It was in downtown Nowra where I spotted the cause of all my juvenile wet dreams, a Karmann Ghia, and a sporty red one at that! This sports version of a Volkswagen was as rare as a Bugatti and as expensive as a Porsche. It was, of course, totally out of my reach as a young 18-year-old who badly needed wheels to follow his mobile office as paymaster of a column of some two hundred workers who were building the "Autobahn" from Hannover to Bremen.
Instead, being only barely legal to obtain a "Führerschein", I bought with borrowed money, guaranteed by my older sister, a bashed-up FIAT 500. It promptly and irreparably broke down and left me with no car but a loan which I kept paying off until I left for Australia in 1965. It also left me with a bad taste in my mouth and I didn't go near another car until I got my first company-supplied car on the island of Bougainville in 1972.
Today, I could afford any kind of car, however red and sporty, but with receding hair, few teeth, and an expanding waistline I no longer fit the picture; in fact, this one Padma took of me in Nowra will be the last.
