I finally made it into my colleagues' future. I had to go back to the past to reach the year 1990 AD, which is really the present. Let me explain.

Here I am back in the year 1972 at Defence Standards Laboratories (DSL) and I am explaining to Mr Thomson and to Mr Johnson that it's not that I can't see the difference between you, it's that I don't know which body belongs to which name.

Professionals at DSL were addressed by their surnames even when they went out for a counter lunch at the Anglers Tavern, which is set on the banks of the Maribyrnong River. There, we would order our counter lunch, usually a T-bone steak with an egg and a salad and we would give our names to the girls behind the counter. When the steak with an egg was ready, the girl at the counter would call out the name over the tavern's PA system. "T-bone steak for Mr Johnson."

The fishermen on the opposite riverbank knew what Mr Johnson was having for lunch that day. Mr Johnson would walk to the counter and take his well-done steak.

When my steak was ready, the PA system would break into a static crackle. "T-bone steak for Mr Jer…., Mr Geee…rrr, Mr Germm…t…sss."

By then I knew that my steak was ready. So I went and picked it up amid a roar of laughter that was directed towards me. Everyone was looking at me, not at the girl who couldn't pronounce my name. I don't blame the serving girl because she probably never had to call out an ethnic name before. I was the only ethnic at the tavern that day and the only ethnic at DSL.

Next Friday it was different, I changed my surname, I gave myself a trendy name. "T-bone steak for Mr Concorde," the PA system reverberated clearly without static. I walked up to the counter and picked up my medium-rare steak with egg in complete silence, thanks to "Concorde, the supersonic jet" that was in the news almost every day during those times.

All of those people at DSL who were in their mid-twenties and whose names were ending in "son" were buying land to build their AV Jennings homes in Glen Waverley. The ethnics on the other hand were buying land in Doncaster to build their homes by Bruno Grollo. I went somewhere in between and bought an established house in Blackburn that had been designed by Robin Boyd. The house came with fully grown trees and all the built-in fixtures ready for us to move in. Today Glen Waverley is inhabited by those people whose names ended with a "son".

Between 1990 and 2002 I was teaching students at Brentwood Secondary College whose names ended with a "son". Except for one charming boy of an Indian background who couldn't stop talking in my class. I developed a trusting relationship with him and one day he confided in me that he felt uncomfortable when he was dropped off at the school yard by his father in their family late model Bentley motor car. Because of the Bentley the kids were picking on him, he told me. I told Taij to tell his father to drop him away from the school grounds from then on. Problem solved, admittedly in a different way to the way problems were solved at Northcote Tech for example.

Every problem has its unique solution. Mrs Jones wanted to know why the Education Department employed a teacher who couldn't speak English. So she came to see me during the parent-teacher interviews to find out. I was tipped off about this encounter by the vice principal.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Jones, please take a seat. Just before we start to discuss Jake's progress in maths, can you tell me if my speech is clear enough to you?"

Mrs Jones understood my question and the intent of my question. She stood up and left the interview before she could sit down. Jake was in for a good explanation to his mother that afternoon.

My introduction and my acceptance at Brentwood Secondary College were lukewarm, a polite "Hi" whilst looking down at the floor is all I heard. Nobody offered a welcoming hand shake. The atmosphere in the science office was what a rabbit in a corner of a pet shop full of dogs would feel.

There was a vacant corner for me in the science office, but I didn't take it. One corner was occupied by an ethnic Egyptian and the other corner by an ethnic Lebanese. I moved into the maths office and there I found a smart but strange friend to socialise with.

She was taller than me and she wanted to be even taller than that. She wore an old fashioned skirt that looked like a Venetian blind hanging vertically on her. One day she forgot her lunch at home and her elderly father brought the sandwich to her office. She was strange; smart people are strange. When Agatha was farewelled from Brentwood, she thanked me for being the only person who spoke to her in a friendly way.

I managed to survive and then I thrived at Brentwood for 13 long years by involving myself in extracurricular activities. I will list some of those activities for the record and then I will move on to the more personal social interactions:

1. Hybrid car: Human powered and battery powered; ran at the Energy Breakthrough, Maryborough, Victoria.

2. Hybrid car: Human powered and petrol powered; ran at the Energy Breakthrough.

3. Nine years with solar-powered model cars; competing across Australia.

4. Building and launching miniature rockets.

5. Introduction of robotics.

I felt that I was slowly converting the ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) focused school into a type of technological school. I was being an existentialist; I did what I wanted to do and I said what I wanted to say with impunity.

