The First Step

Having decided that a blog might be good, I had no idea where to start. The last few months have been a series of memories followed by a series of various reactions: disbelief, anger, sadness and despair. So maybe that’s a good place to start by remembering and being grateful for the memories. I think I might let the bad one’s go and focus on the good ones of which we were lucky to have had so many.

A big adventure, flying to Australia in 1977

In 1976 at the age of 18 and 20 years old, Julie and I were married in Manchester UK and in 1977 took the big step of emigrating to Melbourne, Australia. Quite a huge journey in those days and especially for Julie who had not flown before. Having been born in Lagos, Nigeria and living there for almost ten years, I had flown to the UK several times, but this was special, what would we find?

What we found was a friendly place with helpful people who were willing to give a new arrival a chance and an easy place to make new friends. The adjustment from industrial Manchester to what seemed like a country town was a challenge and homesickness played its card more than a few times, but we got through it and never looked back.

Early memories of seeing Mad Max at the drive in and then buying this monster. Julie learned to drive in it, lots of fun to be had.