Amazing thread, just loved the stories so far.
I was born toward the end of the war in England, my father was in the RAF flying over the Burma road. My mother and I lived with Dad's family, moving from one sister to another, avoiding the London bombs, being evacuated to various country locations. Dad came home very rarely, of course, but as a result of one visit my sister was born.
At the end of the war when Dad was demobbed we were housed in an asbestos bungalow in the heart of London, on what was a bomb site. The toilet was in the small back garden, we did not have a bathroom, baths had to be taken at the public baths,
When I was 7 my youngest sister was born and we were subsequently rehoused into a real brick house with its own bathroom. We lived in various council supplied houses, I realise now that we were poor but I did not know it then because everyone was. My Dad made all our clothes, usually buying bulk material at the market, so the 3 of us were always dressed the same, he would get one pattern and simply adjust it to fit the 3 of us. He was the youngest of 7, with 5 sisters before him all of which were tailors or dressmakers who had taught him how to make clothes. His only brother was killed in the war. Dad retrained as a cabinet maker/wood machinist as he could not see a future in the aeronautics industry once the war was over!!
I left school at 16 after studying commercial subjects and took a job as a junior shorthand typist working in central london for the grand sum of 4 pound 13 shillings and 4 pence, about $10 our money per week.
At 17 I decided I needed to leave England for a better life, and decided to emigrate to Australia. Originally I was coming here alone but eventually my Dad decided it would be good for the whole family to come. So in December 1960 at 17 years of age I sailed with my family to Brisbane, landing right in the middle of the credit squeeze. My Dad had a guaranteed job but a week after arriving the company went bankrupt. So Dad and I left Mum and the other two girls in Brisbane and came down in the train to Melbourne, sitting up all the way, with a 12 hour wait in Sydney.
We rented a house in Brunswick and brought down Mum and the 2 girls from Brisbane. The 4 of us that were able to work managed to get employment with my youngest sister still at school. Mum never wanted to emigrate and missed her lovely council house and all the furniture and car etc., she had been used to in the UK and just did not settle. So after 2 years they all returned to the UK but at 19 I stayed and married Alan, he was 20 and we had known each other for 6 months!!
When we married we owed my parents 30 pounds. They returned to the UK straight after the wedding, with Alan and I renting a very small house in Templestowe behind a shop. Both of us were working but on very low wages, as full wages did not kick in until 21. We were determined to buy a block of land and have a house built, as did all young couples in 1963. We found a block of land for 1075 pounds, we had saved half and paid the other half off over 2 years, Alan earnt 19 pound and I earnt 14, we both did extra part time jobs to raise the money. We looked around to have a house built on the land but could see it was going to take forever to pay for it, so decided we would design our own house and build it ourselves over weekends. I was a shorthand/typist and Alan was a Commercial artist.
Thats what we did, we worked after work every night building frames in our little rented house and put them on the roof of our little simca and drove them over each weekend. We bought a cement mixer (which I still have) and laid our own floor. It took us 2 years to get it to the stage where we could move in, it certainly wasn't finished but was JUST liveable. I remember well having a shower with the noggins all around, where we could rest our soap. Our son was born in 1966 to a very empty house with concrete floors and some walls missing.
By 1967 we were 24 and owned our first house, we realised that we had been saving very hard but were at risk of spending that money, so bought a second block of land and designed two units to go on it, unfortunately the council regulations changed in the time we were saving up to build and we were refused our permit, we appealed etc but decided to build a house anyway. At the time hand made bricks were free to anyone who would pay for the cartage, so we paid for loads and loads of them to be delivered to our block of land and built the house I now live in with them. It took Alan some years to build the house at weekends laying thousands of bricks but at the end of it we moved in and owned both houses, renting out the first one.
At this point we went over to the UK to spend 3 months living near my family so that our son could get to know his grandparents and aunts. On our return we moved into the new house, which was just the first stage of the house and from then we gradually built the second stage. We realised that we needed to get a 3rd property very quickly, or the money would be swallowed up in our extension so put a deposit on a 1 bedroom flat in Thornbury, as it was all we could afford while building and paying for the extension on the house.
By the time the house was finished we had paid for the flat but had a lot of trouble renting it, as no one wanted to live in a 1 bedroom flat in Thornbury - a bit different now!!! So we sold it and used the money as a deposit to buy a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house at the grand sum of $93,400. I still have that house. From there, whenever paid off a house we bought another.
By this stage I had returned to Uni at night, whilst working full time to obtain a Degree and Alan was working 4 days a week in a studio in Carlton to give him a day a week to work on the houses.
I won't go into all the purchases we made from then on but when Alan died in 2005 we had 16 properties with debt on one. The original properties have escalated in value. I have now started to sell down and invest elsewhere. I thank my lucky stars for my good fortune in emigrating and meeting a like minded individual, we simply clicked and the investing was just automatic it was never a concious decision, it was just something we knew we had to do.
My parents returned to the UK and purchased a house. They did in fact sell and return to Australia many times, eventually settling in the UK because both my sisters were married by then with children.
I am sorry this is so long winded
but it is covering a very long period of time
Regards
Chris
