By Alejandra Martinez
My family landed at Cabramatta Hostel in the early 1970s. We were housed in a hot one-room corrugated iron half-cylindrical hut. It was far away from all that was familiar, including the coast, which is so prominent in Montevideo, the city, where we lived in Uruguay.
On the flight from Montevideo to Sydney, my parents befriended a young couple, who also were taken to Cabramatta hostel. This couple had a letter for a family in Wollongong, or ‘warlongong’, as my parents called it for the rest of their lives. Due to this letter, the young couple, my parents, my sister and I all moved to the Illawarra. The recipients of the letter told my parents that there was work in the Steelworks and they could live close to the beach, like in Montevideo. That was enough for all of us to move to Wollongong!
We were transferred to Fairy Meadow Hostel, which we all thought was wonderful, as the corrugated iron huts were bigger, and the suffocating heat of Cabramatta was replaced with a coastal breeze. We had one big room, with two beds, one for my sister and one for me, and a sofa that was made into a bed for my parents every night. There was no kitchen, bathroom, or laundry. These were communal. You lined up in a big cafeteria, where strange food was plonked on your plate by one of the kitchen ladies. The many languages, the clanging of dishes and scraping chairs collided to create a jumble of noise. On Sundays we had ice-cream. That was our favourite day.
While these huts were very basic, they were safe. The military with their machine guns, were not standing on street corners. People or houses weren’t searched.
From the hostel we moved to our first house in Australia, in a cul de sac in Barrack Heights. Our new Australian house was a hot fibro box in a new suburb in need of residents. Ours was the first house built in the street. Around us was long grass, which my father cut with a machete. One day the grass out the back caught fire and my sister, and I were evacuated to the nearest neighbours, a block away, while my parents fought the fire to save our house. Inside that house was everything we owned, including the little bits of Uruguay that we had brought with us. Luckily the house survived the fire.
Houses were soon built along the cul de sac and a community of neighbours from all over the world formed. While we didn’t share a language, we were all migrants, searching for a better and safer life in the Illawarra.
My father worked at the Steelworks, like most of the other parents in our street, and on the weekends, we went to Warilla beach, where the force of the Pacific Ocean was a contrast to the gentle water of the Atlantic.
I completed my schooling at Warilla High School and lived in Barrack Heights until I moved to Sydney to go to university.
I decided to set my novel, Salsa in the Suburbs, in Western Sydney as that was where we first lived in Australia and where my father moved to, years later after my mother died. However, I still consider the Illawarra home, as it’s where I grew up, went to high school and where family and friends live.
In my novel one of the characters, Lola, moves from Sydney to Coalcliff. It is here that Lola starts to make peace with herself. The enormity of the cliff faces along the escarpment, makes this natural beauty a contrast to the industrial story of Wollongong. It is in this contrast that Lola finds her place in the world.
Alejandra will be in conversation with local author Hayley Scrivenor at Wollongong Library on Thursday evening, 18 September. Salsa in the Suburbs is available at all good bookshops or at the Puncher & Wattmann website.
For more information, visit alejandramartinez.com.au