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Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Researchers from The University of Western Australia have been flooded with calls from British migrants - young and old - keen to share their stories about their move to Australia.

Many are concerned that they are ‘the forgotten migrants' - sharing a similar culture to the majority of Australians and apparently fitting in easily.  But was it so easy?  How did they cope with separation from loved ones back in the UK?

UWA and the University of Hertfordshire in the UK have joined forces to produce an audio archive of personal accounts of families who emigrated from the UK to Australia after the Second World War.

UWA's Winthrop Professor Jenny Gregory, from the Centre for Western Australian History, said more than 100 interested people had already contacted the research project team.

Professor Gregory said the project, known as Full Circle, involved teams of interviewers in WA and the South of England recording stories of those who emigrated as well as those who were left behind in the UK.

Some were "Ten Pound Poms", so called because of the government-subsidised cost of travel to Australia during a post-war assisted-passage scheme.  Others were more recent migrants.  According to United Nations figures, 1.28 million of the 5 million Britons currently living abroad are in Australia.

For the Full Circle project, Dr Andrew Green, visiting senior research fellow in the history department at the University of Hertfordshire, and a team of three students from Hertfordshire have travelled to Perth to join UWA students in conducting interviews with former migrants.

With Dr Green, Dr Bill Bunbury, well-known ABC broadcaster and one of Australia's leading oral historians, they will be providing intensive oral history training for UWA students in Perth and Albany who are involved in the project.

"We look forward to hearing stories of recent migration as well as those from the more distant past," said Dr Green. "How were lives changed by the new opportunities that opened up in Australia, and what adjustments did those remaining in the UK have to make?"

Interviews will be recorded at UWA (Perth and Albany) and stored at the JS Battye Library of West Australian History and the University of Hertfordshire.  One outcome of the project will be a publication and a CD featuring many of the interviews.

Media references

Winthrop Professor Jenny Gregory (UWA Centre for Western Australian History)  (+61 4) 10 581 343
UWA Media Office (+61 8) 6488 7977

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