One of the things I did was to rejuvenate the forlorn soccer team that was run by a disinterested geography teacher. One day I saw her with her head buried in her lessons-preparation work, while thirty or more boys were kicking a soccer ball aimlessly around the school oval. Next Wednesday ten boys were eliminated from the team for not running fast enough around the oval. A teacher came up to me and he said that he was impressed with my training method.

Then the PE teacher brought a kid to the soccer pitch and she told me that he was a "gun" at soccer and he was - he played for a local soccer team. The "soccer-gun" could take the ball from centre midfield all the way to the goal square through a bunch of defenders and put the ball in the net. I was impressed, but I threatened him with expulsion from the team.

"Mustafa, if you don't pass the ball to other players, you will be kicked out of the team."

Mustafa brought his cousin Ahmet next Wednesday to pass the ball to. And now we had a team that was good enough to play against other schools.

The following year a new teacher came to the school who knew far more than I did about soccer. He played the game as a school boy. The only ball that I kicked was the blown-up bladder of our pig back in Macedonia. Having two teachers interested in soccer gave me the time to start a girls soccer team. This was unheard of in the land of the VFL football stadium in Glen Waverley.

The girls had to be told not to pass the ball to their friends, who were in the opposing team. There was a soccer gun in the girls' team as well, but when it came to striking a goal, she would pass the ball to her friend, the goalkeeper of the opposition.

"No, no, you don't pass the ball to the goalie, you kick the ball into the soccer net," I shouted.

The next extracurricular activity was completely different from soccer or from cars. This activity was conducted on the snow, it involved a biathlon skier and a group of thirty novice skiers, the making of a lifelong friend and unintentionally making the vice principal uncomfortable.

Although Glen Waverley is a wealthier suburb than Northcote, there were some families in Glen Waverley that couldn't afford to send their child on a trip to America. The poster read: "Come and say Good day U.S.A for $2,000 dollars."

My handwritten poster read: "Have fun in the snow for $17 dollars." The emphasis was on a low-cost trip.

The ski hire was arranged at Marysville ski hire. Nat, the proprietor, threw in a free ski lesson for thirty students. The bus was booked; I think the school council paid for the bus hire. The vice principal asked me to brief the students before the trip and she sat and listened to my briefing.

"Wear normal but warm clothing, bring a beanie and gloves (not dish-washing gloves) and sunglasses, but nothing special. You don't need snow boots, ski boots will be provided, and bring your lunch," I instructed the would-be skiers.

The vice principal was aghast with my unprofessional briefing. She was the one who, one day at the outdoor swimming sports, pointed out to me that I was incorrectly attired.

"Oh, Olie, do you know that that's not the correct umbrella for a sunny day?"

Oh, dear, I used a black rain umbrella to shield the sun, oh what a misdemeanour.

At Lake Mountain Alpine Resort mother nature was kind to us. She provided a blanket of fresh snow to match the perfect sunny day. All of the students were shown how to execute a snow plough by Nat's ski instructor, all except for Eleanor, the vice principal, who came too late for the lesson. That's because she was busy fitting herself into her biathlon ski suit which had Ken Done livery splashed all over it. The only thing missing was the rifle.

After a quick lunch the skiers shuffled their way up along a steep incline to an area named "Helicopter Flat" where a string of ski trails fans out. We decided to take the easiest and shortest trail that leads back to the car park. We skied to a wide flat area with pristine snow, the ideal place for snow play.

"Unclip your skis and have fun in the snow," I told the kids, and I left them there under the supervision of the other teacher. I skied back to look for the biathlon skier.

Thank God she wore her Ken Done outfit, it made her stand out like a rosella against the white background of the wrong trail that she was on. We shuffled back to our private snow play area without talking or looking at one another. Eleanor continued to shuffle all the way back to the car park.

I can't believe how everything ran like clockwork that day, the kids filed into the bus and sat as quiet as mice. We returned to Nat's ski hire shop in Marysville and each kid graciously thanked Nat for a great day in the snow. Nat dubbed us the "Brentwood ski team". Nat and I became life-long friends from then on, I still drop in to see Nat when I go skiing at Lake Mountain.

