Oh dear, I felt shy, timid, with minimal English skills (but pretty good 

for a year after immigrating from Germany as a ten pound tourist), and 

what an intimidating old school building it seemed to me. I had never 

heard of Charles Dickens then, but that's what it felt like in 

retrospect! My memories are sketchy, hidden by some blockage, probably a 

sense of not really belonging or coping well. The recurring memory is 

concrete, with lines drawn or painted, for playing "wog ball". I was 

aware, from old war movies watched at neighbour's houses (we couldn't 

afford TV then), that I belonged to the doomed master race, the spawn of 

Adolf, the ridiculed German soldier in so many TV and Film scripts. I 

was born after the war and the history pertaining to the pre-war era was 

well concealed from small German post-war children in Germany. It took 

the Australian / American media to make me aware of that. I arrived in 

Australia on Boxing Day 1960, went straight to Bonegilla from Station 

Pier, and spent some months at Maribyrnong High School (placed in the 

Migrant Hostel there for a while) before moving to Number One Kingsley 

Street, Elwood. I found solace in Elwood Beach; in summer I often went 

for a pre-school, pre breakfast swim. For me the beach was a marvelous 

indulgence, a daily holiday luxury. I made my first Australian friend 

outside of school. He was a Tyrolean Italian boy with whom I shared a 

bit of the isolation of the new immigrant. All that didn't last too long, 

though. I made new friends at school eventually, and then the big new 

adventure at the senior school, Elwood High, began. I never really 

looked back. Kay Schieren