The first thing Linda and I had to do after our travels was replenish our bank accounts. We'd travelled very much on the cheap through the Middle East and Eastern Europe, but the money had to run out eventually. Linda’s sister lived in Canada, so it made sense for her to go over there.
So she did that, and became the chef of a hospital in Barrie. My old employers in London arranged a transfer to their Toronto office as an auditor. First, I drove my Mum around England and Scotland, at her expense, then hit her for the airfare across to the new job.
Canada wasn’t my first choice, actually, but its immigration
line was shorter than the US’s - a story told in The Turning Point in
January 2014. Linda and I were on our (separate) ways home to Australia;
Canada was just a place to save money so as not to go back broke. Linda met me
off the plane, which was nice…
That was in 1965. Eventually, she lost patience with my
reluctance to commit, and headed back to Melbourne to make a new life for herself.
By the time I finally did commit, by phone, and in writing (as demanded...!), our logistics were all skewiff, and I was out of town when she arrived.
Touche’s office down in the Bahamas had asked Toronto to
lend them three or four young and single audit clerks for a few weeks in December. Rum and
Coca Cola on a tropical beach instead of hot coffee in a cold motel room in
Windsor, Ontario, seemed like a good deal, and I jumped at the chance.
Linda reckons she landed with only $30 on her, which in all
the confusion she left behind in a phone booth at the airport. Poor Linda! Poor
Jon, my flatmate, who had to stake her to the airfare down to Nassau – plus $30
pocket-money, I guess. The details are fuzzy, after all these years.
So we got an early honeymoon in the old Royal
Victoria Hotel, and wondered if we might come back to live in Nassau one day. But
Touche didn’t want me, except for the few weeks; and the trust company I’d been
auditing chose somebody else for the job they had advertised. Bummer.
Sigh. As a second-best, I persuaded Touche Toronto to
recommend me to its office in Kingston, Jamaica. A few months after our wedding,
we signed up with an agency that delivered snowbirds’ cars to them in Florida. A
leisurely drive down to Orlando took five days, staying at motels along the
way.
Jamaica ahoy! But - never say die, eh? Our personal
schedule left us two weeks to knock on doors in Nassau, and we landed jobs
halfway through the second week. Linda began teaching at a government school,
me at the trust company I'd audited before. The chap who had beaten me for the job had failed
to turn up.
A warehouse in Miami had let us park our
belongings with them until we sent for them – to Nassau if we got lucky, or to
Kingston if we didn’t. We phoned and sent a cheque, and all our suitcases and
boxes came on the next boat. No problem. Imagine making an
arrangement like that these days! Our gear would be blown up by Big Brother the
first day. Simpler times, back then.
Our first house and car in Nassau were provided by Tim, who also
worked for the trust company. He was off the Island with his family on “long
leave”, and didn’t find out about the deal until he got back. That was par for
the course, apparently.
“Long leave” was a carry-over from the Good Old Days
when the sun never set on the British Empire, in which anywhere in the tropics
was a “hardship post”. Two weeks in the hill stations of India or Kenya or anywhere else were a refreshing
break from the stinking heat of the population centres, but it needed three
months in Blighty every two years to prevent the chaps from “going native”. Mad
dogs and Englishmen, and all that.
By the time Tim and Mrs Tim and the little Tims came back,
we had our own accommodation and car. We blew all our savings on the car - as reported in Me and Miss Ohio, in April
2013.
We finally made it to Jamaica for the Easter of ’68 – a second
honeymoon, or a third, or a fourth. We loved it, and did all the usual tourist
things – Dunn River Falls, rafting on the Rio Grande, the hot spa at Milk River,
rum and Coca Cola on the beaches… Those were good years for expats in Jamaica
as well as Nassau.
But the latter was a tax-haven, and by gosh didn't we flourish in the absence of Income Tax! When the time came to move on, we looked for another tax-haven.
But the latter was a tax-haven, and by gosh didn't we flourish in the absence of Income Tax! When the time came to move on, we looked for another tax-haven.
