* * *
Now it is the Open again in Melbourne and I’m too far away to visit. However, I can see the players and balls up close and the commentators switch around the courts so I can see a bit of everyone. It looks very hot again and the players will be suffering from the hot courts.
All too soon the Open was over for another year and I now knew a bit more about playing tennis. I practiced after the day sessions with my new racquet and I’m getting better at changing grips. I haven’t done much with my serve and I really need to practice so I can go in a competition. I don’t think I could ever serve as fast as Tomic but I do want to get it in the serve box as well and I can only practice that on a court.
“How’s it coming, Tiger?” asked Dad the day before school began.
“It’s a lot easier to hold the racquet with the correct grip. Using the stress ball while I watched the tennis has helped me as well,” I said.
“Excellent. How about we practice a bit together? I can hold your old paddle/racquet and we’ll see who gives in first.”
Dad won but that’s all right. He’s bigger and stronger. I’ll be bigger one day and then I’ll thrash him.
School has started and tennis lessons will begin next week. I played with Marcus after school and told him about my Christmas present. All he got was clothes and a Donkey Kong game.
In English we were given a workbook called Storyteller Walkabout. We have all term to finish it and at the end we have to interview a migrant or someone who knows a migrant post World War II. That’s going to be difficult for me as I don’t know any grandparents up here.
“Who can I interview who is old enough to have been born about 80 years ago?” I asked Dad when I got home from school.
“What about my mother and your mother’s father?” Dad said.
“I guess I could interview them over the phone,” I said.
“ And what sort of questions do you want to ask them?” said Dad.
“Well, it has to be about being a migrant from 1945 to 1955. In other words, people who came here after the Second World War.”
“I can remember my step-father telling us how they used to steal the Chinaman’s apples and place them in the front of their old fashioned swimsuits. The Chinese would shoot salt pellets at them as they escaped and swam across the Yarra River. Then they’d have to dig out the salt. Those apples must have been worth it.”
“That’s a great story so I suppose I would have to tell it from the Chinese point of view. Anyway, we have to interview someone so I can’t use it. But thanks Dad. We have to work our way to the interview, being given hints on describing our interviewee as well as post World War II history, and adverbs.”
“I know”, said Dad, “what about interviewing someone who lived in Broome in the 1940’s and 1950’s. I was in Magabala Books yesterday and bought Sally Bin Demin’s book Once in Broome. Ask your teacher if you could do your assignment with someone from Broome seeing as we don’t know any migrants here. The people in her book were very multicultural and came from many lands. She seemed to have lots of fun growing up, even when they evacuated to Beagle Bay during the Second World War when Sally was only four.”
“Okay, I’ll try that,” I said.
The Journal of Paul O'Leary: From the City to the Outback Page 10