When my desperately poor but ambitious grandfather, actually my paternal grandfather's brother, came to Australia in the early 1920s, he saw a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges and flooding rains as described accurately by Dorothea Mackellar in her iconic poem My Country. In addition to the vastness and the raw beauty of Australia, my grandfather saw something else to what Mackellar described in her poem.

He saw a rainbow with a pot of gold at its end. My grandfather followed that rainbow all the way to Tallangatta in north east Victoria, where he realised that the rainbow kept on moving ahead of him. Always a certain distance in front of him. Rainbows don't have a fixed position. My grandfather gave up chasing rainbows and that's when he found real gold in Tallangatta. Not a mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He found gold by clearing forests for farming land, for which he was paid in real gold money. Two years later he returned to Macedonia with a metaphorical pot of gold. He spread the word to his local community that Australia was a land of opportunity. "Australia was paved with gold," he told them.

Many other Macedonians travelled to Australia in those early years to shore up their financial position at home; those people are known as pechalbari (migrant workers who plan and strive to improve their lives). My grandfather and many of his contemporaries enjoyed the fruits that Australia provided them, until the political situation in Europe changed and it made their lives miserable and unbearable, including our lives in Macedonia.

The Greek Civil War, which followed World War 2, was the last straw that forced my father to leave his village in Macedonia and to travel to Australia; to the land of opportunity. He came with a one-way ticket and a plan to bring and set up his family in the land of opportunity, which a few years later was dubbed "the lucky country". It had taken dad eight years to feel confident enough and financially secure to bring us to Australia and to house us in a tiny house in Richmond. He managed to do that despite being afflicted by the deadly tuberculosis disease.

When post war migrants came to the lucky country, they saw it as an open-cut gold mine, full of gold which required lots of work by all family members to extract the riches that this lucky country was blessed with.

Migrants come to Australia prepared to work. They didn't come for the social life. There wasn't much of a social life in Australia, let alone in Richmond except for the social drink in the pubs after work. The pubs were places where workers would meet their mates for a yarn over a cold beer. During the sixties, men went to the bar after work and drank until the mandated 6.00 o'clock closing time. And on Saturdays there was the obligatory footy match for the whole family, full of action, full of colour and a place and time for the spectators to release their pent-up tension. Neither of these social activities were attractive to the migrants, and certainly not to my parents. In fact, most newcomers to Australia, including myself, preferred to work extra hours instead of taking part in either or both of these new-to-us activities.

Dad didn't have the lung capacity for heavy work or to work extra hours after undergoing several lung surgeries to overcome the tuberculosis that he contracted shortly after arriving in Australia. Dad worked for very low wages (subsidised by the Australian Government) as a cleaner in a funeral business. But mum on the other hand worked at several manual jobs, making hats, or at other places sorting things on assembly lines. Mum would often bring work at home, what was termed "piece work" when she worked as a milliner, and was paid per item that she made.

I started work from about the age of 14 and continued working at various jobs right through to and beyond the time when I started full time employment as an engineer. I didn't see the extra work as a burden; I saw it as being somewhere, doing something at a given time.

My first "being somewhere, doing something at a particular time" was selling the Herald newspaper in Wellington Parade in East Melbourne opposite the MCG pub, which itself was opposite the MCG football ground. There were so many interesting things that went on around me and things that I saw during my working time at East Melbourne that made me think that I was in a theme park instead of a workplace. I won't bore you with all of the activities, but I will relate some interesting stories that may not be in chronological order as they roll out from my mind.

I love coincidences and I remember this particular coincidence well, even though it had taken place over a long period of time, 50 years in fact. When I was selling newspapers in Wellington Parade amongst parked cars while they were waiting at the traffic lights, a customer asked me for the "post". I was completely puzzled by that request. Why does he want to buy a post? I thought to myself as I pointed to an electrical post on the footpath. He kept repeating the word "post, post" until the traffic lights changed and he drove off.

Later on I told the newsagent that a man was asking for a post. "What did he mean by that?" I asked the agent. The newsagent showed me two magazines, a Post and a Pix, and told me to have one of each when I am out selling the Heralds. He overloaded me with the two extra magazines from then on. When I finished selling the Heralds I took the time to flip through the two magazines. I found an interesting article in the Pix magazine, an article about the Icefields Parkway in Canada. The Icefields Parkway is a 230 km twisting road amongst the Rocky Mountains of Canada. The magazine showed a bird's eye-view of the road and dubbed it the "toilet-bowl" highway because there was a section in the road that looked like a toilet bowl. Unbelievably, fifty years later, I went on a holiday to Canada and on that exact road I saw the same "toilet-bowl" that was in the Pix magazine.

Cliveden Mansions in East Melbourne was an exclusive block of apartments before it was pulled down and replaced with the Hilton Hotel. The apartments were occupied by wealthy tenants. I was in the courtyard of those apartments and whilst I was delivering the Herald to one of the apartments I was stunned by the most unbelievable sight. Something I read about in car magazines and now here it was, in all of its glory for me to see at a close range. The magnificent Jaguar E-Type in metallic grey. Wow, the most beautiful car in the world at that time, as described by none other than Enzo Ferrari.

There was no shortage of amazing cars in East Melbourne. My first sight of the amazing Lotus Elan, the super low and stunning Lotus Europa, the outstanding Ferrari 330 Lusso with spoked aluminium wheels, had taken place in East Melbourne. Driving along Wellington Parade I saw Syd Heylen, a well-known Melbourne comedian during the 1960s, in his Red Triumph TR4 with its headlights protruding above the grill. What a sight! East Melbourne was like an open-air car museum of the latest sports cars.

In Jolimont lived Lex Davidson, a well-known and respected Melbourne open-wheeler race car driver. I delivered his newspaper there and I remember the sad day when he was killed whilst testing his race car at Sandown Racecourse.

I also delivered The Age to Lord Casey, the Governor-General of Australia. I saw his black 1950s Bentley with its sweeping mudguards. I also saw him in his matching black long-tailed tuxedo; probably going to cut a ribbon somewhere.

On another day in East Melbourne I saw Lady Casey, who actually spoke to me, about her car. She spoke to me, the newspaper boy. She came to the news agency to settle her account with the newsagent in her brand new orange coloured Porsche 911 E. "I love the colour of my car," she told me in a very humble manner.

She was a lovely lady. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to buy a car for its colour alone, irrespective of the car's price, I thought to myself. At about that time I started planning and saving money to buy my sports car and this car wasn't going to be orange and certainly not a Porsche. I will leave this story for the chapter on Counting Cars.

The next story took place in East Melbourne again and it occurred at a later time, and it's not about cars.

When I was about 18 years of age and too embarrassed to sell newspapers I started working in a fruit shop next to the newsagency. This time I was selling fruit instead of newspapers. The fruit shop was run by two Greek brothers whom I liked. I liked the job as well because the two Greeks let me eat as much fruit as I wanted to. I remember asking them if I could eat some of their fruit. They said: "Eat as much as you like, as long as you don't eat us."

This is why I can pick the flavours in wine, because I have tasted every fruit and almost every vegetable there was in the fruit shop.

The customers coming to the fruit shop were as varied as the fruit in the shop. One particular tall professional-looking male came in every day and every day he bought one apple. His legs made up 75 percent of his overall height. He befriended me by casual conversation. He asked me what my favourite subject was at school. I told him that it was physics. He was impressed with that. Then he told me that he was a psychologist and I was impressed with that. Finally, he asked my name and I answered him in a way a Greek person in Greece would address a professional man and that is you state your surname first, followed by your Christian name. "Germantsis, Olie," I said. He looked at me from top to bottom, because he was so tall, and said to me "You got problems, boy" and he walked away.

I looked at him and saw that he didn't close his briefcase and that the solitary apple was holding his briefcase open. His legs were touching together at his knees and his lower legs were spread out in the shape of an isosceles triangle. He walked like John Cleese did in his famous comedy sketch where he portrayed the Minister for Silly Walks. The psychologist could have been a smart man, but he was ignorant of different cultures. I thought he buys an apple each day because he was told that an apple a day will keep the doctor away. Why doesn't he buy seven apples once a week, I thought to myself? Psychologists think differently!

