WHEN Lynne Hayes was 10, she didn't want to leave the Leigh area. Her parents had decided to make a new life for the family abroad, but they hadn't counted on such plucky resistence from their eldest daughter.

"I desperately didn't want to leave England. I begged my parents to leave me behind," recalls Lynne. "I had a fabulous school. I went to Leigh Street Primary School (which now doesn't exist) and I went to the Baptist Church in Leigh Street as well. I had really, really strong community links. So, I just didn't want to come (to Australia)."

Her old school, now called Parklea School, was rebuilt in an area that was once fields.

"I was always very ambitious with education. I realised I had to win scholarships because my family weren't very well off," Lynne said.

She remembers being quite head-strong at an early age: "I had my heart set on going to Bolton Grammar," Lynne said. "If you'd have asked me at eight what I was going to do, I would have said I was going to win a scholarship to Bolton Grammar."

Now, 40 years on, Lynne is the headmistress at Sydney's St Catherines School - Australia's oldest independent girls school. But it has been a long road from leaving her home in Atherton to building her new life with husband Michael Stone and their son Peter, 19.

Lynne was born at the Firs Hospital in Leigh in 1954 and lived in Leigh until the age of three, before moving to Argyle Street in Atherton. Lynne's father had been a weaver by trade, but they closed all the cotton mills. Then he became a coal miner and they soon started closing all the pits. The family decided it was time to make a change.

"The area did go through quite a depressed period, so mum and dad applied to go to Canada and Australia. Australia came up first. And that's the only reason we're here as opposed to Canada," Lynne remembers.

Lynne, with her mum and dad and two younger brothers Nigel and Barry went for interviews and medicals in December, 1964 and were on a plane to Australia in May, 1965.

The Hayes family has lived in Tyldesley and Atherton since the 1850's. On a visit back to England, Lynne got a taste of her rich family history.

"The last time I was there I was walking down Astley and we stopped with my aunt and she said to the lady leaning on the fence: 'Do you know who this is?' She looked at me and said: 'She's a Hayes, but I don't know which one.' She told her I was Kenny's daughter and everyone knew then where I fitted into the family. And it was that sense of depth that we lost when we left. We literally lost grandparents, aunts, uncles ... and there was just us. The family were a bit upset with us for leaving; They'd say: 'If you want to change, why don't you just move south? Don't move to Australia.'"

As sponsored migrants, Lynne's father had to work for BHP on arrival in Australia. The family settled in Dapto (on the New South Wales south coast), but the rule was, if they went back home within two years, they had to pay all the money back. They spent six months at a migrant hostel.

"It was pretty apalling ... the meals were terrible. We lived in huts, raised off the floor and ours was infested with cockroaches. My mother was nearly beside herself," Lynne recalls. "Mum used to buy tins of beans and we worked out that if we got the coppers going in the laundry, we could heat the beans. So we'd have beans on toast occasionally, which was an incredible treat."

Lynne's parents became very involved with sport in Australia.

Lynne said: "We all played a lot of sport. And for kids my age in England at the time, there just weren't enough teams. There was one netball team in our school and I didn't make it in. I can remember trying out - trying my absolute hardest to get in - I desperately wanted to play."

"In England, we'd always been into walking. My parents were of the mindset: you wrap the kids up, put them in a pram and go for a long walk. So we would often be walking along the canals in the summertime, so we'd always been a bit outdoors from that point of view," Lynne said.

If there was one thing Lynne has taken away with her from Leigh it would be a good education.

"I think I got possibly the best start that you would get and I've actually written to my old school and told them that. Almost all of my teachers were single women. But I just remember the richness. We used to go on nature walks, sketching, play endless word games."

She has fond memories of her teachers: Mrs Massey, Miss Bannister, Mrs Gee, Miss Ormisher and Miss Yates - Mr Greenwood was her headmaster.

"Miss Yates and Miss Bannister produced the school plays and musicals and had beautiful voices. Miss Ormisher was my class teacher and also taught us the most creative craft work and sewing - she introduced me to the Wizard of Oz, reading it aloud to us in class. Mrs Massey was in the Infants' School and gave me a watch which I still have," Lynne said.

Lynne's life in Australia has been built on a series of scholarships and hard work, but it's not likely to be slowing down any time soon.

"I've just turned 50, it's my fourth year in the job, Lynne said. "I will always work with young people, but it's not a hurry. It's not going to happen in the next couple of years. But I think beyond that, I'll probably be a volunteer abroad; maybe working with a Third World country, helping to set up teacher education programs."