You are here; http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com,
My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk
The map of Australia, that was the far away land that I migrated to a long time ago. I believe that in those times there were better opportunities then today. Because most of us were able to start a new way of life. But anyhow these are things of the past. Today we can only talk about what we have done.
Welcome to our article part one,
Dear readers, when I came to Australia in the early sixties, there were good opportunities to work.
Anyhow, I feel that today is different, but I suppose that every one of us feels different, you see, whether we are emigrant, or we have been born here we have our own story to tell, and everyone has a different story and views of the past, according to our life experiences and the work that we did; but let me tell you my personal story.
If I were to use only my personal experience in Australia as a standard, we must say that Australia opportunities today are not as good as they used to be, because things have changed since I came to Australia. Now if we want to compare the fewer opportunities that are available today, with what used to be available in the sixties, you can use my life story, to compare with what is available today.
Anyhow, everybody in the wide world thinks
that Australia is still the land of opportunities, and that is the reason why
people are trying to migrate to Australia; but, are those opportunities still
there, one may ask? Or is it a myth now, and the opportunities that existed in
the past, are a lot less than they used to be, especially for those unskilled
people that are coming to Australia.
Having been a migrant myself a long time ago
in the early sixties, and being lucky to find some relative that helped me to
settle in Australia, I know that migrating to another country is not easy, especially if there is no one waiting for you and help you when
you arrive, and it is even harder if you don’t speak the language of the
country you are migrating to, but today there is a great movement of people
throughout the world that migrate from one country to another, and a lot of
people want to come to Australia, they even risk their lives during their
journey, boarding boats that can break up and disintegrate in the
ocean, and they can drown, because there is no help.
Therefore, when I see people migrating today like desperado that want to reach Australia at all cost, I go back mentally to the times when I legally migrated, and think what I could have done if there had been no one to help me when I arrived in Australia. Just to think about it makes me shudder, so, to see these people that come illegally knowing that they may not be welcome here make me wonder how desperate they are, to try to migrate at all cost.
Looking at what is happening today, we know
that the entire world has problems with people migrating to other countries
like Australia. Here in Australia we are upset to see people coming in by
boats, and we want to stop them, or send them back where they came from. Now, I
need to say that in Europe is even worse with people coming in from North
Africa every day, they are so many that is hard to count them, and we guess and
say that the same amount of people that migrate illegally to Australia in a
year may migrate to Europe in a week or even less than that.
--------------------------------------------
Anyhow, let us talk if Australia is still the
land of opportunities.
If I use my personal experience as a
standard, then I can say that today in Australia work opportunities are not as good as they used to be. But then
not everything is as it seems to me, because my judgment is that of a single
person and therefore, I might be wrong.
There are many things that have changed since then,
because of the progress humanity has made and continues to make; therefore,
working opportunities have changed, so, today it is a lot harder to find a
manual job; this is due to the fact that we do not need as many hands to do a
job as we used to in the past, because the work is being done from
machines, therefore, people that have no skills and rely on their physical
strength are not required. For this reason, there are less jobs
available, but if people have a trade or have studied there are working
opportunities for them.
Now that we have explained how we see today working opportunities, allow me to go back to the days when I came to Australia, so , let me tell you my experience when I came to Australia, because this is the way that we can compare the work opportunity situation.
I have been told there have been times in Australia when everybody had a job, so, there was no unemployment at all, and employers had not enough employees and they would go down to the wharf when the ships arrived and select a few people that seemed good enough for them to do their jobs, therefore, in those days there were no unemployed people, but unfortunately those times do not last long, as I said working opportunities go up and down.
-----------------------------------
But, what opportunities were available in Australia in the sixties?
When I arrived in Australia in March 1961 my
relative and friends were all working, at the same time they were telling me
that there were not many job vacancies available, so, I had to be patient until
a job was available. But what sort of work I could do they were not sure just
we had to wait and see, what I knew about working for other people was that if
a job was offered to me I had to work hard, since in my country when we hired
workers to work in our family farm, we expected them to work hard so that they
would earn their pay, therefore, I was in my right frame of mind to go out and
work hard, whatever job was offered. I have said this,
because it is necessary to understand that whoever attempts to migrate to
another country, he/she must be ready to work hard if they want to succeed, and
it all boils down to this that you need to do a fair work day for fair daily
pay.
Beside my willingness to work I was also young and fit enough to do any manual job that I was offered, the only problem was that I didn't speak English. but even although I had very little English, things turned out all right in the end, perhaps this is another reason why people think that Australia is still the land of opportunities.
For me when I came to Australia I was still thinking the Italian ways, so, I was thinking that when you go to an Italian office if you want something done quickly you need to know somebody in there, otherwise before your turn comes the office hours are over and you have to come back the day after, so, I was wondering how could we succeed in these Australian offices, since I didn’t speak English and my friend was just a little bit better than me.
Anyhow we waited our turn and soon we were
being interviewed from this middle aged man that seemed to have so much
patience and understanding of the situation, he slowly worked out what we
wanted by asking and repeating what we did not understand, and he noted
everything down as he asked me many things to see what sort of job I could do,
I remember even now that one of his questions was if I were afraid of heights
and I said no, as I was going up some tall trees to prune them, he also asked
if I knew anything about building or building maintenance, here again I said
yes as we sometimes repair some farm building. I believe that these two things
gave me the first job in the building industry, as I was called one day to go
to work for the first time in Australia. My
first job was that of a bricklayer labour, and we were working on a chimney
stack in the brickwork's where bricks are made, which I managed to hold for a
couple of weeks, until a bigger gang came and I became a bit confused in the
middle of all those people, and I lost my first job for lack of knowledge or
lack of understanding English. But anyhow I had my first work experience and I
was sure that soon there was going to be another one.
Anyhow, I need to say that Australia is a
great country to be in, because people are given their opportunities as they
deserve, if you are willing to work hard for it.
And in the unemployment offices the officers are just great people to deal with, or at least they were when I came to Australia in the sixties.
Anyhow this blog is long enough, so, in my next blog , I am going to talk about how I ended up working
in the Australian building industry for good.
-----------------------------------
This blog is, old man-lifeworks
Australia was the land of opportunities
IS TO BE CONTINUED WITH
The Australian building industry
See you soon.
---------------------------
I believe that on the internet, it is helpful if we keep our personal links handy, so that we can visit our sites from anywhere we are. These links hereunder are some of my links, feel free to visit them.
https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/
https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/
https://sites.google.com/site/godintheuniverse/
------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment