Migrantweb.com Hostels Forum

[metalfossil]

Thanks for providing this wonderful forum. I'd almost given up hope on discovering any information regarding Smithfield. For a while I actually thought that perhaps I had imagined staying there as a seven year old in 1966.

Disembarked from the Fairstar and stayed there around August-Sept 1966 until my father got shipped off to Penrith and we moved to Villawood.

Would love to hear from other people who were also there at the time.

Thanks again

[ANDREW WILLCOX]

I am Andrew Willcox. My family, 4 children mother Joan, dad and I arrived at Smithfield Hostel in Feb 1958 after arriving on the Strathnaver.
Some women cried when alighting the bus at Smithfield, on a hot dry and dusty day on the Adelaide Plains and finding our new home (for a while) was a tin shed.
Us kids (I was 8) just got to it and discovered it as a new playground, and met friends. I thought how wonderful living next to the train line.
Dad, Roy Willcox would have felt very anxious, hoping this new experiment would all come together.
He was very skilled, a toolmaker (Rolls Royce) and a very good muso, plus a chiropodist, so we did flourish and made the best of the situation after leaving our safe home etc at Shellthorpe, Leicestershire.
On our walk to Smithfield primary and back we saw our first goannas, huge spiders, lots of bunnies and the like, no houses for miles.........to be continued..........................