Ping pong Poms
MAN: So cold down here at the moment. What do you think about spending your birthday on such a cold beach? No chance of swimming today.
PETER FITZSIMONS: It begins with a dream, the dream of a better life.
MAN: Yeah. My chips are cold.
YOUNG MAN: Mine are getting cold now as well.
PETER FITZSIMONS: The Australian dream...
MAN: Are you cold?
WOMAN: Yeah, freezing.
MAN: Never mind. You'll be too hot soon.
PETER FITZSIMONS: to swap life here for here. But just like the First Fleet, many emigrating English have second thoughts.
WOMAN: Carl. Carl, can you come up here, please?
JEFF: Well, there's things in the sea what will kill you for getting into the sea. Like, in England at least, we haven't got...
PETER FITZSIMONS: Welcome and farewell. Nowadays stayers, like Sayer, seem to be the exception...
SAYER: Beauty, mate!
PETER FITZSIMONS: not the rule.
SAYER: Are you staying or are you going back?
WOMAN: No. We're staying.
SAYER: You're staying? Because, you know, there's lot of people going back.
PETER FITZSIMONS: But it isn't just a couple of families doing a U-turn -last year, more than 7,000 Britons took their bat and ball and went home. They're known as 'Ping-Pong Poms'.
JEFF: So we're just going back to being scrimping and saving, won't have the income level.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Among their number is Jeff McMillan with whom I'd only just been acquainted.
JEFF: Sorry, Peter... Peter Fitz...Is it Fitzgerald?
PETER FITZSIMONS: Fitzsimons. Same spelling as the famous author.
JEFF: Oh, right.
PETER FITZSIMONS: This is what Jeff, his wife and two children left behind in Lancaster, England, five years ago. Their leaving party was full of high hopes.
JEFF: We'll get on well with the Australians because they're a bit up themselves.
PETER FITZSIMONS: They settled in the Sunshine State, set themselves up in a modern 3-bedroom home near Brisbane.
JEFF: Come on, Lewis. Time to get up.
PETER FITZSIMONS: But, unlike the engines of the jet that brought them here, they haven't stopped whining since.
YOUNG BOY: Will we be going to England today?
PETER FITZSIMONS: How do you find Australia's food generally?
WIFE: Crap.
JEFF: The roads, the potholes are atrocious. It's like Third World countries, some of these potholes. They won't get to them for weeks.
WIFE: The sausages are just awful.
PETER FITZSIMON: OUR sausages are awful?!
JEFF: The Brisbane drivers, they don't do overtaking here. It's all undertaking. That's why the undertakers are so busy.
WIFE: I've not met anyone that they like the sausages here.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Excuse me!
WIFE: English.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Is it possible that you two are, I'm trying to think of that expression. Oh, I remember. Whinging Poms?
JEFF: No.
WIFE: Never whinged.
JEFF: Never whinged. We're just stating the differences, aren't we? That's all. Never whinged….At least in England, we've got a bit of courtesy on the roads. I won't miss the driving here.
PETER FITZSIMONS: This is what we call in Australia “meat and one veg."
JEFF: Somebody's let me out. That's a rarity - must be English. Must be a Pommy.
PETER FITZSIMONS: For the Waldren family in Norfolk, it's only a few more days before they leave. Surrounded by boxes, their interest in us like so many English, was sparked while watching 'Home and Away' and that, it seems, is where the ping-pong problem begins.
MAN: Can't wait to get there. Can you?
BOY: Nah.
ROGER BURROWS: I think the growth of a range of television programs in the UK about a better life Down Under -'Home and Away', all of those things that we are very familiar with paint a picture of life in Australia that perhaps doesn't always live up to people's expectations.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Ping-Pong Poms are so intriguing that at the University of London, Professor Roger Burrows has forged a career trying to make sense of it.
ROGER BURROWS: I think we've been very surprised by how remarkably unprepared people have been. They really have been driven by the dream, by the images, rather than a realistic assessment about what the day-to-day, mundane life is gonna be like.
JEFF: We don't go to the beach too often, do we, us lot?
WIFE: We tend to stay indoors 'cause you are worried about the kids burning, skin cancer. Don't like it. It's too rough for me.
