When I was just 23 years old, I booked my one way ticket from Australia to Europe. Granted it was back in the days before email, but I could keep in touch with my family through mail and, if necessary, very expensive phone calls. There was also the thought that I would eventually return home – though the return ticket was never purchased and I have not lived in Australia since.
How then did my ancestors feel embarking on a truly one way voyage from the United Kingdom to Australia or New Zealand knowing that they probably would not see their families or home towns again? We are very lucky to have a copy of the diary my great-grandmother, Jane Gibbons, kept on her way from Perth, Scotland to Dunedin in New Zealand.
Jane McKenzie (nee Gibbons) was a well educated young woman from a comfortable background who gave this all up to accompany her new husband to a “better life”. For poor Jane I am not sure that her life was better. Her husband, Donald, had gone ahead to New Zealand and had purchased some land to farm. When he wrote back home asking Jane to join him, Jane’s father refused to let her travel alone. Donald had to come all the way back to Scotland and the only way he could afford the trip was to sell his new land. By the time the newly married couple arrived in New Zealand there was already a baby on the way and no money for another piece of land. Unfortunately the family’s finances never really recovered.
Many of my other ancestors, however, did mange to find a “better life” outside the United Kingdom and I am grateful that I was able to enjoy a comfortable and will-educated upbringing due to the many one way tickets they traveled on.