Life stories: 1963

 Nirvana at last [Previous ¦ Next]

After the desert debacle, my Dad was offered a plum posting in Brisbane, on the northeastern coast of Australia. We traveled widely thru North America (New York, Grand Canyon, New Orleans, Dallas and LA), S. Pacific (Tahiti, Fiji, New Guinea), SE Asia (Philippines, Japan, Kampuchea, Hong- Kong, Sri Lanka, Kashmir and India no less than twice), as my Dad's firm sent us abroad and then back home at regular intervals as expatriates. My parents could afford all they wanted, a new company car, a large house with veranda and lush tropical garden, delightfully open Aussies and tightly-knit expats (expatriates), private school for me, bridge for Mum, field work in the vast Australian interior for Dad, long road trips up the Queensland coast and the Great Barrier Reef, down New South Wales and the Snowy Mountains. I learned English in no time in the streets with a very broad Queensland accent, ran barefoot and half naked, indulged in swimming, rugby and cricket, and started a 30 year-long love affair with horseback riding and pets. Life was good, at last.

On the downside we were far from what Mum and Dad called home, while I vowed to stay down under. The labor régime brought endless strikes, so much so that cooking stoves had both gas and electric ranges so one could cook regardless. One never knew when mail would arrive from halfway across the world where everything seemed to happen. Alcohol was big, some workers took weekly pay, drank at the pub, and women took the car on Saturday to shop on what money was left by their men. Racism and misogyny were not even perceived as such, and Aussies still turned their backs on their southeast Asian neighbours (giving Sukarno free rein in Indonesia and looking on as the US engaged in Vietnam). The country's socialist traditions mirrored those I knew in France, and thus helped form my political education with more continuity than my peregrinations might initially have lead to believe.

I also learned a lot on life at an early age: I was exposed to eastern religions early and countering my Catholic upbringing. My parents were not really religious, a dislocation that was reinforced by back-to-back French and Australian (read: British at the time) education. History for example was seen so differently by those two former empires, that I relied on dates and place names to recognise matching events! I was only to learn later on that my parents had emigrated with an empty suitcase filled with a rucksack, so they were hard up for cash to early on. They were however well treated by the French government, and afforded privileges not given to native French: refugees' welcome already brought ill feelings from their hosts still learning to cope with the post-colonial era: This would go on through the end of the century, and wrack society post-Soviet régime and -Balkan wars.