JEFF: It's too dangerous, innit, Lewis? Them rips will take you out, won't they? Make you drown.
GIRL: Everybody's got to find out sooner or later.
WIFE: You get sand stuck all over you.
JEFF: That's it. Then you bring it home in the car don't you, Lewis? A mobile beach in the car. All that sand in your hair. I wish I had hair like you.
PETER FITZSIMONS: In Sydney, another family over here, over us and heading back.
MICHELLE: I'm just going to go upstairs and make a start on Zach's room.
PETER FITZSIMONS: For Michelle, baby Zach and Carl...
MICHELLE: Carl. Carl! Carl, can you come up here?
PETER FITZSIMONs: history is repeating itself.
MICHELLE: My father was a 10 pound Pom in the '60s so he came to Australia as a bit of an adventure and he ended up staying here, I think it was five years.
PETER FITZSIMONS: He returned to England but Australia never left his heart.
MICHELLE: I've grew up with Australia as this fantastic place from my father and we always just thought, "Let's give it a whirl."
MICHELLE: Cover up my shoulder...
PETER FITZSIMONS: So, five years ago, they emigrated, but every year since has been a struggle to make ends meet. Australia, they find, is too expensive.
CARL: I always thought the Australian dream of the quarter-acre block of land with the pool and the house but it doesn't exist.
MICHELLE: You know, the clothing over here I don't find as good quality as in Europe and it's a lot more expensive as well.
CARL: I think Australian people do tend to moan a lot more than English people.
PETER FITZSIMONS: No!
CARL: Yes!
PETER FITZSIMONS: Welcome to paradise. This will be Carl and Michelle's last lunch living the Australian dream, a dream they feel only Australians really get.
CARL: Australians tend to think that this is the best place on Earth and it can be a bit one-dimensional here. The difference between Australian and a yoghurt?
PETER FITZSIMONS: Yeah, what's that?
CARL: More culture in the yoghurt.
ROGER BURROWS: There are really just three main reasons why people return. First of all, all people miss their family.
JEFF: Well, we are missing family.
ROGER BURROWS: The second main reason is that people feel homesick, they feel displaced.
JEFF: I agree I don't suit Australia's culture because I'm a Pom.
ROGER BURROWS: And the third reason - and perhaps this is a more important reason than it has been historically - is that people feel that their dreams have not been fulfilled.
PETER FITZSIMONS: I just don't understand why your heart's back in England
JEFF: Yeah, but I don't do beach. I don't want sand down my crack.
WIFE: I'm dehydrated.
JEFF: I forgot about me phone. My phone's knackered. I haven't got a phone now.
WIFE: We're not beach people, are we?
PETER FITZSIMONS: But as I was to discover, the Macmillan family was not united. Have you had the joy of catching a wave and feeling that rush?
TEENAGE GIRL: Yeah.
PETER FITZSIMONS: So you've had that?
TEENAGE GIRL: Yeah.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Alright. Girlfriend, you're one of ours, then. And we're not gonna let you go back to England. A few days before their flight back to England, 16-year-old Danielle broke ranks.
TEENAGE GIRL: No, I don't want to go back. I still don't want to.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Why not?
TEENAGE GIRL: I like it here.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Do you feel Australian?
TEENAGE GIRL: Yeah.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Do you?
TEENAGE GIRL: Yeah.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Who do you want to win the next Ashes series?
TEENAGE GIRL: Australia.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Good!
MICHELLE: See your books? Just in case you forget where's you're from, our little Aussie man.
PETER FITZSIMONS: So it hasn't quite worked for you the way you might have hoped. What about Zach? To grow up on the beach, to be a nipper?
MICHELLE: I know. I imagine he'll look back and say, "What the hell!?"This is where, you know, I was born and you lived and you've brought me back here?!" But we never set out to come here forever.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Stay with me on this thought experiment, here is an Australian pub.
JEFF: Yep.
PETER FITZSIMONS: There's a beach, there's a cold beer, there's sun shining outside, there's beautiful girls walking past in bikinis, and here is an English pub and it's cold outside and it's wet and it's all really tight and there's sort of a smoky atmosphere. OK. You're an intelligent man. Which one of these are you gonna pick up that you really want?