The pub two doors down from the newsagency showed a different group of men and a few women; they sat in the same positions in the pub every day. I was allowed to sell newspapers in the pub, but barred from drinking beer or any other alcoholic drink. There was a man with a sad-looking face sitting on a low chair all by himself in the corner of the pub. He bought a newspaper from me every Monday, and he gave me a Tattslotto ticket. He was different from the other pub patrons, so I asked him one day: "Where are you from?"

He said that he was from Wales.

I said "New South Wales."

And he said "No, Wales."

I thought to myself why do these people shorten the names of everything? I liked him and he liked me and after many days I found out that he was from Wales in England (schools aren't the only places for learning). Wales was new to me, so was the Tattslotto lottery. I found out later that he was giving me lottery tickets that were out of date. But one day he gave me something that appeared genuine. He gave me a cricket bat that looked authentic and looked like it could have been used in major cricket matches going by the dents made on it by the hard cricket balls. I wished I kept that bat.

One person gives and another person takes away. The barmaid, a middle aged lady who was serving beer behind the bar, asked me for two pounds (equivalent to four dollars) one day.

"Lend me two pounds, till tomorrow. I will pay you back tomorrow afternoon," she said.

The next day she wasn't at her usual spot behind the pub's bar. On subsequent enquiries I found out that she collected enough money from everyone in the pub for a one-way ticket to Queensland.

Despite losing two pounds, I was still saving money towards my first sports car.

So, now let's find out how the migrant adults were making money and saving money.

Australia was a bonanza for the newly arrived migrants. You could not stop the impoverished migrants from working and you couldn't make them spend their hard-earned money; initially that is.

Richmond, Collingwood, Burnley and Abbottsford collectively were a hub of industry. There was a large collection of factories such as Vickers Ruwolt, Carlton & United Breweries, the State Electricity Commission, Arnott's Biscuits, Nylex Plastics, McPhersons. Further away from Richmond there were the car manufacturing and car assembling factories, etc. On the smaller scale of factories there were Pelaco, Bryant and May (the match factory), Peters Ice Cream, Rosella, Yarra Falls and many other manufacturers of all sorts of goods. Collingwood was the shoe making centre and Flinders' Lane was the "rag trade" centre. There wasn't a shortage of employers, but there was a shortage of employees, almost all of the factories had signs of "Workers Wanted" plastered on their factory facades. Many factories asked their employees to work overtime and did they work overtime!

I remember when my uncle Vangel brought his niece Leta over from Macedonia and he secured a job for her at Peter's Ice Cream, where he worked for many years. When Leta was able to communicate in broken English, "Vangel" told her to ask for overtime: "Ask the boss to give you overtime," said Vangel.

The boss gave Leta overtime and she worked there many hours per week and for many years until she retired. Leta was a model worker, never missing a day. She gained the management's respect. The management rewarded Leta with a lifetime membership to the Peters Ice Cream annual Christmas party, with all expenses paid by the management. After her retirement the management would chauffeur Leta from her home to the annual Christmas party each year until she wasn't able to attend any more.

Leta amassed a substantial amount of money by working overtime at Peters Ice Cream. Rumour has it that one day on her way home she walked past a house that was being auctioned near her home. While the auction was in progress Leta waved to a person in the auction crowd; her hand waving coincided with the final call from the auctioneer and Leta ended up buying the house. There was no need for financial arrangements, such was her financial position. Leta bought the house with cash money.

On average, our people worked fifteen extra hours per week of overtime. The extra hours were paid at one and a half times the normal rate of pay; Sundays and public holidays were paid at double the rate of normal pay. Overall, a working couple would bring home three weekly wages. This was a substantial amount of money, much more than the pay of a middle-level management employee. The migrants had an additional advantage over a middle management employee and that was that they were able to save most of their wages because their expenses were minimal. No car expenses, no TV licence, no insurance fees and most importantly no holiday expenses and certainly no dining out expenses. Those who had purchased a house would use their spare time painting or even extending their prized possession instead of going on holidays, so no maintenance fees; what a bonanza.

