I was born in 1950 in Welwyn Garden City, a planned town built during the Garden City movement of the 1920s. My father was a brick-layer, and helped to build other towns in Hertfordshire. In the early 1950s we moved south to Hatfield to be closer to where my dad was now working. My younger sister and I were educated in an old rectory, which had been converted into a primary school in Hatfield. I was more interested in playing football (soccer) and cricket with my mates than studying, so I went to the Secondary Modern College when I was 11 years old.

I had three firm friends, and we all barracked for Tottenham-Hotspur in the Premier League. On the Friday night before they played a home game, we’d catch a train to Tottenham and then a bus to their ground. We’d sneak into the grandstand and pick up some of the printed programs that the printer had dropped off for the next day’s game. Then we would get to the ground early on the Saturday afternoon and sell the programs to attendees, thereby raising enough money to buy our tickets to watch the game. Part of the fun was doing this without getting caught! I also had a job delivering newspapers on my pushbike, but I was never going to earn enough money to buy a ticket this way.

When I finished school at the age of 15, I wanted to join the navy like my father did during World War II. If it wasn’t for my eczema, I might have led a very different life. The naval doctor mentioned it in my medical report and I was given the thumbs down. After I got over my disappointment, my dad lined up a job for me as a brick-layer.

I was apprenticed to Fred Ely – he was an animal. He would kick my freshly laid walls down if they weren’t perfect and slap me on the side of the head if he thought I wasn’t paying attention. Employers would never get away with that sort of behaviour today. He taught me the old school way, and it certainly sunk in. I worked with Fred for three years, but it didn’t quench my thirst to travel.

My mates were all talking about going to Australia. I was keen too, and not just because I liked hanging out with my mates. My father had been to Australia when he was a boy and I felt like I was following in his footsteps. His dad (my grandfather) helped to build the railways in Western Australia after World War I. Unfortunately, two of his fingers were crushed laying sleepers and his wife died while they were over there. After my grandfather re-married, they moved back to England but this slice of family history added to my interest in Australia.

England was also not a good place to be in the 1960s. There was a recession and a lot of unrest and violent crime. My dad could understand why I wanted to go to Australia, so he took me to Australia House for my interview with the BBM. Because I was over 18 years old, they said that I didn’t have to go and work on a farm when I got there.

I flew to Sydney in March 1968. Aeroplanes did not have large fuel tanks back then, so it was like an international milk run via Zurick, Rome, Calcutta and Darwin. When I arrived, I was taken to the BBM hostel run by Mr Hickey at the top of Burwood Road. I met some other ‘Little Brothers’ there who became firm friends, which was just as well, as my mates from England decided not to come to Australia after all.

Below: (L-R) Tony Corner, Colin Sizer, John Noctor and Dave Gambleton, all Little Brothers, c.1968.

I continued my apprenticeship as a brickie with Bill Weir. He was a mad-keen supporter of the St George Football team and told me that if I was going to work for him, I had to support them too. We’d go to their ground after work to watch them train and he took me to their rugby league matches on Saturday afternoons.

After I’d been in Australia for about 18 months, I became friends with another labourer, John Cummings. We used to meet at the Burwood Hotel for a drink after work. This was part of my Australian education. In England we drank pints – I had no idea what a schooner or a middy was. I remember trying to order a drink when the pub was chockers. Men in their suits and trilby hats were standing six deep at the bar, eager to order their drinks and I was looking confused and bewildered. I remember someone shouted: ‘Give the Pommie bastard a middy!’, so that I’d get out of the way. John taught me some of the unwritten pub rules, such a how if you see a beer glass with money in it on the bar, don’t touch it and don’t take the seat that’s near it as it means that the owner of the money has just gone to the ‘loo and will be back to claim his seat and his cash!

Soon after that, John and I started a small business together that became a kind of working holiday.  John had a ute (utility truck), a concrete mixer, a barrel, and loads of experience building brick houses. We travelled across Australia sub-contracting to builders and laying bricks for double-brick houses. We were paid in cash, about $500 per house. It would take us one to one and a half weeks to build a house, so we’d get $250-$300 each for our labour. When I was an apprentice, I earned $32/week or $6/day. I loved the pay rise! Back then a packet of smokes cost 20 cents and a middy of beer was 15 cents, so your money went a lot further than it does today.

John and I travelled up the NSW coast to Lismore building houses as we went and then turned around and headed south. We kept our cash in a tin under the seat in the car and used it to pay for motels and food. This lasted for about 18 months, which is when John decided that he wanted a change of lifestyle, so he used his share to buy a block of land in Coffs Harbour.  I went back to Sydney and found a room in a hostel in Wentworth Road, Strathfield. This is where I met Shaun McDermott and Steve Emmett and how I met Wendy.

Shaun, Steve, Dave Gambleton and myself decided it would be cheaper and more fun if we rented together, so we moved into a one-bedroom flat in a place called ‘Flamingo Court’. Soon after, this a good-looking woman came to the door looking for her brother, Steve. I wanted to catch her attention, so I played a joke on her and said that he didn’t live here and closed the door. She knocked on the door again, and I let her in this time and we became friends. That was in 1970. In February 1971, we were married at St Paul’s Anglican Church in Burwood.  Wendy was also from the UK so her brother gave her away.

Below: Colin and Wendy, 1971

We went back to the UK together in December 1972 so we could meet each other’s families. We wanted to stay, but there was nowhere affordable to rent in the London area, so we moved to Pontefract in West Yorkshire. Fortunately, Wendy’s parents lived in that area and could help with our first child, Mark, who was born in Syndey, August 1972.

We decided to come back to Australia in 1975-76 and, for something different, chose to settle in Perth! I had an aunt who lived in Perth and it was easy to rent a house. Our second child was born in Perth, 1976.

I started work as a brick-layer again. After a while, we bought some land and I built our family home. The best place to find a job as a brickie in the 1970s and 1980s was the pub. Thanks to my mate John Cummings, I was familiar with the culture of Aussie pubs and picked up some work in interesting, isolated places; such as Cape Lambert (outside the port of Karratha), the Chevron oil refinery on Varanus Island, and Mataranka in the Northern Territory. Most of these male-dominated places had more dogs than people. I’ve never been out of work in the past 59 years.

I’m 74 years old now (in 2024) and getting a bit old to be heaving bricks around. Instead, my mate who’s a chippy (carpenter) helped me to get a job teaching brick-laying at TAFE. I had to go back to study myself, to upgrade my Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, so that I can teach again.

Below: Wendy and Colin, 2024

Wendy and I hope to drive across the Nullarbor together next year. I want to stay at the Strathfield Motel in Sydney, if it’s still there, because I helped finish building the lift shaft in 1968 soon after I arrived in Australia!

The BBM is unique. It didn’t cost me a cent to migrate and I know it was the right decision for me. It would have been an adventure to join the navy, but then I wouldn’t have met Wendy or come to Australia, which I think of as ‘home’.

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