Dorothy Cameron

Story

I left the USA and went to Austria to study during my 3rd year of university in 1967. While traveling in France, I met Ewan (Kenneth )Cameron, who was born in Ceylon as his family were tea planters there. Though he went on to study in Oxford, England, and I went back and finished university in the USA, we married in Oxford in 1969. We had our first child Jacob the next year.

One day I found an advertisment in the London Times asking for applications for a scholarship to the Australian University in every subject you could imagine. He applied and was accepted. The scholarship paid our way to Australia and a stipend until the Ph D was finished.

We visited the USA to see my family on our way to Australia, and also Tahiti. When we went to leave Tahiti we were told that I (being a US citizen ) needed a visa to go to Australia, but I had not known that! So I needed to buy a ticket out of Sydney to New Zealand before they would take me on the plane. As soon as we got to Sydney, we were whisked away to a room where I was given a temporary visa.

Canberra then was still fairly small (150,000 people) and we did not have a car, so walked everywhere near by and to do shopping. I remember seeing a kangaroo in the street the first day, and also the beautiful parrots and feeling that it was very exotic indeed!

We were living in university flats in Manuka, and everyone there was a student and most had little children, so it was a very friendly place to be, and everyone got to know everyone else. I started studying nursing, and then midwifery, which turned out to be a wonderful profession.

We had 2 more children and decided to become Australians and stay in Australia. The only sadness was not being near our extended families, but in many ways, our new county was good to us, and we have loved her people, and the beautiful variety that the bush has shown us.

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