The Voyage of Their Life by Diane Armstrong

Author:Diane Armstrong [DIANE ARMSTRONG]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780730450115
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Lea, with her mother and father and little sister Tiia, disembarked in Fremantle because her godfather had migrated to Perth during the economic crisis in Estonia in 1927. ‘All we knew about Australia was that there were poisonous snakes, spiders and queer-looking animals. My mother was so petrified, she sprayed anything that moved!’

When the Ohtra family arrived in Perth, the four of them lived in a closed-in verandah and cooked on a primus stove. They were considering moving to Sydney when Lea’s godfather lent them 600 pounds to build a house. ‘My father was a fitter and turner, not a builder, but with an instruction book in one hand and a hammer in the other, somehow he managed to build a ten-square house. What made it even harder for him was that we were used to the metric system, which was so simple, but here he had to work out inches, feet and yards. Twelve of this, three of that, and 144 of something else. And then there were pennies, halfpennies, shillings, pounds and guineas. It was all very confusing.’

Lea, who loved clothes, was intrigued by the way Perth women dressed. ‘I arrived with one heavy overcoat with a little fur collar which I got from American aid in Germany, a green wool crepe dress and red shoes with rubber soles which I thought terribly posh! We thought it odd that women in their fifties wore floral hats, bright frocks and long gloves, and plastered rouge in bright circles on their cheeks. The food was different too,’ she muses. ‘The only restaurants we ever went to were Greek “caffs” where the menu was steak and eggs, chops and eggs and sausages and eggs.’

Suddenly she giggles. ‘I must tell you about my first party. I was told to bring a plate. A young man picked me up in his father’s car, a Ford Prefect which looked like a small box, but I felt very special being driven to the social in a car. When they asked us to go in for supper, I said, “I can’t eat anything because I didn’t bring my plate.” To my amazement, my escort looked into my mouth and said, “I thought they were your own teeth!”’ Helle and I are laughing as Lea continues the story of that disastrous evening. ‘When he asked what I’d like to drink, I said in my most careful English, “I would like wine.” Well, that didn’t go down too well because no one drank wine in those days. Boys drank beer and girls drank lemon squash. Needless to say, I never saw him again!’

While Lea was settling down in Perth, Helle and her family travelled to Sydney by train. She stared at the unfamiliar gum trees, a name that made no sense when she looked it up in the dictionary. These trees did not exist in Estonia. ‘So this is the beginning of a new life,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘End to DP stage, although we are still refugees, hoping to return to our homeland.

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