Eventually after a brief stop at Fremantle we arrived in Melbourne safely. Mother did not actually know anyone there at all, but had an introduction from a London art friend who had originated from that beautiful city, to a Mrs Young a most charming and active lady in her mid-forties. She was like a fairy Godmother to us, and having a car she took us everywhere and introduced us to everyone, with a wonderful cheerful vitality that was a joy to see. She settled us in very pleasant premises called “ Coronado Service flats” where we had our own flat and a daily cleaner, but could also dine in the main restaurant which is what we mostly did. I as a child was amazed at not having servants for every minor task, and Mother had to give me severe and strict lessons for example on how to polish my own shoes and keep them clean. “ There is no Podian here!” she would bark at me, “ We are living in a white country where you have to do it all for yourself from now on”.
Our flats were situated on the lovely St Kilda road on the corner where the trams branched off for Camberwell. I would take the trams daily to and fro up the road to Melbourne Grammar College where I was enrolled in their junior school. To start with I was amazed that although I had not been to school for over a year, I was miles ahead over my contemporaries, and was completly bored until I was moved up into a more challenging class with older boys.
Mrs Young would take us into the countryside to the wonderful nature reserve at Healesville which was my favorite. There we would make friends with Kangaroos wallabies, enormous long haired and fluffy koalas, and the extraordinary duckbilled platypus which simply guzzled worms uncontrollably! There were quite the most beautiful flocks of parrots, parakeets,rosellas and cockatoos all with the most brilliant colours imaginable flying wild in the trees and round the lakes. Then more secretively the amazing Lyre Bird and the bower birds with their displays and their huge moundlike nests. Many times we would go to Healesville and each time I would enjoy it as much as before.
Then she would take us into the wild bush to see the remnants of huge bush fires, range upon range blackened. We would build our own barbecue in the bush skewering the chops with wattle branches, and making a safe fire with highly inflamable and aromatic eucalpytus. We would swim in the sea, and on Christmas day Mother made me walk across the park behind us, in a 100 F heatwave to church. In the late autumn of May we had a brief visit from Aunt Helen who was returning to Ceylon , from having settled cousin Ian at Christchurch College. It was a real joy to see her with her down to earth ,wise and practical wit and ruthless sarcasm and of course always the ever present cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She stayed in a guest house about a couple of hundred yards up the St Kilda road and there was once the most almighty storm that laughing she just tucked her skirts up between her thighs and walked through the floods which were over her knees. Most sadly these couple of weeks were the last time that I was to ever enjoy her vitality, joy, and boundless gaiety, but her memory lives on forever.