Vocal Voices

I don't know if I liked it or not
It,wasent what I expected at all

Nor me, Saundra.

I was hoping for a documentary showing what uncle Bill and auntie Margaret went through when they moved to Maffra, not a docu-drama.

It all felt a bit fake.

It was very clinched I thought. Girl escaping an abusive relationship, ex-military PTSD sufferer who drinks and his long-suffering wife, unwelcoming Aussies, racist attitudes towards the Aborigines. All packed into the first episode. I was disappointed

I saw loads of trailers for it and didn't fancy it...although I'd watch a programme if there was a proper documentary about it.

We quite enjoyed it, I knew it wasn’t the promised land of milk and honey for the people who went there early on. It was all much better organised later on, we had a friend who went there under the scheme in 1973. As far as we were concerned, he found his spiritual home there, he has become as boorish as many Australian men. Apparently the series is based on a lot of fact - I was interested in the nurse looking for her son (brother?) who had been sent there under the shameful forced immigration programme.

Funnily enough, Osc, my cousin John, born in 1961 a few years after Bill and Mage got there, is a stereotypical Aussie male. He's a telecomms lineman, out and about in the bush with his hat with corks on strings to keep the flies away. He loves Rugby Leauge and hates 'Abbos', now there's a story!

Bill was a train engineer fixing locos and rolling stock so he ended up in Maffra, a big cattle station out in the sticks north of Melbourne. Madge was a seamstress at Burtons and set herself up making frocks for the local lasses.

My dad cobbled together a sort of speakerphone so that we could all get together at Christmas and birthdays etc.. They phoned us because it was a lot cheaper than us phoning them.

How things have changed.