Kambala School

In the meantime our mother had enrolled us in school in Sydney - Barbara and myself in Kambala Girls C of E school, which had the most marvellous view over the harbour from Double Bay, and Robin in Cranbrook School, a prep school further along the road towards Sydney. We were fortunate, Barbara and I, in that Kambala School provided an excellent education. We were really very, very fortunate because Barbara was already quite a step ahead of the Canadians when we were over there, in her educational standards from England, and I was rather behind in my schoolwork and needed to catch up in an academic A stream.

It was in Kambala School that I met my greatest friend, Merrilee Addison. On our first day [10 February 1942] an Austrian refugee girl called Charlotte Engel and I were sitting there rather forlorn in the wrong uniforms left over from previous schools, feeling very conspicuous eating our lunch on the grass. Sandwiches were the order of the day, and these we brought in various assortments of tins and boxes, and there was much eyeing of each others lunch by other girls. Mothers used to vie with each other to give their daughters a very healthy "Oslo" lunch with brown bread and cheese, etc. On this occasion Merrilee came up to us as we sat entirely alone and asked Charlotte and myself if we would mind if she joined us with her lunch. She was the most popular girl and where she led others followed, so that very soon we were accepted despite our strange accents and shy manner. Barbara too I think was accepted within her form - certainly she soon seemed to have as many friends as I did. [Merrilee's father was the Eades family's GP while they lived in Sydney.]