Read Rattler – silverfox175

All ready for a wedding.

The flight from London to Melbourne was particularly good considering the last time Maureen & I flew to Australia, which was not long after we were married in 1970, we were also travelling ‘staff travel’, and we were ‘off-loaded’ in Hong Kong and we were stuck there for about four or five days.
As a couple it was inconvenient, but with two children an ‘off-load’ would have been a problem.

The wedding went well, and we all had a great time, and the children just loved the beach.

After the wedding we stayed with Maureen’s aunt & uncle who had emigrated from the UK in 1951.  They were very hospitable and during one visit to the city via the old ‘red rattler’ we thought we would check something out.

The above shows Chelsea station, although part of the Melbourne network living in Chelsea gave the feel that you were in a small town rather than a major city.
Note the level crossing to allow the train to pass through . . . it was quiet, and the beach just a couple of minutes’ walk from the station.

Red Rattler 

inside of a ‘red rattler – I think the red rattlers was discontinued in 1985.

We arrived at the terminus in Melbourne, which is in the heart of the city.

Walking around the city we passed the Migration Services centre (I am not sure what the exact name was in 1978), but this was what I wanted to check out. 
From memory this office could give you permission to stay in Australia permanently. 

I queued and when it was my turn an Italian-Australian asked

‘What de u vant’

I said ‘I’d like to stay in Australia, please.’

‘What skil av u ?

‘I work for an airline.’

‘We don-t-a need you.’

‘But I can fly a B747!’ said, I lying to my back teeth.

‘We plenty pilot we don-a-need you – NEXT!’

A Vietnamese chap behind me with limited English was smiled at, and asked to sit down – PC had not been invented in at that time . . . 

After our holiday we arrived home in November 1978, and now I had to settle back into the routine of shift work and selling frozen food, and it was cold after the beautiful beach weather of Australia. 
To add to the cold weather mortgage rates were about to go up in early 1979 to just under 12%, we could no longer afford to live in our house or even in Congleton because of the cost of petrol and the proposed mortgage hike.

In March of 1979 the Prime Minister, James Callaghan lost a vote of confidence in the House, and he was forced to call a general election.

As all this was happening Maureen and I were discussing our future and we both considered that since our last visit eight years earlier, Australia had change in a positive way.  The living standard of the average man had increased considerably, but Maureen & I had the feeling that we were going backwards in the UK, because we were being forced to move closer to work because of the high mortgage rate and the cost of petrol to get to work.Discussion in Parliament anticipated that the mortgage rate in 1980 would reach 15%. 

By July 1979 petrol prices for 2-star petrol had jumped to £1.40 per gallon (£7.13 today). The fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 caused oil prices to skyrocket.