For those who didn't have a house it wouldn't take them long to buy one. The two greatest incentives for Macedonians for purchasing a house were: no Macedonian wants to pay rent, they didn't want to make the landlord richer; and no Macedonian wants to pay bank interest, they didn't want to make the banks richer.

In many cases migrants, especially Macedonians, bought their houses with cash money. They worked many hours, saved most of their pay and waited until they had enough money to purchase the house outright, without a mortgage. For example, three brothers from our village managed to buy a house for each one of them within two to three years of arriving in Australia. How can this happen, you might ask? Well, they minimised the cost of renting by sharing one house. It was common for two families to rent a small house, and three families to rent a bigger house. And in the extreme case, groups of single men rented houses in shifts. One shift would sleep in the house while the other shift would be at work.

But the greatest advantage in being able to buy a house was the low purchase price of the houses in the industrial suburbs of Melbourne. Suburbs such as Richmond, where dad bought his first house in the same street where there was a large drycleaning business by the name of Brown Gouge. This stinking factory discharged its used smelly solvents every day at 5.00 pm, forcing the residents in the street to shut the doors and windows of their homes until next morning. One had to put up with smelly and dangerous conditions in order to buy a house at a bargain price in the industrial parts of Richmond. The discomfort and hazardous conditions gave us, the migrants, a foot in the property market.

I will disclose some figures here, which are unbelievable in today's housing market. These figures illustrate that industrial suburbs such as Richmond, Fitzroy and Collingwood were a bargain in this lucky country. The 1950s-70s were the "bonanza" years for house buyers.

1. In 1953 a small house in Kent Street, Richmond, about ten houses away from Brown Gouge dry cleaners, was sold for $600 when the average wage was $1,300 (Prices then were in pounds and I have converted them to dollars. A house then was less than half a year of an average wage.)

2. In 1965 a bigger house in Bennett Street, Richmond, a better part of Richmond and on land that was three times bigger than the land of the house in Kent Street, was sold at a still relative bargain price of $12,000 when the average wage was $3,200 (Again, prices then were in pounds and I have converted them to dollars. A house was a bit less than four years of an average wage). If we included two wages the price of that house was bought for less than two years of an average household income. For a Macedonian couple working overtime that was about one and a half years wages.

3. Now the price of that same house is fourteen times the annual average wage. Today, it is near impossible for a first home buyer to buy that house.

During the 1950s-70s when the houses were at bargain prices, many migrants including my parents' purchased homes in industrial suburbs. This was a stepping stone to better places in Melbourne. After securing a place to live in, no matter how humble, my parents like many other families who had teenage children were preparing themselves for the next onslaught in family life, and that was to marry-off their children.

Marry-off sounds a bit like an expulsion of one's children from the family home, when you say it quickly in one sentence. But the Macedonians from rural parts of the country take marriage very seriously and strive to arrange a marriage which is more of an agreement between two families rather than two young lovers coming together. It's more like an addition to their family. The engagements and the weddings were major and expensive events in the early 1970s. The prelude to the union of the young couple was even more expensive than the actual wedding reception, which normally hosted around three hundred guests.

So now the preparation for the hunting game begins. Hunting for a lifelong partner was expensive for the parents, exciting for some young lovers, disappointing for others, and downright bewildering for a few.

The parents of eligible girls made sure their daughters were dolled up with the latest dresses and spent time and lots of money on grooming. They presented their daughters like princesses at the hunting-marriage game. The parents of the potential grooms had to make sure their sons appeared to be successful by buying them a new car (a Valiant car was on top of the shopping list if funds were available). Not all families were able to meet those requirements of course, thus the disappointment for some families.

My parents certainly were not able to meet those requirements and it was fortunate for them that I wasn't ready to start the hunting games yet. I participated as an observer only, but a pleasant surprise was waiting for me in the near future.

Before the hunting game began in earnest, a group of us went on a real hunting trip; hunting rabbits. This hunting trip turned out to be more than a rabbit hunt as you will read in the next chapter.

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