As soon as we were handed over to Australian Troops we knew that our destiny had greatly improved. We were taken on board a train which was docked along the ship, and after an 18 hour journey we arrived in Hay. We were given sandwiches and fresh fruit for the journey and at one stage, one of the guards wanted to roll a cigarette so they actually handed over their rifle to one of us while he was doing this. After our arrival in Hay we were split into two lots of 1000 and taken to two separate camps which were about a mile apart. There were 40 odd huts which had 24 bunks and everybody was free to choose whichever hut they wanted to go to. I was fortunate to get into a hut with a bunch of academics; some very nice people, one of whom turned out to be Paul Kurtz. I was the youngest in camp. It took a while to settle in. But every hut selected a hut leader and the hut leaders went into the meeting place once a week, where we had our local parliament, and the camp spokesman was selected, and we started negotiating with the authorities. There were solicitors, there were dentists there were doctors, there were labourers, there were fish mongers. You name it, we had it.

The camp was exclusively for the Dunera people, two thousand of us, all either Austrian or German. And it turned out like a complete community on its own. The dentist finished up making his own tools and treating our teeth to the best of his ability. The doctors were sent into a special hut where they could hold surgery hours every day. A lot of us were sick and on top of everything else soon after we arrived we were welcomed by the first sandstorm. Well, it arrived within minutes and within half an hour everything was covered with inches of sand and rubbish. But we got used to it and we settled down to a reasonably normal life. Everybody chose what he wanted to do, where he wanted to work, if he wanted to work, whether he wanted to read. We were allowed a letter a week, which was like an aerogram now. And I started writing to the Red Cross trying to contact my parents. After 4 months, suddenly a letter arrived for me, from my mother. They had been contacting the Red Cross, and the Red Cross contacted the Home Office, and the Home Office actually traced me to Hay and we finally established contact by mail and I knew they were still alive.

Apparently my father had been released from the internment camp just before the German army arrived and he managed to get home to my mother. She was still living in the old flat in Perigueux, above the park. Only the men had been interned; there was no rhyme nor reason to it. The same thing happened in England; the women could go on spying ’till the cows come home.