CHAPTER 18

Sailing under the Wind of Hope

It was a strange feeling to be standing at the deck's railing and waving to my former boss Jürgen and Dagmar Siemering and to Wolfgang von Guenther, who had become like a younger brother to me. As the SKAUBRYN moved away from the pier, the people waving there became smaller and smaller until they blended into one indistinguishable group of humanity. Slowly the harbour buildings and the docks with the derricks and petrol tanks merged together, and as the SKAUBRYN began to move full steam into the open North Sea, the structures built by human hands were the last sight of Germany, disappearing in the distance.

My feet seemed screwed to the deck, for a strange feeling of anxiety came over me. What had I done? I had left the familiar behind and exchanged it for an unknown future. I had travelled across borders before, but it had never been into a country with a different culture, using a language in which I was still not thinking. I told myself that I had a good grounding in English, but deep down I knew that I would have to learn a lot more until I mastered it in the same way as German or Polish. And how would the people in Australia accept me, coming from a country with which only ten years ago they were still at war? Would there be a future for me, or was I going to just enjoy the trip, learning about the wool trade and after a couple of years come back to mother Germany? But then I thought there was the thrill of adventure. I was still young at 25, and the promise of a new world and a new life pushed my anxiety slowly into the background. I was determined to have a positive attitude towards all new experiences, absorb them and let them mould me into a new person. My parents and my Heimat had given me enough to be proud of them, my family and my ancestry. I knew who I was and I could look into the future with confidence. I did not want to live with a confused feeling of hankering after the past and at the same time trying to grasp everything the future would offer.

It had not been difficult to say my good-byes to my parents, to Gerda, to the extended family and to my friends. I began to realise that I didn't have a future in Germany. Having lost my Heimat at the end of the war, I

264