DAVIDSON, Joan Kathleen

Joan was born in England in November 1922 in Tunbridge Kent.  She had four brothers, two of whom died prematurely.  The family relocated to Greenhithe when her father Frederick was appointed the Station Master.  When Joan was eight the family again relocated, this time to the country, to the village of Adisham which is situated between Canterbury and Dover.  When she left school she wanted to be a nurse but her parents did not agree, those being the days in which daughters stayed home to help their mothers.  Joan however managed to get a job in the village post office.

The Second World War began and Joan was in the St John's Ambulance Brigade at Adisham she got a job at a hospital six miles away.  This was also the period when the Germans began night bombing raids on London.  For four months every night at six o'clock, for their safety they went to an air raid shelter enduring long nights sitting in rows.  Here she met her future husband Lewis, who had been born in Inverness, Scotland.  She and Lewis became engaged, then married, and as he was engaged in constructing runways for the aircraft they moved thirteen times during the war.  Daughter Mary was born during an air raid and son Robert was born in 1948.

As Australia needed migrants, especially those involved in the building trade they applied to emigrate but Joan initially did not qualify as she was underweight.  Ultimately they departed Liverpool on the ship Somersetshire which had sunk during the war and refloated but which kept breaking down on the trip to Australia.  En route, she was separated from Lewis and after six weeks at sea, they reached Melbourne.  After a day of looking around Melbourne, the boat departed for Sydney from where they were taken for two weeks to an ex-German prisoner-of-war camp at Bathurst.

They then traveled on a train to Albury and a bus to Melbourne where one group went to Yallourn in Gippsland and another to Ballarat where some went to work at the paper Mill and Lewis got a job with Feary the builder.  They resided in the Nissen huts at the Migrant Hostel which was a great shock to them.  There were no floor coverings, no curtains on the windows and they were unlined.  Each family had three rooms, two bedrooms, and a living area with no kitchen as communal meals were served in the mess.  After tea at 5 p.m., there were no means of making a hot drink of an evening, but they all clubbed together and broke open the hot water furnace to partake of a cuppa.  The food was poor and so they had to purchase other foodstuff and many, after leaving the hostel, still had to pay off their high hostel fees.  Joan believes that they were treated like 'convicts.' 

Joan and Lewis resided in the camp in Gillies Street North opposite the present Stockland Wendouree (Wendouree Village) complex from November 1950 until February 1951 when they rented a house in Eureka Street with no power only candlelight.  Many of the other migrants went to Melbourne and resided in a converted woolshed in Footscray.  The huts were used to officially house the rowing crews visiting Ballarat for the 1956 Olympics.  Ultimately the Ballarat hostel buildings were taken over by Telstra.

Joan reflects on the wonderful neighbors at Eureka Street.  Unfortunately, she contracted polio, spending a couple of months in hospital, and upon release believes she was the recipient of Ballarat's 'first' home help.

She remembers that the newly arrived English migrants were invited to the English-oriented local Victoria Leaguer Club and requested to 'bring a plate', which they did, except they were unaware that by Australian tradition it was supposed to be adorned with food !!!!

Joan died on the 13th July 2012 and was cremated at the Ballarat New Cemetery.  Her ashes have been collected by her family.