Meanwhile the biathlon skier sat at an outdoor table of the closed coffee shop next to Nat's shop with her back facing us. I think she was humiliated by virtue of her own pre-judgement (prejudice). I assumed she was thinking: how could this ethnic, who looked like he should be driving taxis, take a group of students on a ski trip and exercise complete control over them?

Little did she know that this ethnic had a holiday house that he built with his own hands at the foothills of Falls Creek, and that he skied there as well as at Lake Mountain. Little did she know that this taxi driver look-alike competed in last year's Kangaroo Hoppet, a cross-country ski race at Falls Creek.

That's what prejudice is about; judging a person according to what you know about that person's ethnic group. Don't worry, we are all guilty of prejudice because we are all ignorant of some things.

Now it's time to roast the principal, well, the most recent principal of Brentwood Secondary College, that is. Principals at secondary schools change on the average every three years. Ambitious teachers step on a conveyor belt that eventually takes them up to the "principal class", hopefully at least two years prior to their retirement age so that they can retire on a super fund that is seven times their annual salary (averaged over their last two years). This is a great financial benefit for those who are that way inclined. If a teacher achieves that goal, he/she can holiday in the south of France once a year and tell everyone there what a great success he/she has been. The principal at Brentwood was on the last few rungs of the conveyor belt, having started from the low rung as a primary school teacher.

During 1991 a tragedy occurred in my family. My father passed away at an early age. I approached the principal and I told him, I didn't ask him, I told him that I needed a week off from teaching for my father's funeral arrangements. Do you know what he said? There was no mention of condolences by the way.

"According to the gazetted teachers' work agreements, you are entitled to three days for bereavement," he informed me.

That's what principals do. They point out the rules of employment. Principals know the rules, they know which boxes to tick.

"Bring me a resignation form and I will sign it right now," I shouted at him.

Do you know what he did then? Well, you won't believe it, because I didn't believe it myself until a week later when he told me face to face. I walked away from the school and returned a week later without signing a resignation form because he didn't produce one.

The funeral was held in the Macedonian Orthodox Church in Young Street Fitzroy, the same church that I was married in. It was a small church and it was overflowing with relatives, friends and mates and, unbeknown to me, the principal of Brentwood Secondary College.

Monday week the principal runs up to me and speaks.

"I went to your father's funeral and I was amazed at the service, it went on for over an hour and I didn't hear a word of English spoken during the whole service. You are really living two lives," he told me.

The principal confirmed that I and many other ethnics were living in a type of a parallel universe, an imaginary universe perhaps, one that we slipped into at appropriate times.

When at times I walk past a restaurant with darkened windows and I see an image of myself and at the same time the restaurant patrons see the real me, I wonder if the patron's sense of me is the same as the image I see. I think not, as the next brief story shows.

I was in the Maths office of Brentwood Secondary College at the time of report writing. I was shuffling through the dictionary pages to check the correct spelling for my students' reports. The head of the Maths department was looking at me with a sense of superiority, you know what I mean. He had his hand on his chin and his head slightly tilted, his long thin body in a gentle "S" shape and a "I-feel-sorry-for-you-look" on his face.

Brentwood, as other schools in Victoria whose main objective was to prepare students to attain the highest ATAR score, informed the parents of that fact via comprehensively written reports. Brentwood had a system of proofreading the reports by a colleague chosen at random before the reports were sent out. By chance I was chosen to check Maxine's reports, the head of the English department who was a notorious perfectionist. The head of the Maths department handed me Maxine's reports and smugly uttered the words: "Good luck with that, Olie."

Next morning Maxine received her corrected reports and by late afternoon she delivered my reports and presented me with an expensive bottle of red wine in the presence of the head of the Maths department.

"Thank you for the thorough checking of my reports, Olie, I appreciate your help."

The head of Maths dropped his jaw and his sense of his superiority was truncated by half that day, his body took on the shape of an elongated question mark. There was no need for me to tell him that my daughter Stephanie, who was in year 12 then, corrected Maxine's reports.

