On higher ground

Australia has been home for more than 30 years.

- Bernard Lagan

My journey here from New Zealand has its genesis half a century ago in a jagged inner-Melbourne enclave of crumbling terrace houses, jammed with students and struggle-street immigrants. Just out of my teens, I'd flown from Wellington to join a mate for a couple of weeks in Melbourne, where he had found work as a tram conductor and digs in a chaotic flat. On my first night out of New Zealand, I camped in a sleeping bag on his bedroom floor, rising early to the pull of the laughter and foreign voices coming from that North Fitzroy street.

Maltese children, dressed in threadbare national costumes danced on the footpaths to the music of their far-off land. Sun-weathered, work-weary parents munched on colourful pastries, enjoying their Sunday respite. It was a tableau that made my own sheltered and placid upbringing in the Hutt Valley seem as distant as their Mediterranean archipelago.