Finsbury Park Adelaide Hostel
Without Prejudice
I can remember the ride from the boat to the Hostel. I was 2. I knew something momentous was happening and gazed out at the blinding sunny city streets, white hot and dazzling. My eyes filled up with the light. I knew it was my new home, this new country, Australia. I knew everyone around me was excited too. A whole new beginning for our party of five kids and Mum and Dad.
The next memory is of the canteen where meals were served. Dad said shark was on the menu and that the Tomato soup was not Campbells Cream of Tomato. And the Nissen hut, one bulb in the middle of the room, bedrooms sectioned off. the heat, the flies, none of that is remembered. I can feel my sisters hand tugging at me to hurry up as she took me to Nursery School. She had to take me every morning before she herself went to school. And I cried for my Mother, every single day. Jackie would virtually tow me along.
I remember the nursery school and how they thought I was very bright for my age. And George my 19 month older brother was a little horror. I can remember him swinging, higher, ever higher up on the swings and yelling. I think they refused to take him after a while. I'm sure Mum said he was thrown out of Nursery school. I can still smell the orange juice and arrowroot biscuits we had for morning tea. And the hot afternoons, darkened for nap time and I would lie there bored and wanting to get up, but wasn't allowed to move.
I was toilet trained and refused to use a potty as expected and there were meetings with my Mum and I was allowed to use the toilet. I read just recently some of the best educators were at the hostel for teaching in those days. Teachers that were the pick of the crop in South Australia at that time. My older brother Ian would have been 10 or so, he would remember better than I, Jackie, too. We were lucky enough to have two well educated parents anyway so most of us did alright at school.
The Nissen huts were tiny and hot and each had a little path out the front. The floor was black tar macadam. I can remember shouts that rang out in the night from men, listening behind the fly screen as I was. There was always trouble with the men. Old war conflicts emerging between the different nationalities, hungarian, German, Yugoslavs, Italians. We stayed out of it all but I knew there had been knives produced and watched Ian in terror one night as he leaped the corrugated iron fence. He had told me he just wanted to see what was happening and I bit my knuckles until he jumped back over. Nothing to report.
Jackie was not the well behaved child as she liked to be deemed, all the time and blackened the eye of another Pommy couples daughter. The parents arrived for
I can remember the ride from the boat to the Hostel. I was 2. I knew something momentous was happening and gazed out at the blinding sunny city streets, white hot and dazzling. My eyes filled up with the light. I knew it was my new home, this new country, Australia. I knew everyone around me was excited too. A whole new beginning for our party of five kids and Mum and Dad.
The next memory is of the canteen where meals were served. Dad said shark was on the menu and that the Tomato soup was not Campbells Cream of Tomato. And the Nissen hut, one bulb in the middle of the room, bedrooms sectioned off. the heat, the flies, none of that is remembered. I can feel my sisters hand tugging at me to hurry up as she took me to Nursery School. She had to take me every morning before she herself went to school. And I cried for my Mother, every single day. Jackie would virtually tow me along.
I remember the nursery school and how they thought I was very bright for my age. And George my 19 month older brother was a little horror. I can remember him swinging, higher, ever higher up on the swings and yelling. I think they refused to take him after a while. I'm sure Mum said he was thrown out of Nursery school. I can still smell the orange juice and arrowroot biscuits we had for morning tea. And the hot afternoons, darkened for nap time and I would lie there bored and wanting to get up, but wasn't allowed to move.
I was toilet trained and refused to use a potty as expected and there were meetings with my Mum and I was allowed to use the toilet. I read just recently some of the best educators were at the hostel for teaching in those days. Teachers that were the pick of the crop in South Australia at that time. My older brother Ian would have been 10 or so, he would remember better than I, Jackie, too. We were lucky enough to have two well educated parents anyway so most of us did alright at school.
The Nissen huts were tiny and hot and each had a little path out the front. The floor was black tar macadam. I can remember shouts that rang out in the night from men, listening behind the fly screen as I was. There was always trouble with the men. Old war conflicts emerging between the different nationalities, hungarian, German, Yugoslavs, Italians. We stayed out of it all but I knew there had been knives produced and watched Ian in terror one night as he leaped the corrugated iron fence. He had told me he just wanted to see what was happening and I bit my knuckles until he jumped back over. Nothing to report.
Jackie was not the well behaved child as she liked to be deemed, all the time and blackened the eye of another Pommy couples daughter. The parents arrived for
