Mayor came home - to tell us we'd be better off away
THE audience hung on to the speaker's every word as he described the dazzling opportunities that beckoned on the other side of the world — guaranteed work and the prospect of farming their own land.
Australia, the gathering in Milngavie Burgh Hall that December night in 1922 was assured, offered the working man a quality of life that tired old Britain could never match.
The locals were impressed for this lecture did not come from a stranger peddling second hand information, but from one of their own — a son of Milngavie who had truly made his name and fortune in Australia.
Four years earlier, in November 1918, the Herald reported that Walter Lyon, born into a respected local farming family, had just been elected to serve a fifth term as mayor of Sale, Victoria.
It quoted an Australian newspaper as saying the mayor's sense of duty had prompted him to accept a position that made heavy demands of time, energy and money. It also said Sale had never had a mayoress who carried out her duties so well as did Mrs Lyon.
Now Lyon, by this time the ex-mayor of Sale, was back in Scotland as an unpaid representative of the Australian government, urging his fellow Scots to follow his lead and emigrate to this land of plenty.
He was one of many who in his own words had gone there ''without a bob and tackled things and made good.'' This vast Dominion needed many more young men who could do the same.
The Herald assured its readers that although Lyon had spent decades in Australia, Milngavie still held a special place in his heart.
''His ever expanding activities never so completely engrossed his attention as to cause him to slacken his interest in the affairs of Milngavie or to weaken his love for it.''
He spoke of fond memories of Milngavie Public School. The 1922 visit home was his third — he had been to Milngavie only the previous year and also in 1910.
''His business success'' the Herald added ''is a stimulus to the lads and young men of the town who may have to make a choice as to their sphere of employment.''
The paper was sure that many young men from Milngavie and district would attend the forthcoming public meeting, organised by the local Literary and Debating Society, to hear what Lyon had to say..at venues elsewhere between 600-700 had turned up. In the next issue the Herald noted that Milngavie managed ''a fair attendance''.
Lyon told his audience that he was performing the duty of every Australian citizen, whether by birth or adoption, to tell the people of the mother country of everything this young nation had to offer.
''He had no axe to grind, no land to sell, no shares to offer them and no proverbialy get-rich schemes to dangle before them.
''He was not a Government employee, nor was he a Government lecturer, but just a plain Briton who had found that Australia offered better conditions of life and living for the worker than could be found on any other part of the earth's surface.''
At this point Lyon found that he had a receptive audience — they broke into applause, obviously enthusiastic about the prospect of a better future than the one they felt faced them in Scotland.
The Australian and UK governments, to relieve unemployment in Britain and to give Australia the armies of land workers it needed to cultivate its vast spaces had negotiated with the various shipping lines a 36 third class fare. The Australian governmemt would pay a third of that. If the remaining 24 was beyond a would-be migrant's needs, and Lyon admitted that in his travels in Britain he had met many fine young men who could not hope to find that amount, the Australian government would consider lending them another 12 interest free. They might even, in special cases, pay the full amount. Whatever happened Lyon, whose own business background appears to have been in farming, promised that Australia would find migrants work on the land, provide any training needed and generally assist them to settle in.
The audience also cheered when Lyon said that all his years in Australia had been spent working outdoors and the climate had done him no harm, but experience since then has shown that skin cancer from the sun's rays is one of the biggest health risks for white Australians.
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Weather for Milngavie
Saturday 11 February 2012
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