Frank Marks

Story

My wife(Dawn) and I left South Africa because we could not see a secure political future. Apartheid was at its worst. The harsh regime was unrelenting in its pursuit of its ideals of white minority domination of all spheres of society. Having been married for two years, we decided that we could not start a family and have our children subjected to discrimination on the basis of skin colour.

The journey was a pleasant one if you disregard the sea sickness I suffered. We travelled in style on board the Northern Star, a Union Castle liner. We now jokingly refer to ourselves as the original boat people. As we approached landfall off the Australian coastline off Fremantle, we rose early as we were excited to begin a new phase of our lives without being constantly reminded that we were lesser human beings because of our birth parentage. But there was still the Great Australian Bight to negotiate and was it at its worst. The memory of steaming into Port Phillip Bay will remain with me forever. At last after sixteen days at sea, we had arrived in our new country.

Port Melbourne was run down and it seemed that we were stepping back in time. Our host family met us and we stayed in Williamstown. After two weeks I was employed by the Education Department as a secondary school teacher and I remained in Education until retirement in 1993.

Australia grew on us. My parents arrive a year later and in 1972 our son was born. That was when we became Australians. We were naturalised in 1972 and we could then travel the world as free people. We had arrived!

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