Australia, my new home

there were further four or five ferries.

Unfortunately, our lovely honeymoon had to be short as I had to be back in the office on Monday the week after our wedding. Michael was leaving the following day for overseas and had to brief me on all outstanding matters of the business.

Our home was lovely. We had brought a few items of furniture from our St.Ives home, such as the divan bed, a couple of saucer chairs, and mainly kitchen ware. We had to purchased a new double bed and a second hand fridge. A kitchen table with four red chairs came with the house. If we had more than two visitors, they were asked to bring their own chairs unless they wanted to sit on the carpet in the lounge room. We had ordered a wardrobe unit, but there was a delay before it could be delivered, so our clothes were all hanging from the picture rail in our bed room. Before we moved in we had all the floors sanded, except the lounge room, and I had painted them with liquid nylon, a hard wearing lacquer which brought out the natural grain of the cypress pine boards. We bought some straw mats for the hall, and very gradually we bought items such as lounge room furniture, dining room furniture, all second hand, and a new dressing table for Alison. Although our house was modest, we never lacked visitors.

Horst Schmidt, another friend from the YMCA, joined our family together with Chawalli, his Afghan hound. Both of them were very good tenants, and we had never any trouble with either of them. Chawalli was such a lovely dog, quite elegant and he had refined manners. Some neighbours thought that he was aggressive and one complained that he had attacked her. We could never believe it.

During this time Klaus von Bonin was a regular visitor with us, also Werner Schlieper, a cousin of Rainer's. They were all Germans without any family here. Gerda, of course, came quite regularly, and there was always a lively atmosphere in our home. With Klaus our whole group went water skiing or if we didn't have a boat we just went to the beach.

In May Alison became pregnant, but this did not seem to change our way of life. She only occasionally had morning sickness, but otherwise was strong and healthy. George Blome left Australia for the U.S.A. to further his studies. We kept corresponding but I really missed him. There was no one who could take his place.

The beginning of 1960 was extremely hot. We kept going on water skiing trips, but Alison was getting big and felt more and more uncomfortable. In January we had a four-day long heat wave, with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. My office, exposed to the western sun, was very hot. I would come home in the afternoons and sit in our bath tub with some ice cubes added to cool the cold water.

After dinner we would go to Dee Why swimming pool to cool off. There were hundreds of others there, all trying to escape the heat. After having thoroughly cooled off, we went back up the hill at Dee Why, where the

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