The number of immigrants arriving in Australia from Europe increased rapidly just before and after the Second World War. As a postwar immigrant myself I would like to comment on how my experiences differ from the main characters in three Australian books. Moniek Prochownik, the unfulfilled artist in Alex Miller’s novel Prochownik’s Dream (2005), migrated […]

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Chancellor, Provost, Fellows of the Senate, ladies and gentlemen: This occasion is for me a great honour and a great pleasure. The University has played a large role in my life. I cannot, to this day, drive past it and glimpse its towers, without recalling that summer morning sixty-two years ago when I first came […]

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When I was a child, I often used to wish I came from some other family. This is not an uncommon feeling in kids, who can easily become convinced that other people’s families are better and more interesting than the one they’ve been born into. In my case, though, I used to wish mine was […]

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FIRST OF JUNE, 1993, 11.30 p.m., platform number 5, the main railway station of Budapest. There is a bit of frisson to the location: the last time I left Budapest by train was in June 1944 and I, with 1680 others, was leaving for destinations unknown, seventy to a cattle truck. We finished up in Belsen. Now […]

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“TEACHER-IN-CHARGE—Maria River via Kempsey. Second Class Rail Warrant Attached.” Yes, this was all the information thought necessary for me to begin my teaching career in some far-flung corner of the Department of Education empire. Well, I knew roughly where Kempsey was, and having been a member of Section 7, the small school section at Newcastle […]

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I WAS WORKING at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire for a few weeks in the early spring of 1990. I’d flown across alone from Virginia after staying with friends on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. Chatsworth is the home of the Dukes of Devonshire. The house is open to the public most days. I was […]

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ALEXANDER WAS HIS SURNAME and I don’t remember his given name. He was a handsome boy with dark curly hair. His father was a professor at the Lwow University, his parents knew mine and I was encouraged to play with him. Baches, again a surname, was a somewhat overweight boy and wore glasses. Again, his […]

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Have you noticed how seldom you hear people complaining about the weather forecasts these days? It seems only yesterday that no strong wind, freak hailstorm or lashing rain thundering out of a towering cumulonimbus was not followed by public or private outcry: “How could they get it so wrong?” As the Bureau of Meteorology prepares […]

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AS I LAY ASLEEP in Italy … Though not exactly Italy, but Herefordshire. David Wordsworth (a remote descendant of the poet) and I had decided to do some walking in the English countryside, and we agreed on the Golden Valley, partly because he also wanted to visit his mother and little (half) sister. His father […]

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In London my first job after arriving broke in July 1963 was as a plongeur, washing up in a Bayswater pub. At this point in life it seemed to me that I would have far better trained as a plumber or electrician, useful and portable skills, than spent four years and more studying economics at […]

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