Wong’s home stay in Nunawading was an English lady, Mrs. Jean Baum. Mr & Mrs. Baum treated Wong like their own son. I was very envious of him because the external affairs person, Miss Morrison initially arranged for me, only to stay in a guest house in Richmond. The land lady had four or five African students staying in the large house. We each had our own bed rooms and were treated quite well. However it was not homely like in a home stay where you were part of a small family and you went on outings whenever the family went on long weekends and public holidays. Mrs. Henderson was very helpful to us; but we had far too many settling-in problems. There were great distances to walk, our bags were too heavy with books and most of us became home sick after a week or two and there was no cure for that! Many students, including me, tried to solve all our problems by moving house!
The first month, I was very homesick. At first I could not understand this as I was homeless. So, how could I be home sick?! Actually I missed all the foods, friends and
familiar surroundings back in Malaysia. I used to take very long walks alone around Richmond and Albany where I was staying. Grosvenor Court was a large guest house run by an Australian family for about six students. I can still recall the smell of lamb chops on the bed sheets! The whole house had the terrible smell of lamb fat because very often we had lamb or sausages for dinner and seldom rice!
There was also another group of students sponsored by telecom. They were assigned to Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology to do diplomas in telecommunications. The Sesco sponsored students went to Swinburne Technical College on Burwood road in Hawthorne near the Camberwell junction. We were all enrolled to do a four year Mechanical Diploma to be followed by a year working in industries to gain practical experience before graduation and then go home to serve our home country.
The Melbourne weather was horrible. It was cold and wet and the sky was always overcast and gloomy in winter. There was no entertainment or social life and each student was left at his home stay for weeks and months without contact with people from his own cultural back ground. We did not know exactly how to dress warmly for the ever changeable Melbourne weather. The clothing we had from home was not suitable for the Australian winter. I had a suit made to measure for me by Rose in Padungan in 1966; but it was not very comfortable at all for every day wear. One Sunday, I wore a pair of long johns under the suit. My! Was it hot inside the church!? I sweat that time because it was not possible to remove the long Johns until the end of service when I got home! Never again would I put on thermals! I have since learned in NZ to dress in layers which can be peeled off progressively as the weather warmed up.
All this cultural shock was just too much for one African student from Nigeria. After a month of this strange, cold and lonely existence, he locked himself up inside his room for two days, refusing to come out, eat his meals or attend school. The Commonwealth police came and took him away. He was sent home to Nigeria. Poor thing! At least I was stronger than that. However, I was not entirely happy. Ting Chong Seek and I analyzed our problems correctly; but we could not tell our training officer at the commonwealth office, Miss Morrison, our real problem because what we really needed was a woman! Smile!
The first two weeks were great because it was like a dream come true for me and everything was new and interesting, even the lamb chops and sausages were very tasty. After that, homesickness became a real problem for many of the overseas students. Our text books were too big and heavy and we were not used to walking so far. Putting it mildly, some of us became very unhappy. I stayed on for another month at that first guest house in Richmond and then moved to a house in Hawthorn closer to Swinburne Technical College where I was doing a 4-year diploma course in mechanical engineering.
House No: 2, the new land lady, a Basque immigrant from Spain, was herself a new migrant from Spain. Her husband, Vinko Scara, was a Basque Separatist freedom fighter. The Spanish gomen were persecuting them. They escaped to Ozzie as refugees from Spain some years ago. They were very impressed by my command of English because they spoke only very little English. I had my own bedroom and did my own cooking, usually fried rice or instant noodles, no more lamb chops! Most of my weekends were spent doing shopping at Safeway supermarket in Camberwell and doing the laundry at a coin launderette across Burwood road. This strange lonely life lasted just a few more months then I moved house again. House No: 3, Mrs. Henderson was a Jewish lady. This time, I was sharing a house with a Jew who did not allow me to do any cooking in the house because I ate pork and Jews don't. I needed to eat chu-nyuk, so I had to move house again after just a short time staying there even though this house was very conveniently located just across the road from Swinburne College.
Reluctantly I admitted my mistake and prepared to move house again in less than 3 weeks. All this moving made it difficult for me to receive my fortnightly allowance from the External Affairs Dept. I rented a post box from the Hawthorn Post Office for all my mail from then onwards. This was a wise move because it helped me to disappear underground for many years, until I was ready to be found. I approached the authorities in Sept 1972. They were so happy to see me that they gave me a free air ticket to go back to Kuching.
