Shock treatment On entering Australia

Excerpted from A Life in the Law by Nimal Wikramanayake

I had left to study in England 17 years earlier. I was then a young lad, and I knew I would be returning to my home. This time I was suffering from migrant’s anxiety neurosis and my mind was a bottomless pit of sadness. It was not only sadness but helplessness as I realized for the first time in my life that I had no control whatsoever over my destiny. Strange feelings of emptiness settled over me as I realized that this was not the beginning but the end of my life.

I fell asleep soon afterwards on the plane and was awoken by Anna Maria clinging to my arm and whispering, “Nimal, what have we done? I have been looking out of the window for the past hour and all I can see is miles and miles of desert. Where are we going? Why have we come to this godforsaken country?” It was the Gibson Desert which evoked her terrified response.

I lost complete control of myself and snapped at her, “Well, there is nothing we can do, we cannot go back now.” She sighed softly to herself and looked disconsolately out of the window. I fell asleep again and was woken by a flurry of activity in the cabin. We were landing shortly at Sydney Airport so I prepared myself to enter into a brave new world.

It was 8 am when we alighted from the plane. We went through Customs and Immigration then headed straight for the Ansett terminal, as we had a flight booked for Melbourne at 9 am. But there were no seats on the plane to Melbourne that day as our seats had been given away! We had not confirmed our reservations in advance. We didn’t know we had to confirm them, nor could we have done so when we were in Singapore.

We stood helplessly at the airline counter wondering what to do when a bright young airline employee suggested that we fly to Canberra where we might be able to get a flight to Melbourne. We arrived at Canberra in the afternoon to find that all the flights to Melbourne were fully booked. I poured my troubles out to the airline employee at the reservations counter, telling him that I was a recently arrived migrant and had to get to Melbourne as my friends were waiting there for me. He told me that he would try to arrange for us to get to Melbourne.

We wandered around the airport for a couple of hours when we heard an announcement that a Mr Wakawura was wanted at the airline counter. We had heard this announcement several times when Anna Maria said, “Nimal, that call may be for you” I rushed to the reservations counter and lo and behold, I was indeed the person they were looking for. They had reservations for us on the next flight to Melbourne, which my wife and I gratefully accepted.

Melbourne

We arrived at Melbourne Tullarnarine Airport shortly after 4 pm. I rushed to a telephone booth to telephone my friend, Ronnie de Kretser, whom we had arranged to meet at the airport. I found the telephone booth but was unable to use the telephone as the public telephone booths in Ceylon were completely different from those in Australia. I asked a passer-by to help me; he expressed considerable astonishment that I was unable to operate a Melbourne public telephone.

I telephoned Ronnie de Kretser who voiced considerable annoyance about the fact I had not contacted him earlier. He told me to take the airport bus to the Melbourne terminal and that he would meet me there at 5.15 pm. We rushed to the terminal and managed to get two seats on the airport bus. The trip to Melbourne was quite an experience, firstly because we had never traveled on an airport bus before, and secondly, the roads were much wider than those in Ceylon.

We were greeted by this tall handsome man with a Clark Gable moustache. Ronnie would have been most embarrassed if he ever read this description of him. Unfortunately this great and wonderful man died a few years ago. He helped us collect our luggage and we all got into a taxi. He immediately clipped on a seat belt, something we did not have to do in Ceylon. He insisted that Anna Maria and I put on our seat belts too.

He then had an animated discussion with the taxi driver as to how best to get to our new place of residence, and he suggested the South-Eastern Freeway. Ronnie had arranged for us to share a flat with a Ceylonese lady, Joyce, and she was to give us her “master bedroom.” We arrived at the block of flats in the evening and I collected the key from the caretaker. We let ourselves into the flat, as Joyce was still at work. We had our first shock. The flat was tiny by Ceylon standards and had two small bedrooms. We entered the “master bedroom” to find that it was 10 square feet and had only a small bed and camp cot next to it. It was devoid of any other furniture save for a small dressing table and a built-in wardrobe.

We now had to make the most of it. No job, no money and no future. I decided to have a cold shower to soothe my frayed nerves. It was the first and last cold shower I have had in Australia over the past 47 years. Joyce arrived at about 6.30 that night. She was a cheerful soul and greeted us with great enthusiasm. She explained the layout of the flat and told us that she had cooked a rice and curry meal for us. I offered her a glass of cognac, which she gratefully accepted, and she set about warming up the dinner. She had a high-pitched squeaky voice and kept calling us “good people” While dinner was being warmed up, she told us her life story. After dinner we sat and chatted for a while in the sitting room, until tiredness overcame us.

Anna Maria, in her selfless way, insisted that I sleep on the bed while she slept on the camp cot. We were both exhausted and fell asleep quickly. We got up the next morning and had our breakfast. I wanted to have a shower but Joyce gave me a short lecture about showering in Australia. She told me that she showered once a week as “daily bathing was bad for the skin”. I dutifully accepted her advice and only washed what Benny Hill called “the dirty bits”.

Joyce took us to the Glenferrie Road shopping centre which was in the next block. We really had not seen a vast array of goods in the shops since 1960 when Mrs Bandaranaike’s government banned the import of all what the government called, “luxury items”. This included Nescafe, strawberry jam, tinned fruit and other items of food which we in Australia call the normal necessities of life.

We splashed out on all these things, which we had not seen for over 10 years, and even hired a television set. As we had no friends, nor any other form of entertainment, the television set, which was delivered later that afternoon from a rental establishment, was a tremendous boon. We spent the weekend glued to the television set, even to the extent of watching children’s programs early on Sunday morning and then the wrestling in the afternoon. Television was unknown in Ceylon in 1971.

Looking for employment

On Monday morning I set out to look for employment. For the next three weeks I would leave home every morning at 9 o’clock to attend at two legal employment agencies in the city, and on most days

I found that I had arrived just a few minutes late for the employment opportunity of a lifetime. I was, nevertheless, lucky enough to obtain several interviews in large city firms. These interviews, however, were usually unproductive, because the fact that I had taken a Second-Class Honours degree in Law at Cambridge and had practised as an advocate/barrister in Ceylon for 12 years was completely irrelevant as far as these employment prospects were concerned. The question always asked of me was what Australian experience did I have? None, I replied, for I had just arrived in the country. Why I needed Australian experience was beyond me, for the practice of the law was the same in all Commonwealth countries.

I was beginning to despair that I could never gain any Australian experience without first getting a job. I used to spend my lunch hour eating my sandwiches at the AMP Plaza in Bourke Street as there was always some activity going on there at lunchtime. I would return home in the evening with numerous little titbits which I received at the AMP Plaza – packets of sea sand from Queensland, estate agents’ brochures, pantihose, notepads, duly inscribed ballpoint pens, homeopathic remedies and many other inconsequential items.

But then fate smiled on me. I was asked to attend an interview at the offices of a large city firm one morning late in November. I arrived on time, and was called into my future principal’s office. I opened the door and went in to be confronted by a little man with shoulder-length hair wearing horn-rimmed spectacles. He was seated behind his desk with another gentleman seated to his right. I will call him Max. (I have heard recently that he has died.) I will call the other gentleman Oscar. I sat down in a chair opposite Max, who was Australian, while his partner, Oscar, was of south-east European extraction. The interview went exceptionally well, and I must have created a favourable impression, for I got the job. In this new job I was required to advise large insurance companies In regard to workers’ compensation and personal injury claims. I walked out of the room with my feet barely touching the ground. I felt elated. Little did I know that the next 10 months would be a living hell – 10 months of indescribable misery.