Other accolades followed. Firstly, from the principal who by now was at the end of the conveyor belt. He handed me a glowing "open reference" before he left the school. Eleanor, still not looking directly at me, handed me two 'thank you notes' from the parents whose kids had "fun in the snow". A parent whose son won the "bridge building competition at Monash University Engineering Department" thanked me thus: "Mathew won the bridge building competition because of the engineering knowledge he picked up from you during the solar car competitions."

Another parent whose son participated in the hybrid car events thanked me for inspiring his son to study aerospace engineering.

The most touching compliment of all came from Hino, a student of Balkan background who accompanied me on several interstate model solar car competitions. And who was the dux of the school. I met him at the bank queue two years after he left the school.

"How are you going, Hino?" I enquired.

"I am in my second year of medicine, sir. I am doing it for my parents, but when I finish I will do engineering because of you."

It has been 20 years since I retired from formal teaching. Prior to my retirement, 28 of my years were taken up by secondary schools. If I count the eight years that I taught part time at an independent special school, teaching what we termed "kids at risk", it would add up to 36 years of being involved with children. Job satisfaction during all of that time was subjective, and difficult to quantify.

Teachers who have dedicated their energy and applied their specific knowledge in preparing the next generation of the workforce need greater recognition by the community. The few accolades that teachers receive from some students, from some parents and from a few colleagues, are warmly welcomed; teachers don't ask for more than the opportunity to influence and inspire their students to learn.

Not all of the students that I taught went on to study physics, maths or engineering. One student was grateful for a reference that I wrote for him; the reference gained him a job as a security officer. Leo came to my home one day to thank me personally for the opportunity my reference afforded him. My number one driver of the Shell Mileage Marathon car became a plumber and followed in his father's trade. Sure, there were other students who went on and studied engineering, including my two children, but I didn't teach any of them; I inspired them to study; they did the hard work themselves, they did "the heavy lifting" as it were.

The most unlikely student who was inspired to study engineering was Maya. And this happened at the independent special school of Berry Street Victoria. This school accepted students who were barred from attending mainstream schools due to their violent behaviour and drug addiction. One day, Maya told me that she wanted to be a motor mechanic for a Grand Prix motor racing team. My answer to her statement was direct and straight to the point.

"They won't even look at you unless you have an Engineering Degree."

"Okay, I will do engineering," she told me.

Maya was assigned to me; the only maths and science teacher in the school to teach her maths and physics in preparation for her to complete the VCE at TAFE. Six years later Maya returned to the Berry Street School with an Engineering Degree. Not only had she attained a university degree, she got her confidence back. Maya walked into the school wearing a tracksuit, sneakers, her hair was flowing naturally over her shoulders, there was no make-up on her face or mascara on her eyelashes, and no exposed belly button with jewellery in it. Maya was empowered by the knowledge she gained, she was proud, and yet she looked humble as she said a simple "Thank you" to the school that started in a factory in Noble Park.

What inspired Maya to study engineering of all things, one might ask? Nothing more than a discussion about racing cars!

I have said enough about my teaching career, which wasn't my original intention, and now I realise that I have moved away from the theme of this book. The theme of adjusting to the social life in this new country, that to me it looked like it was in a parallel universe.

Now, as I was pondering how to bring this book to a logical and cohesive conclusion, I remembered one day when the phone rang. It was my sister Silvi on the other end of the phone line who informed me that she and her daughter Penny had organised a trip to Western Australia. We were going to visit mum's two younger sisters who are now approaching 90 years of age. One sister lives in Perth, the other lives in Manjimup. To keep this story short, I will talk about the sister who lives in Manjimup, as this sister together with her husband have isolated themselves and live in their own universe. And thus their story is relevant to the theme of this book.

Penny purchased three airline tickets and booked a motel in Perth for the three of us. All I had to do was call an Uber and be at the departure lounge of Tullamarine Airport at least one hour before the flight; this is the type of trip that I like, one that is organised by someone else.

We landed at the Perth airport in the afternoon and found the motel before dusk; all of this was a normal touristy fair. Next day we did more touristy stuff: like having breakfast on the balcony of the motel overlooking Kings Park, and a walk around Elizabeth Quay. At the Quay, the two ladies participated in the obligatory task of souvenir gazing.

