In meinem Auswanderungsrückblick schrieb ich u.a.: "I will always remember one of my cabin-mates, a young butcher from Berlin, who was constantly dressed in a fishnet-shirt (to solve his laundry problem, as he put it, and which left an interesting tanning pattern on his upper torso). Nothing seemed to bother him much; not our uncertain future nor the English lessons which he had dispensed with in favour of the bar. As far as he was concerned, if things didn't work out he could always commit suicide! An interesting outlook on life, to say the least, and the solving of one's problems. I have sometimes wondered how he ended up?"
An den Namen dieses jungen Metzgers konnte ich mich gar nicht mehr erinnern obwohl er mir seit Jahren ins Gesicht gestarrt hatte denn er war auf der selben Seite des 'ships's manifest' wie ich: "DAVID Gerhard, Berlin, S/UN (single/unaccompanied), geboren 27.12.42, 22 Jahre alt, butcher".
Ich half ihm sogar seine "Incoming Passenger Card" auszufüllen denn so schrieb ich damals meine ganz unverwechslichen kleinen und großen 'A's in Worten wie 'Germany' und 'Australia'.
Und er war dann einer von uns drei oder vier deutschen Einwanderern von denen ich in meinem Auswanderungsrückblick schrieb: "Deep blue skies and brilliant sunshine during the day made up for the freezing nights. It was two days after I had arrived in camp and while I was "thawing" out in the midday sun when another German who had come off the ship with me, told me about a "German Lady", a Mrs Haermeyer, at the camp's reception centre who was offering to take three or four recently arrived German migrants back to Melbourne to board at her house. I had been "processed" by the camp's administration on the first day and knew that in all likelihood I was destined to be sent to Sydney to work as labourer for the Sydney Water Board. So what did I have to lose? In record time I had myself signed out by the "Camp Commandant", my few things packed, and was sitting, with three other former ship-mates, in a VW Beetle enroute back to Melbourne.
The "German Lady" had turned out to be a very enterprising roly-poly German housewife who with her German husband, a bricklayer, operated something of a boarding-house from their quaint little place at 456 Brunswick Road in West Brunswick in Melbourne. The place seemed already full to overflowing with young Germans from a previous intake, with bodies occupying the lounge-room sofa, a make-shift annex, and an egg-shaped plywood caravan in the backyard. My ship-mates joined that happy crowd but I was "farmed out" to a nice English lady across the road who had a spare room."
Das hatte ich auch schon völlig vergessen denn ich blieb nicht lange in Melbourne stecken sondern fing bald ein neues Leben in Canberra an.
So, wie erging es dem Gerhard David nach der Auswanderung? Wo ist er jetzt? Ist er noch in Australien, oder ging er zurück nach Deutschland, oder tat er was er sagte er würde machen falls alles schief ginge?
