Blast From The Past: Daws Road

Have done my marking for one subject but yet to finish for another, the more challenging graduate course. So still not out of the woods yet despite my earlier thought that I would have time for myself by now. I was further constrained by my back pain. Every now and then, I have to lie on my back and twist my body to relieve the pain. Yesterday was pretty bad and I took pain killers. So, my struggle day to day. On the better days, I just need to maintain good posture and avoid straining my back in things that I do.

Yesterday, I got a nice surprise that my brother Nasaruddin shared an old document stored, I guess, in one of my late father's files. It was a school document telling us to get prepared for a medical examination for seven of us from SMSPP to go to Australia. The letter was dated 8 December 1979 and signed by the School Principal Mohd Arif. I remember vaguely having mixed feelings about this. After five years in boarding school, I will be away from my parents again for a couple of years in Adelaide, Australia. The only comfort was that there was another school mate, Shaiful Azman, assigned to the same place Adelaide. My step sister, Zaizah went to Perth. We attended Matriculation Course in high schools there. I was in Daws Road High School (now called Pasadena High) while Shaiful was in Norwood High.

My school mates over there in Daws Road are Suhaizan, Hamlussalam (housemates), Sabariah, Noormala and Salamah. Here's a picture of us arriving at Adelaide airport (me, not visible in the first photo - pics courtesy of Noormala).

A week after our arrival (I think), we were sent to an orientation camp in Clarendon. I remembered vaguely I just followed along particularly with our seniors who were there too (see pic). In a way, I had a bit of cultural shock then, like a fish out of water (rusa masuk kampung), particularly with my shy personality.

For matriculation, I remember chemistry and physics were relatively easier compared to mathematics since we had covered some of them for MCE (the last batch). Mathematics, we had to struggle a bit with regular homework sets given by our teacher Mr. Hilditch. Here is a picture of our class (can't remember what it is called).

I'm not sure about the others, I did not mix that well out of shyness. I do remember that my housemates were doing better. I remember Salam invited Tasso (an Australian Greek) to our home for Hari Raya and another Chinese whom I can't remember the name (see pic below - Salam just told me he is Eric but still can't place him). Our matriculation is pretty much hard life. Our scholarship quantum was small, and most of it went to the house rent. I remembered once there was this announcement made in the media that made us just about the poverty level in Australia. I also remembered once I used copper coins (one and two cents) to pay for our bus fare and got scolded by the bus driver cum conductor (see pic below, me with Shaiful at a bus stop). I kept my hair long partly due to money shortage.

During the school holidays, I remembered somebody (a Malay staying in Australia) hired us to pick garbage from some gardening or construction work at some place. I was then told not to come back the next day but housemates went on. Felt so humiliated then but I can't say much, perhaps being little, I was not performing as well as my house mates. So now, I can 'proudly' say that I'm not even good enough to be a garbage collector. Those were the hard times. Later, when we were doing Bachelors degree in University of Adelaide, I think they raised our scholarship allowances but still much of it was spent on rent. Will need another post to talk about the B,Sc. years. The pic below is me with Dato' Suhaizan (Che' Jan we called him then) in our backyard.

Despite the hard times, I certainly value the things we have learned and experienced. Particularly this period, first time abroad.