and, true to his word, he's still here
Every so often, a blogreader asks me if I have started working on my book yet. What book would that be? The only book I keep working on is my address book when, several times a year, I perform the melancholy task of crossing out the dead.
Yesterday, for a change, I added the name of a Swiss friend but, given his advanced age, only in pencil. He's eighty-nine years old but still in surprisingly good shape. They breed them tough in the Swiss Navy!
He and his German wife - another mixed marriage! - had driven up from Bermagui and we met in our favourite café and talked and talked some more and our talk drifted back to 1957 when he had come to Australia.
"Where did you find this?" he asked, looking amazed at his seventy-year-old arrival card I had brought up from naa.gov.au on my mobile phone.
"I'll send you a copy by email", I replied. "I don't have email", said the probably last man in Australia who has neither an email address nor a computer, and so I went back into town today to print out their arrival cards, his brother's arrival card, her and her family's registration cards at the Bonegilla Migrant Camp, a photo of the ship ANNA SALEN she had arrived on, and a copy of Neptune's "crossing the line" certificate.
As for writing that book of mine, let me tell you there's a lot more to writing a book than to writing these thoughtless thought bubbles which may take me ten minutes to half an hour at the most. This one took me even less as I am in a hurry to mail the letter to them before the post office shuts. Merry Christmas, Ernst & Lieselotte, and happy memories!
