When my son and his family emigrated to Australia, my husband and I were full of admiration at their adventurous spirit and excited to hear about their new life on the other side of the world. Nevertheless it is a huge wrench when people you’ve been used to seeing at least once a week move so far away. At first we were emotional wrecks.

Bur we are lucky. In our technological age we can easily stay in touch. Within a couple of hours of arriving they phoned to let us know all was well. There are frequent phone-calls, text messages and web-cam sessons. In twenty-two hours we can be with them and have been over twice in two years. How much worse it must have been years ago when the only means of staying in touch were flimsy airmail letters that took weeks to arrive.

I’ve been thinking about my grandparents whose eldest daughter went to Australia in the sixties with her husband and two children. Like many others, they went as “ten pound poms” under the assisted passage scheme. My uncle was a mechanical engineer and they left England for much the same reason as my son, who is a builder. Their skills were in demand in Australia and they were tempted by the prospect of a better climate and lifestyle to match.

My aunt and her family set sail from Liverpool in 1964. Their journey took them via the Canary Islands, Rio de Janeiro and South Africa, finally arriving in Australia six weeks later. My grandparents, who were much the same age as we are, waved them off at the docks. These parents had already seen sons leaving to fight in a war. Now there was another parting to endure. They were not well-off, had no telephone and never went on a plane in their lives. The thought that they might one day visit Australia didn’t cross their minds.

I guess those, like my aunt and my son, arriving in Australia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries couldn’t be called pioneers exactly, though I think a certain bravery of spirit is needed for such a big move.

The true British pioneers arrived in Australia in 1787. Admittedly they had no choice in the matter and probably didn’t feel much sense of adventure. These first emigrants were mainly petty thieves and pickpockets from London’s slums sentenced to “transportation.” The first fleet of ten small convict ships set sail from Spithead in green and pleasant Hampshire bound for Botany Bay carrying 586 men and 192 women. They were accompanied by 232 free people, one of whom, Arthur Phillip, was to be the first Governor.

In fact, Botany Bay proved an unsuitable venue with its swamps and shortage of fresh water and Arthur Phillip had to look elsewhere. Eventually he found Sydney, which he described as having “the finest harbour in the world” and landed his fleet there. His men hastily erected a flagpole and flew a Union Jack whilst Phillip and his officers drank to the success of the new colony.

Life was tough for these very first “poms.” They had to chop wood from eucalyptus trees and it was like trying to saw iron. The soil was dry and sandy. Huge stinging ants abounded. The days were oppressive and humid, whilst the nights brought torrential rain drenching everyone and everything. They lived in flimsy canvas shelters until eventually they discovered they had a bricklayer in their midst and the first brick houses were built.

Despite the hardships they had no alternative but to persevere, and persevere they did. Their efforts were such that, just six years later, in 1793 the first five free British settlers were tempted to Australia by the offer of land, provisions, servants, farm equipment and free passage for themselves and their families.

Perth in Western Australia, was the first settlement made up completely of free people, though it too had to rely on help from “juvenile delinquents” sent out from Parkhurst Gaol to work as labourers. Perth was established in 1828 by Thomas Peel, a relation of Sir Robert Peel. Life on the other side of the world was still hard and the British families who landed in Fremantle, Perth’s harbour, were often completely unprepared for what lay ahead. One man, newly arrived, wrote that some of the first emigrants “expected to find inns, turnpike roads, smiling orchards and cornfields in a country untrod by civilized man.”

Since that time, Australia has tempted many Britons, and others from around the world, from the gold seekers of the nineteenth century to those with the skills needed to help build a young country. These days life in Oz for modern-day pioneers is very different from those early days and, thankfully for us, it is easier than it has ever been for them to keep the ties with the “old country.”