Introduction
When I was a boy in the Bismarck school, Tasmania, we used to sing:
“Oft in the stilly night
‘Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
The smiles, the tears of boyhood years,
The words of love then spoken:
The eyes that shone, now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken.”
We learned the sounds by rote, but the words meant no more to us than the ones we taught our Rosella parrot – “There is a fountain filled with blood.” Now that I have a long and lavish memory, that old song lights up a lifetime of recollections, and events that crowd the years of our family odyssey from Germany to Tasmania, Tasmania to Australia, and Australia to America, where this memoir is written.
