When I was washing the dishes, that solitary chore where one’s thoughts are suspended over a sink of dirty washing up, I suddenly understood why, having turned 47, I feel like a baby boomer who has lost half of herself along the way. I left Germany when I was twenty and brought with me all the hopes, uncertanties and feelings of adventure I imagine any 20 year old would experience who decides to go oversees for a year. Little did I know that this adventure was to be the biggest change in my life, a change for which I alone was responsible and which would bring with it a new life in a new country and a new life where no-one would be from or familiar with my past. 27 years on, I remember my 20th birthday with the Suttons and the nice dinner they made and the anthology of Australian poetry Ruth gave me as a present. And even then, only such a short time after my arrival, I felt that I had embarked on a journey which was going to be more personal than geographical. Maybe I already knew somehow that I would want to stay, that my I would be happy here. And while life is good, advancing years and my 47th birthday last week have made me feel somewhat melancholic at times. And while washing dishes late last night and looking out of my favourite window, whith the lights of Hurstville glistening in the distance and the leafy valley of Penshurst below, a light came on in my brain like an extra bright bulb in a broken christmas decoration. I looked up at my surroundings and suddenly knew that I would never be able to share my first 20 years with anyone, that I would always have to talk about school, childhood, relatives, friends, likes, dislikes and my experiences as if they were stories from a book. As if they were a documentary on TV. When other people do not need to say anything to explain what a certain feeling or experience was like it I have to qualify and explain and thus sound like a travel guide or a foreigner who can’t get used to living here. But that isn’t it at all. It is as if half one’s life is gone and one has to start all over again without the benefit of shared childhood experiences, a common culture and language. Even just talking about childhood events can become somewhat encyclopedic due to cultural differences and the effort this takes can be too much when met with a fairly polite, but blank expression on the listeners’ faces. In a way I became a ‘new born’ Australian at the age of 20 and now find myself stuck in a 47 year old body which is rapidly losing its last vestiges of the 20 year old ‘Weltenbummler’. And the irony is that within this walking, talking 47 year old female frame is a person whose image in the mirror has become unfamiliar. There are hardly any signs of the “first” life left; the ridicuously rapid and unrelentless onset of old age is wiping out what was my identiy created by my former life, my upbringing and all the good and bad which came with it. At least I had that to hold on to. But now, when I look up from the suds and see my image in the window I sense how disconnected I am with the life I led before, the life no-one can relate to and no-one understands or knows. And at the same time I cannot help but feel disconnected to Australians my age, because we did not grow up together and have neither language nor culture in common. And with this realisation comes a sense of grief. Grief for the life that only I hold in my heart and my head, a hisotry that is of no significance or interest except for the odd occasion when stories come out like something from a Bill Bryson journal or a travellog. And like a traveller who cannot share experiences of the journey I have a whole life for which there is not a single fellow traveller with whom to share a wordless and mutual understanding of what it was like and what it meant. I no longer seem to have the strength to bring back what needs so much effort to explain without sounding out of place or unintelligible. And all that remains of the first 20 years of my life can very briefly be summed up in the style of a package tour style tourist brochure: – Born to Bavarian parents in beautiful Stuttgart, known for its cars, wines and history. After 2 years a short stay in the romantic town of Rottweill and a childhood and adolescence growing up in the picturesque town of Geislingen an der Steige, which boasts a castle, famous mineral spas and famous railway track idyllically situated between five valleys.