JEFF: Well, you go for that because that's what I'm brought up in, innit, that culture.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Only 'cause you didn't know better! Once you've tried the Australian pub...
JEFF: Yeah.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Mmm-mmm.
JEFF: Far superior?
PETER FITZSIMONS: Far superior!
JEFF: Nah. It's not though. There's all these pokies...
PETER FITZSIMONS: I liked Jeff's frankness, even though I could hardly understand a word he was saying…You know what I think we're gonna have to do with you on this story -I think we're gonna have to put subtitles. You don't like the beer, you don't like the pubs, you don't like the people...
JEFF: Well, you don't get pints! It's like a lady's drink, innit, drinking out of that.
PETER FITZSIMONS: So nobody's ever called you
a whinging pom?
JEFF: Not yet.
PETER FITZSIMONS: I tell you what after this show, they will.
(Part 2) PETER FITZSIMONS: You pinged over here in 2005.
LEO: Yes.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Is there absolutely no chance that sometime in the rest of your life, you're going to pong your way back there?
LEO: I never wake up in the morning and miss England. That's the big telling factor. I usually wake up in the morning look out the window, hear a crow or a parrot and know I'm home.
PETER FITZSIMONS: One of our most famous immigrants, Leo Sayer, is surprised by the Ping-Pong Poms.
LEO: I just really worry about what they're going back to.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Are they gonna get...?
LEO: They won't get this.
TWO GIRLS: Hi, Leo!
LEO: Hi, guys. How are you?
TWO GIRLS: Nice to meet you.
LEO: Something in Australia has, well, to be truthful, touched my heart and something has made me feel like I belong here. So, that feeling of belonging is possible for people to have but you can't force 'em!
MAN: Well, last night in England.
WOMAN: Yep. Goodnight.
MAN: Goodnight, then. See you in the morning.
PETER FITZSIMONS: As the Waldrens prepared to leave Norfolk for the big journey Down Under, in an old Queensland butter factory, dozens of new Australians were getting ready to make it official, proof, perhaps, that this country isn't so bad after all.
YOUNG GIRL: We are really glad that Australia accepted us for who we are, and we are just proud to be in this country.
MAN: Very, very good place to be, this one.
YOUNG GIRL: I love this place, it's a lovely place to be. I feel more safe than being back home.
ALL: From this time forward...
PETER FITZSIMONS: But not everyone who takes the pledge intends to keep it.
ALL:..I pledge my loyalty to Australia
and its people.
PETER FITZSIMONS: A fortnight before they flew out, the MacMillans, like many Ping-Pong Poms, took out Australian citizenship.
WOMAN: Congratulations.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Is it a bit "up yours" to us to grab your Australian citizenship papers and go, "Taxi! Get my back to Britain. Get me back to the airport"?
WIFE: I feel a bit funny sometimes about getting it, but, you know, if we're welcome back in a year's time. And I think if we come back it'll be coming back to settle and that's it.
PETER FITZSIMONS: Carl, are you an Australian citizen or are you honest -a British citizen with Australian papers?
CARL: If I'm honest, I'm a British citizen first and foremost with another passport.
WIFE: We don't know it.
JEFF: Nice to have met ya.
WIFE: Say, "Goodbye, Australia!" See you next year.
GIRL: Goodbye, Australia!
WIFE: No, we won't.
GIRL: I will!
JEFF: Maybe. Ciao for now.
MAN: The vegetation is different here, isn't it? Hey? They've got lots of ferns.
WIFE: Yeah.
MAN: band playing for us
WIFE: What a welcome.
MAN: That's nice, innit, 'eh? Brilliant! Great. Really great.
WOMAN: Welcome to Nambour on behalf of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council.
MAN: Thank you very much.
WOMAN: and a couple of gifts here to make you feel very Aussie.
MAN: Oh, lovely. A little kangaroo.
PETER FITZSIMONS: What did you think when you came around the corner, you saw the brass band?
WIFE: that was really unexpected
MAN: surprised, yeah wasn’t expecting that that was really nice
WIFE: Just for us
PETER FITZSIMONS: oh no we do that for everybody that arrives.
END
