There was this lovely elderly gentleman sitting next to me in the upper deck of Qantas Airlines from New York to London and I observed the way he was dressed, so very well made and of superior material. His face had a soft glow and his deep blue eyes a kindness in them, wise and filled with beauty, that I was wondering who he was and what his life had brought him. 

He looked at me, probably feeling my gaze on him and he smiled. The smile was a smile of a hundred years, two hundred, perhaps 1000 years of wisdom.

He asked me in English with an German accent why I was on the way to London, and what I was going to do there. I told him I was married to an American, now living in Miami and on the way to a friends wedding in Germany. I told him that I was Australian and very proud of that. A hand was extended to me and taking my hand, he quietly pressed my fingers and did not let go. His voice went softer and he started telling me a story:

*Ach, Australia...saying those words bring back the most beautiful memories....in 1923 my father migrated to Australia from Vienna, with just 1 dollar in his pocket. In Australia he worked very hard as a farmhand and cleaning incoming ships (Perth) and then bought his first sheep. The very first wool he got from this sheep, he sold and he got a second sheep. >From then on he bought more sheep, every month one, till he had 14. He then married my mother who he had met on the steamboat from Europe and who was at that time 18. They set up house with 3 people, in Western Australia, close to a place called Merredin, and worked day and night to make their farm, also growing wheat, survive and they did. I was born in 1926 and lived the happiest time of my life between the unimaginable lands, Eucalyptus and the hundreds of Kangaroos. No schooling was possible but my mother, an educated girl from Vienna, taught me all about Wagner and music, arts and old German writing. German was spoken in our house and English with the only farmhand we had, more we could not afford. I myself started earning my keep at our house when I was only 6 years old and helped bringing in water logs and feed the chickens,

Our life in Australia, very hard at that time, was the most beautiful life though anyone could live. The land of spirit, huge spaces, red sand, night colors, sounds, a history that you could feel in every stone you lifted, in every stream you crossed.

Unfortunately this beauty was taken away from us when my father at age 40, died from a fall from his horse. My mother decided she could not stay in Australia alone, although she loved it so very much, and took the family, me, my two sisters and the cattle dog called Warra, back to Austria, Vienna. We lived there the rest of our lives, just after the war, and thinking about Australia so often and in our minds reliving every day of it. When we left Australia. I could have stayed and I most probably should have but I was not brave enough at that time to see my mother and sisters go and with almost certainty never see them in my life ever anymore so I also went on the boat and returned to Vienna. I by then had worked as cattle hand and on farms to add more money to our income.

Often I have wondered how my life would have been if we would have stayed, what I would have done and how life would have turned out. Now, I am 81 and am still living in Austria, but two of my three children have migrated to Australia many years ago and all have families. So, being here with you, this young Australian, on this flight from New York to London, feels like being at home, back in Merredin. I think we should talk about Australia the whole way and drink a good glass of champagne on what Australia is meaning to so many people in the past, in the present and shall mean in the future*.

And yes, he kept his promise:... the old gentleman and I spoke from New York till we landed in London the full 9 hours about Australia, music, poems, history and then switched to Wagner and Bayreuth and from there to sheep shearing and the wine industry in the Hunter Valley and back to Merredin again....

When we said goodbye at the Airport he gave me his card. His address is in Vienna, his name Austrian, the writing in German but he has a Kangaroo as one symbol.....and a cattle dog as an other...

Until that next cup of coffee...

Yours Truly.

Brigitte