Anthony Parnell

Story

During the Second World War my father Ron Parnell of Derby England sailed as a ship\’s carpenter on a cargo ship the SS Marquesa between Argentina and Liverpool bringing chilled meat to England. On one trip he met Emma Jenkins the English daughter of Herbert and Ethel Jenkins in Buenos Aires and during subsequent trips courted and married her on the 18/9/1941.

Emma sailed to England in October 1941 to be near Ron and to help out with the war effort. She lodged with Ron\’s parents in Derby for a short while; then settled in Liverpool. Ron left the Merchant Navy in 1944 and joined his wife in Liverpool.

On the 24/7/1945 myself (Tony) and my twin sister Pat were born in Liverpool to Ron and Emma Parnell. We lived in flats or houses in Liverpool, Chislehurst and Plymouth as my father moved around England rebuilding after the war. Limited food and heating was a severe privation for families with young children as war rationing was still in place until 1950.

In 1950 my parents were convinced by two Australian Immigration officials who visited my father\’s office that we should to emigrate to Australia. Their reasons for leaving were that, it would be a chance to see more of the world, and it would be warmer than England. They thought that, at worst, they would be away on a two year working holiday.

Four weeks later we had sold the house and furniture, said our farewells to our families and embarked on the passenger ship SS Ormonde. We sailed via the Suez Canal, Aden and Ceylon to Australia. It was an enjoyable trip with the family sharing a cabin. There were swings and a playroom on board for the children. I had a fez bought for me in Aden and saw boys diving into the water around the ship for pennies thrown over the side in Ceylon. I still have my certificate from King Neptune when we crossed the Equator. When the ship docked in Melbourne my sister and I were quarantined on board the ship for the whole fortnight as we had the measles which had been rampaging throughout the ship. We sailed on to Sydney, disembarking on the 30/11/1950.

We travelled by night train to Bathurst where we were housed in an ex prisoner of war camp and held for screening for TB and other nasty diseases. The food was served cafeteria style and generally fatty and fried. The showers were filthy, hessian enclosed stalls. The toilets were bucket type, usually overflowing. We had travelled from the cold of English winter to the heat and flies of an inland Australian summer. Many in the camp washed in the local creek as it was cleaner than the showers.

After ten days in this camp we moved by train and bus to an immigration camp in Ballarat. There, the Nissan huts were each divided into six rooms, three rooms to each family. Two bedrooms with two single beds and a combined dressing table wardrobe in each, and a room with a lounge and card table along with one kitchen chair, one easy chair and a piece of carpet. Everything was very clean, especially after Bathurst. There were communal showers, baths, flush toilets, hand basins, and even laundry troughs with hot and cold running water.

At the end of January 1951 Ron decided to look at several places that may have a reasonable climate to live in. On board the Ormonde, my parents had met a lady and her children traveling to Devonport to meet her husband so Ron travelled firstly to Tasmania and looked at jobs in Devonport. He liked Devonport very much. He decided to take up a position as estimator with Haines in Devonport without looking at the other places. A week later we flew to Devonport to meet him, staying first in a rented caravan at the caravan park in Devonport, then in a house supplied by Haines.

After a year Ron opened his own joinery shop under the name of Tonat Industries whist Emma worked for a secretarial firm and we kids went to the local school and roamed the area with other kids, tadpoling and playing on the beach.

At the end of two years we had saved enough money and were free of the immigration bond to enable us to return to England. Much discussion ensued about the pros and cons of returning and it was decided to stay in Tasmania and use the saved money to buy some land and build a house.

In 1953 we bought 12 acres of land at the back of Penguin and built a house where we kids grew up attending the Penguin Primary and Ulverstone High Schools, my parents worked at Papermakers mill and Tioxide pigment factory in Burnie while in our spare time we ran the 12 acres as a hobby farm.

My parents never regretted their decision to move to Australia. They had a long and happy life here. Emma died in 2002 at 89 and Ron died in 2004, aged 91. My sister and I have had happy and successful lives here in Tasmania, marrying and raising our families.

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