When Marilyn Foster left her life in England 50 years ago she, quite literally, never looked back.
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Then, aged 27, Marilyn said goodbye to her family and friends, embarked on a ship bound for Australia, never to see her loved ones again.
“It was 1963 and in England advertisers were calling for people to travel to Australia for 10 pounds and if you didn’t like it you could go back home after two years,” Marilyn said.
“I didn’t think there was anything to lose so I became a 10 pound pom.”
Created in 1945 during the government of Ben Chifley as part of the ‘Populate or Perish’ policy, the 10 Pound Pom scheme was designed to substantially increase the population of Australia and to supply workers for the country’s booming industries.
For Marilyn, however, the scheme created an opportunity for her to leave her somewhat oppressive existence.
“It just seemed to me to be an opportunity to do what I wanted to do,” she said. “But my family thought I was mad, they acted like I was going to the end of the world.”
But Marilyn’s first impressions of Australia weren’t what she expected.
Instead of beautiful beaches and spectacular sunshine, the young migrant was faced with the back of Woolloomooloo dock.
“It was all pretty grim to be honest,” she said.
“It was nothing like the ads they had been showing back in England and I just thought ‘Oh my God, what have I done?”
Within two weeks Marilyn, now 78, was working behind the cosmetic counter at David Jones in Sydney and her life began to change.
“I settled in very easily because I felt so free,” she said.
“Back in England I had an auntie living in one street, my grandmother lived around the corner and you couldn’t blow your nose without something hearing you.
“It was a terrible existence really, but out here it was so free and it was the ‘60s of course and everything was happening.
“The world was getting back to normal after the war and it was the best time, truly.”
The 10 Pound Pom Scheme attracted more than one million migrants from the British Isles between 1945 and 1972.
In 1957, more migrants were encouraged to travel following a campaign called “Bring out a Briton”. Ending in 1982, this reached its peak in 1969 and 80,000 migrants took advantage of the scheme.
Marilyn spent the first 20 years of her Australian life living in Sydney.
She then moved to the Central Coast before arriving in Maitland in 2001 where she now lives in Gillieston Heights as a writer, poet and historian.
“I just love it here. Every time I’m in central Maitland it reminds me so much of the old town I knew back home with its Georgian architecture, the big churches and the history of the place and I just felt home at last,” she said.
“When I was a young girl I used to get my trusty two-wheeler out and cycle through Hampshire and Dorset looking at all the old churches, I used to love church architecture and the graveyards.
“And now at the end of my life I am a church historian and parish poet (for St Mary’s Anglican Church, Maitland) and I think that’s a good beginning and an end. It’s like I’ve come full circle, just by accident.”
Another childhood memory Marilyn recalls was as a little girl lying in bed ill.
“It was a Sunday and I remember I had mumps and jaundice so I was fat and yellow,” she said. “And I heard this almighty bang and the window shook, we didn’t know what it was and it turned out to be a bomb.
“It hit the department store in town – which would be about as far away as Maitland is from here (Gillieston Heights).
“Then when I was about six I remember seeing the actual German planes flying over head and they were that low you could actually see the swastikas on their wings, my mum used to take me by the hand we’d go out into the yard and look at them.
“And I often think God I couldn’t do that now.”
This month Marilyn celebrates her 50th anniversary in Australia and, as always, ponders how different her life may have been.
“I often think what my life would have been like if I had stayed in England and I can’t begin to imagine it,” she said.
“I think I would have moved, be it to London or somewhere, to get out of the life I was living.
“I absolutely made the right decision becoming a 10 pound pom.
"Best move I ever made.”