I stood at the pier and reminisced about an earlier trip to Rottnest Island that I and my young family enjoyed some 40 years ago. Forty years ago the ferry trip to Rottnest Island seemed like a long trip and an amazing adventure. Now, that stretch of water looks like a hop, step and a jump. My sentiment was confirmed by my cousin Chrissie, the mother of a physiotherapist. Later on, in Manjimup Chrissie told me that her daughter, who is a physically fit physiotherapist, swam the 19 km stretch of water between the Perth coast and the island. It seems that distances shrink with the passage of time in Western Australia, particularly in Manjimup.

Next day at precisely 4.00 am, Chrissie, the mother of the Rottnest swimmer, distorted the space-time continuum and picked us up and drove us very slowly back in time to her parents' farm in Manjimup. She could have driven us back to our village in Macedonia as far as I was concerned. Not true, but it's easy to imagine if you change a few elements. Replace the gum trees with fruit trees, imagine a snow capped mountain, add a score of sheep and you are in Mala, Macedonia, back in 1952.

Chrissie parked the car in the machinery shed next to her father's tractor and escorted us to the small weatherboard house that I saw for the first time 40 years ago. Tetin (uncle) Risto was waiting at the farm gate to receive us like royal guests. He was dressed in a suit and he looked very uncomfortable; a 90 year old farmer who spent 70 of those years on the land doesn't look comfortable in a suit. His cast iron hands, his sunburned face with cracked lips were sure signs of hard work on the land.

Lunch was ready for us to partake; this is easy to say, but I know it had taken Teta (aunt) Ristana, mum's youngest sister, all morning to prepare the lunch in her wood fired stove. Almost everything on the dining table was farm produce.

After lunch, Tetin Risto changed into his farm clothes and he gave me a tour of his paradise. He told me that his father bought the 35 acre plot of land from a returned soldier who obtained the land via the Returned Soldiers Settlement Act, but the soldier couldn't produce anything from the land and thus he sold it to Tetin Risto's father. During the 70 plus years on the land, Tetin tried everything from milking cows, growing tobacco, growing onions and finally settled on raising cattle.

Oh yes, he grows his own vegetables and keeps chickens for eggs and meat. One thing that he didn't tell me, but it was evident from his actions, was that he lost his sense of "the passage of time" - he had no plans of slowing down and certainly not retiring as confirmed by his recent purchase of a young bull and the installation of a huge rainwater tank.

What kept and is still holding these immigrants from Macedonia on this desolate farm for so long, I wondered? There wasn't much to see on the farm; just flat land, two dams, a shed, the new rainwater tank and 30 head of cattle (the newly purchased bull had not arrived yet). I sort of know what keeps my Tetin and Teta on this harsh land, but I don't know how to express it in words. I saw the answer to my question on both of them. First on Teta's beaming face when she brought the pastry out of her woodfired stove that was heated by fire wood from a neighbouring farm. I saw it on Tetin when he was watering his vegetable garden. He stood firm and straight on his own land, full of confidence and beaming with pride that he had the knowledge of the land. Just then I saw flashes of Maya, full with pride, alongside my Tetin, but with a different knowledge and in her own individual universe.

Extrapolating my flashes of Maya to single individuals, one can conclude that everyone on Earth lives in their own universe.

Next morning we left mum's sister and her husband in Manjimup/Macedonia in their sustainable universe and headed for Perth and later on for Melbourne, both of which are in a decadent universe.

At ten thousand metres above Australia, flying over the Great Australian Bight, I pondered about the amount of fuel the plane was burning and how much of that was contributing to global warming. Climate scientists have not reached consensus on the contribution that fossil fuel makes towards climate change. But Tetin Risto knows how much the climate has changed and he did something about it; he installed a rainwater tank. Farmers like Tetin Risto know that the Earth is suffering because they talk to the Earth; they do this by touching the Earth's soil with their bare hands. We are grateful to the scientists for alerting us to the Earth's plight, but we must ask the farmers to tell us what the Earth needs. And we must learn to speak with the Earth, even if it takes us 70 years.

Referring back to my chapter on "Searching For The Elusive True Blue Aussie", I have found the ideal true blue Aussie and that is the one who looks after the Australian land, including a couple who migrated from Macedonia and have been caring for a piece of Australian land in Manjimup for more than 70 years.

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