How I started my life in earnest, in luxury

If all goes well, I will just have arrived in Melbourne, Australia, when you read this. Come to think of it, I will sort of have arrived tomorrow by your reckoning, because of crossing the Internatinal Date Line. It's not the first time in my life that I have lost or gained days or seasons: This month it will be exactly 40 years ago that I first set foot in this city, to begin my career.

I had just finished my studies and accepted a job in Australia to get away from Holland where, at 24, I felt I'd been there forever already. Also, the climate was beginning to get to me; I wanted sunshine. So Loni and I got married, left for Australia on a glorious spring day, and arrived in the pouring rain of a Melbourne fall.

Actually, there were five weeks between leaving and arriving because the Australian government, bless them, had booked us a first class cabin on the P&O line Strathmore.

Not a bad beginning for a former secretary and a graduate assistant used to living on academic welfare. In fact, it would have been heaven -- imagine a five-week honeymoon on a cruise ship -- if all our luggage hadn't been lost in London.

The man from the British railways couldn't have been nicer; he came all the way out to the ship to tell us about it. They had lost the entire train, he said, such things sometimes happened in England.

We had only our hand luggage left but, being young and in love, we figured "so what" and went on with the trip.

"So what" turned out to be more, or rather less, than we had bargained for. "So what" meant wearing corduroy and wool in the Suez canal; it meant shopping for underwear in Arab bazaars while other passagers visted mosques and monuments; it meant appearing at the Captain's table dressed in a turtle neck sweater.

Still, we had fun. We ate six-course breakfasts in the morning, lazed the day away playing shuffle board and spent the night trying our luck at bingo, which the British called Housie-Housie.

We also practiced our English, which we had studied for five years in high school. But when we stepped off the boat on Melbourne, we discovered that people spoke Australian -- pronounced Strine -- and even the English -- called Pommies -- were lost.

You'll understand that this trip will be pure nostalgia. There'll be endless reuniouns with my old "mates." There also will be sadness in going through the streets where Loni and I walked so long ago.

But happiness has always revisited me and I will celebrate that down under. I'll keep you informed.

At Random-Adrian Korpel