I did, and soon after arriving in Australia, married her.

While studying journalism, I met a wonderful Australian girl. One day the school hall was raided by the police who then branded me a Communist as they considered educating Africans a subversive act. This was due to the fact that I had started a weekend school for Africans in the school hall of the prestigious boy's school I attended. I came to Australia because I was banned from returning to my own country. His was the best education I was ever to receive, despite the scholarship I won to a prestigious boy's school and thereafter to a university in England where I studied Journalism. Here I met Doc, a drunken German music teacher who spent the next few years filling my young mind with the wonders of nature as we roamed the high mountains. At the age of five I was sent to a boarding school which might be better described as a combination orphanage and reform school, where I learned to box - though less as a sport and more as a means to stay alive.īut I survived to return to a small mountain town named Barberton in the North Eastern part of the country. It was a somewhat isolated community and I grew up among farm folk and the African people.

His was the best education I was ever t I was born illegitimately in 1933 in South Africa and spent my early childhood years in a small town deep in the heart of the Lebombo mountains. But I survived to return to a small mountain town named Barberton in the North Eastern part of the country. At the age of five I was sent to a boarding school which might be better described as a combination orphanage and reform school, where I learned to box - though less as a sport and more as a means to stay alive. I was born illegitimately in 1933 in South Africa and spent my early childhood years in a small town deep in the heart of the Lebombo mountains.

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay