Gema Gonzalez

Story

GEMA\’S STORY Part 1, Journey from Catlonia to Brisbane

This is the story and adventures of a little girl born it North Spain, (Catalonia) in 1948, and growing up with the poverty and miseries in postwar times after the Spanish civil war and Second World War. The struggle of trying to feel accepted and fulfill her dreams lasted until she was in her sixties. Because in the times she was born, being the fifth child of a poor farmer family, she was just another mouth to feed. She never felt understood and accepted. In the times of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, the fight for a better future was in everybody\’s mind of her generation. After her marriage, she and her young husband immigrated to Australia, but she carried with her the scars of her childhood. Here she had to fight again to feel accepted, in the new Australian society.

This little girl, now a middle aged woman, discovered that she had suffered fibromialgia for most of her adult life caused probably by her hard times in her childhood. She became free of the feeling of rejection, because she now accepts and understands herself, and felt worthwhile, to pursue her life dream of writing.

THE DREAM

When Sebastian and I, in October of 1973, were accepted to immigrate to Australia, our friends and relatives gave us their individual opinion about leaving our country and going to the other side of the world to work. Some were saying that Australia was still a wild and dangerous country, others that Australia was so rich that we will become millionaires in no time, even others that is it was so far to that country that we will not be ever able to come back to Spain. We made our own minds and we made sure to encourage our selves to go ahead with that adventure which we did not know how it would end. Our theory was that Australia being such a new country big and rich, and so near to Japan and their great technology, Australia would be a modern country with high velocity trains, like the Japanese ones are.

When we landed in Brisbane, it did not take long for us to realize that the theory of a modern country was not a reality. From Brisbane Airport to Waco Hostel, where we were about to live for six months we traveled by bus – sixty Spanish people left the Brisbane airport, the capital of Queensland, the Fourth Sate of Australia. It was Saturday at nine am. The city was empty. We only could see wooden or brick houses, but all in the style like the ones we used to see in the American Western Films. The streets were not dirty but the bad state of the buildings made it look untidy. In some corners there was a boy of about 12 or 13 years old, yelling, ‘Papers’ We could hear their voices from the bus.

The Brisbane airport is situated en the east of the city, and the bus took us on a 45 minutes ride to the west. In the course of the trip, we saw wide roads, with big cars, like the Americans and we could see the influence on the American culture in Australia, but no trace of Japanese culture at all.

Today, in 2008 the little towns still have the some look, lonely relaxed, old and dusty,

But the big cities now have the same appearance of a modern European Cities, however much less crowded.

< Back to the Stories