Wasn't it great to present the scholarships to the Class of 2025 recently? This year there were two Alumni Scholarships; one provided by the usual process of combining individual donations with money raised at our 'Stammtisch', plus one funded in its entirety by a generous donation from Mr Robert Walker. At the recent Presentation Evening, Robert's scholarship was proudly awarded by SAGSE Alumni Officer Warren Pratt to Bendigo Senior Secondary College student Matilda Wilby. Robert went on exchange over 50 years ago, with Andrew Ferguson amongst many others. It was a large cohort, as SAGSE was gaining traction as a force in Student Exchange. An accomplished musician, Robert's life journey took him back to Germany on a DAAD scholarship, and when his heart was taken by a Swiss soloist, the rest of his life was destined to be spent in the beautiful Helvetian Confederation. Through a serendipitous course of events, the editor now works at Robert's former school in Melbourne, and was able to arrange a mountain-top meeting with Robert whilst on a German Study Tour in Switzerland in September.
Year of exchange: 1974 / 75
Group Leader: Lois Reynolds
School: Trinity Grammar School, Kew
Sponsor: Hapag-Lloyd
Town / city of exchange in Germany: Uelzen
HAPAG-Lloyd arranged a trip to the ports of Hamburg & Bremen with a young employee from NZ – was very interesting to tour a container ship. At the end of the stay, our group’s visit to Berlin was a highlight. This was still about 15 years before the 'Wende', so our daytrip to East Berlin beyond the Wall was an unnerving experience. Fortunately, all of us returned safely to the West and were soon on our way back to Oz.
I completed a Music Degree at Adelaide University and then received a DAAD scholarship to continue my studies at the Musikhochschule Detmold.
I am happily retired, except for bits of relief teaching, music arranging and ensemble direction – all great fun. Forty years later (schwupp) and I have four grandchildren, all of whom are growing up with several languages each. That’s Swissness!
Because of my musical interest it had been intended that I was to stay with a family in Tübingen, however a postal strike meant that two days before my group’s departure for Germany there was still no confirmation from that family, so instead I was sent to another family in Uelzen, halfway between Hannover and Hamburg, on the Lüneburger Heide. I very soon discovered that my good grounding in German grammar helped me with understanding and with making German sentences, but my laziness had not provided me with enough vocab to describe anything, so that was a real kickstart! Fortunately, my hosts were very generous and patient with me.
My host father had a hobby with electronic organs, one of which was like a church organ, so I enjoyed hours of playing on that. He himself was more into Hammond and Wersi entertainment organs, so that was all good fun. He even took me to the Frankfurter Musikmesse, which was huge.
After the briefest of homecomings from my exchange, I went to Adelaide, where I enjoyed four years as a music student, also adding in a semester of German. This was useful in gaining me a good reference for a DAAD scholarship which took me back to Germany for a year of further studies at the Musikhochschule in Detmold. The strangest part about this: I thought my comprehension was pretty good by now, but I hadn’t reckoned with rapid-fire German student slang, and often didn’t have a clue what they were talking about!
During my year in Detmold, I was sent on a concert tour to France with a German cathedral choir. One of the soloists on that tour caught my eye and ear: on a subsequent visit to Europe I visited her, it rapidly became clear that we wanted to stay together, the question however was: who was going to emigrate? A year of letters and phonecalls later (at least an airfare’s worth in those days!) I realised that I would be the one to make the move to Switzerland, and so began my new life in Europe with a new wife and a new language – Swiss German!
My grounding in High German was of course useful, but I only really made progress in the local Swiss dialect after accepting it for what it is: the local language, of which the locals are proud. Swiss German has one major trick: because the dialects differ from place to place, there is no one standard way of pronouncing or writing anything, which means you can be very inventive! It also gives you very flexible ears – all great fun.
Fast forward forty years: I was pleased to run into Warren Pratt (also ex-SAGSE) recently, leading a group of boys from my old school, Trinity Grammar, and accompanied them on their last full day in Europe. May their experience on that trip lead one or other of them to follow up their German studies with another visit one day. Who knows where that might lead them?