came courtesy of those DPs. But soon it was heavily targeting Britons to join the wave of those leaving Europe. “Australia hopes that for every foreign migrant there will be 10 people from the United Kingdom,” declared Arthur Calwell, our first Minister for Immigration the following year.

The “Ten Pound Pom” premise was simple: If an adult could raise “a tenner”, the Australian government would cover the rest of the passage (children travelled free) and organise housing upon their arrival. The only catch? By taking up the opportunity migrants guaranteed to stay for a minimum of two years. And if they were to leave, not only would they pay the fare home in full (an eye-watering £120), they’d need to reimburse the government the difference in their initial discounted fare.

Advertisements for the scheme promised sunshine, a wealth of jobs and a luxurious new life. Instead, many arrived to find themselves put up in “Nissan huts, formerly used as army barracks, working jobs locals had turned down and in a landscape that was both harsh and unfamiliar”.

“Life in Australia had the potential to be anything from wonderful to horribly disappointing,” Alistair Thomson and A. James Hammerton wrote in their book, Ten Pound Poms: Australia’s Invisible Migrants.

When the scheme was launched in 1945, Australia’s population was 7.4 million. When it wound up in 1981 that number had more than doubled to almost 15 million, despite the fare rising to £75. And while it’s estimated that a quarter of Brits who took up the opportunity headed back to the UK, half of that number would eventually return, gaining themselves a new moniker: “Boomerang Poms”. AWW