The RMS Himalaya, the steamship on which Allen and his family sailed to Australia in 1968. Photo: Museums Victoria
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Allen Brooker was an 11-year-old boy when he and his family put London’s Tilbury Docks in their wake and set sail for Australia. It would be the last time Allen would see his land of birth until 2017. By then, he would recognise little of what remained.
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The first thing Allen noticed about his new home was the quality of the light.
“The main thing I noticed ... It was so bright compared to England,” he said.
Born in 1957 in Reading, England, Allen is the middle child of four siblings.
Now retired from a career in metal polishing, he is able to recall in detail the austere disciplining dished out on him and his peers at school.
If, for instance, Allen didn’t place a gold coin for lunch in his master’s outstretched hand, he would be punished with a beating to his backside.
His parents were unaware, at the time, of the painful disciplining. The situation — alongside his embarrassment over his struggle with reading and writing — soon became so dire that Allen began playing truant and wandered the streets of Reading.
“It got to the stage where I wouldn’t go [to school]. I was too frightened.”
Then news arrived that would change the trajectory of his and his loved ones’ lives.
Under the then Federal Government’s Assisted Passage Migration Scheme, the Brooker family, like countless other young British families, packed their lives up into four suitcases and found themselves bound down-under.
Allen remembers looking down from the deck of the steamship RMS Himalaya at Tilbury Docks and seeing his grandparents waving up at the young family.
After stopping by Cape Town, the RMS Himalaya crossed the Indian Ocean — a voyage of nine days on the open ocean.
“That was a big journey,” Allen said.
On January 29, 1969, after six weeks at sea and a stopover in Perth, Allen and his family stepped on to dry land at Station Pier in Port Melbourne.
Allen’s souvenir life buoy from the RMS Himalaya.
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They soon found themselves housed at the Nunawading Migrant Hostel on Rooks Rd, Victoria.
Allen found the sunny skies more congenial to his tastes than the climate.
“The heat was unbearable for me,” he said.
“I can remember running a bath and hopping into that — just to cool off.”
The hostel at Rooks Rd, Nunnawading, where Allen stayed with his family after arriving in Australia.
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He fondly remembers cooling himself down with a Sunnyboy and drinking Tarax at the hostel.
“There was a train tracks near [the hostel], and I remember the bells going off,” Allen said.
His family soon left Nunawading to rent a home in Boronia.
After leaving Knox Technical College at 15, Allen began working full time as a metal polisher.
“I’m all right with my hands, and I’m a bit arty,” he said.
Later, while working at a tanker manufacturing company, Allen’s job would be to climb inside the bowels of trucks and clean their internal weld seams to a food grade finish.
Allen believes his parents — both of whom served in the British forces — met while based in what would later become the town of his birth.
Allen’s father served in the Royal Corp of Transport as an army duck driver. His mother worked in the Royal Air Force, packing parachutes for RAF paratroopers.
Now, after more than 55 years in the country, Allen said he loves Australia and rarely misses England.
In May 2004, during a ceremony at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, he was granted Australian citizenship.
After moving to Cobram from the Macedon Ranges in July, 2022, Allen and his wife Lyn will celebrate 41 years of marriage this November.
After Lyn’s dementia diagnosis in 2022, Allen took an early retirement to care for her.
In their spare time the couple enjoys taking long walks down to Quinns Island with their Jack Russell terrier, Jade.
They would like to express their gratitude to the Cobram community for their support.
Asked which single word best describes him, Allen said ‘calm’ best fits.
