Pat

Y name is Patricia Celine O’Connor, I was born on the 24th of February 1942, and I arrived in Australia on the 1st of June 1969, that’ll be 54 years here this year. Well, I had some here, but we had my husband and I had talked a little before when I first got married and didn’t have any children. By the time we had three children, I had other members of my family here. I had a sister who lived in Scotland, and they immigrated first, I’m not quite sure the year they arrived here, maybe 66 or 67. My mom, dad and younger sister came over in December 1967. Then my oldest brother, who also lived in Scotland and his wife and four children arrived over in 1968. They all came to Brisbane. My brother and his wife, myself and my family we stayed on migrant hostel that used to be at Wacol. No I came by plane, my sister came by boat and the rest of my family flew.

We actually had to go from the boat tonight before because the way the flights were, and then travel down to London. We went to a bed and breakfast but none of us had got any sleep on the boat and even though we paid for a full night’s accommodation, we which we were only there for about four hours just so the kids could get some sleep.

There was nobody but migrants on the plane - there were no other passengers. We flew into Perth and a lot of people got off there, then we flew into Sydney and more people got off there and then there was just us and we were put on a domestic flight up to Brisbane. Well being as it was the 1st of June, it was supposed to be wintertime and I was wearing summer clothes because it wasn’t winter time to us! I still feel the same way as I did then, that the sky was so bright, so blue and so clear. I think that’s because you spend so much time with the rain and the clouds and the winter days back home that I noticed it.

Was Brisbane different to like where you were from back home?

I actually sort of pictured in my head that everything would be very English because it was a Commonwealth country, but my impression of the shops, not not so much the houses but the shops was that it was very like America.

Arriving at that time of the year down to the ground, even though by Christmas we were melting. Even though we had family here I didn’t see them all the time because we only had one car. The migrant hostel was all the way out on Wacol and my brother lived in Gales out by Ipswich. We did used to go and see our parents a lot. They lived in Kangaroo Point and we would go visit them on Saturdays. I distinctly remember that our parents had a phone, and not many people had phones in those days and I remember that we used to phone a taxi on the Saturday night and I swear that the tax had cost about $2 or maybe $2.50 to go from Kangaroo Point to Wacol. Well, I’ve seen a lot of changes building wise. They used to be trams and Brisbane and they went off they went off the day before we arrived! Brisbane was like a big country town with a lot of old-style wooden houses, and I loved it like that. Now when I see the old wooden pubs, I think that a lot of things used to be like that. The first thing I did was that I heard about Irish dancing that was being taught just up the road from where we were living, and my daughter wanted to learn Irish dancing. She was actually a qualified Scottish dancing teacher but I started off with her there and then we could go to competitions and I met other others there. I met a woman who was actually Australian but her husband was from Cork, and they used to have a little Irish social club called the ‘Harp and Shamrock.’ They used to have a big do on Saint Patrick’s night down in a place in New Farm. They had music and used to do céilí dancing. They also had monthly catch ups and an Irish dancing competition once a year. Most of the people that were involved in that club have sadly passed away now, or I’ve lost touch with them. I value my Irishness.

I tried to get a man to come here (to the IASAQ Centre) once. I met him in the City at a 50’s plus event and invited him along. He said that he had worked in England for years and that when he came to Australia that he wasn’t going to get involved in anything because he said it was tired of listening to the Paddies and they were always drinking. I’ll not tell you what I thought of that, but it wasn’t very nice. I walked away and left him standing. Some people think that when you come out here that you have to blend in the Australians if you want to live the Australian way of life. A lot of people think that the Irish only drink, but you and I know that the Irish do a lot more than that. I think it’s sad when people leave Ireland and are done with it. It’s like saying that you don’t belong anywhere. I’m here 54 years and I still talk about going home. I mean my hometown, my home country. Yes yes, that’s where my ashes are going.