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Clive and I emigrated from Dartmoor, England in November 1979 - with our three children (Dorothy then aged 5, Alistair 7 and Robert 9) - to take up employment in the Falkland Islands. Our long term aim was to one day have our own farm, since we hadn't the capital to do this in England, but at the time the likelihood of this actually happening seemed very remote.

We travelled by air from Heathrow via Argentina, arriving finally at Stanley, Falkland Islands with just £3 cash to our name, three tired and crabby children at our heels and all the luggage that we could carry. Our furniture and the rest of our worldly 'goods and shackles' - to borrow Clive's expression - had been sent ahead by sea. These included all the items we had bought to furnish our new home, clothes for the children to grow into and so forth, on which we'd spent all our money. These items were waiting for us in crates on the Stanley jetty, upside down with sopping wet contents - though we weren't to discover this until much later when the crate finally reached Port Stephens many weeks later.

We had been employed on a one-way ticket, three-year contract by the Falkland Islands Company, then the largest landowner in the Falklands, to work at Port Stephens, at that time one massive farm on southern West Falkland. (It has since been subdivided and sold to private owners.) Flying out to the farm on a Beaver seaplane was an amazing experience - over a hundred miles and we saw not a single sheep... This was to be our new home for the next three years. Little did we think we would still be in the Falklands in 2006...

If you would like to read more about our early years, please check out Early Days.

Updated 1st August 2006