Leaving austerity Britain for the New World: how thousands emigrated to Australia from Liverpool docks

Apr 19 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

£10 emigrants on their way from Liverpool to Australia _320

The great P&O and Orient Lines liners

THE regular sight of the great liners of P&O and Orient Lines moving slowly downriver at the start of voyages to the far side of the world sparked the imagination of the boy standing on the solid earth.

This young spectator, Geoff Lunn, knew where the ships were going – to Australia and New Zealand. These new worlds were more like new planets in public’s mind in the postwar austerity of the the pre-jet age.

But he was inquisitive enough to wonder who was aboard these ships and what lay in store for them. These seeds were further nurtured when his parents took him for a port visit aboard just such a liner Orontes, in 1958, at Tilbury.

"I was 11 years old and Orontes was one of Orient Line’s pre-war liners pressed into emigrant service," says Geoff.

"Orontes looked antique even then and I can recall lots of exposed pipe-work and big cowel vents, but the biggest impression were all these iron bunk beds. It struck me as not being the most comfortable way to spend four weeks to get to Australia.

"It was remembering those days spent ship-watching in the 1950s that inspired me to write this book and try and find anyone who was involved in these voyages, either crew or passengers."

Geoff placed an advert in the shipping press and was surprised at the response, especially at the photographs loaned to him by one former crewman, Mike Day.

"He’d promised his collection to the Australian emigrants’ museum, but was happy for me to use some before they were dispatched. This was a great gesture for which I’m deeply grateful," says Geoff.

Mike, from Derby, who trained at HMS Vindicatrix, was a crewman aboard the Royal Mail liner Asturias, which carried thousands of emigrants from the UK to Australasia in the 1950s.

Best known of the Liverpool emigrant liners was the former White Star Liner Georgic which was rebuilt after being bombed, burned out and beached during the Second World War at Port Suez.

Recommissioned as an emigrant and troopship, Georgic was nicknamed "the iron lung" due to her decks’ corrugated look after being buckled during her wartime mishap.

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