George Palmer

He worked in London before the war in banking, in the banking industry, but the war interrupted that.

So he had no qualifications and he certainly was not part of the establishment.

And even though he ended up as a major in the British Army, that wouldn't have got him anywhere back in England.

So they were looking for some place where they could start a new life, bring up a family.

without also the inhibitions of class restriction.

I think probably my father was conscious of that, having worked in London, coming from Cyprus.

So they wanted somewhere where they could make a fresh start for the family in the new world.

Well, we arrived when I was three months old.

As soon as I was born, they tried to arrange passage to ownership.

The first ship they could get on was to Australia.

They arrived 1947, not very much money at all.

No job, no connections for my father.

They had just a little saved.

You don't get paid very much in the British Army.

They found a house they could rent, a little old house in Rosebury in Sydney, which was then quite an industrial suburb.

And I grew up there for the first four years of my life with my mother, father, my aunt and

and my grandmother, and my uncle.

So the family lived together in this little house, and my grandmother, who had a very comfortable life in Egypt, she had married a French engineer,

who was in charge of a big cotton mill in Egypt.

So they had a very comfortable life in Egypt, servants and the whole business.