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Steve’s dad Joe had left Heidelberg and immigrated to Australia in the mid-Seventies.
Joe never returned to Germany, he finally settled in Perth after years of backpacking and doing almost any job he was offered. Since Joe had never spoken about it, it took Steve a long time to find out more about his father's background and his reasons for leaving. In fact, Joe had been raised by foster parents who asked him to leave the house when he turned nineteen, because at the time he was an unpredictable and unsettled young man with what they considered very odd political ideas that frightened them.
Joe never returned to Germany, he finally settled in Perth after years of backpacking and doing almost any job he was offered. Since Joe had never spoken about it, it took Steve a long time to find out more about his father's background and his reasons for leaving. In fact, Joe had been raised by foster parents who asked him to leave the house when he turned nineteen, because at the time he was an unpredictable and unsettled young man with what they considered very odd political ideas that frightened them.
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So Joe left.
Eventually he landed in Singapore and from there he made his way to Queensland, where he met Sue from Liverpool. They found each other and their true calling in life playing in a band, trading radical political views for radical new ideas on how to make music. So their only son Steve grew up with music and musicians. But Joe never taught his son any German. Steve grew up speaking Aussie-English and practicing his mother’s delightful scouse accent. At school he soon realized that he had the “gift of the gab”, he did very well in French class and he always wanted to learn German too. When his own kids were born in the late Nineties he was determined to make sure they would get the chance to learn languages if they showed interest and talent. Steve and his wife Kim joined GlobalNatives.Org in its very early pioneer days and soon connected with the Schwaab family near Heidelberg. |
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The Schwaabs had a lively girl of fifteen and were very keen to partner with someone in an English speaking country. Misgivings about the cost of travel were soon dispelled – they simply compared airfare prices to the cost of sending a child on a language holiday and found the results convincing.
Sue and Joe, who was about to turn sixty in the Spring of 2013, had no idea that Steve and his family had been on their first trip to Germany in the summer of 2012. They successfully managed to keep it a secret. So Joe was absolutely speechless when his grand-daughters surprised him with a couple of birthday songs in perfect German. On that day he told them his own story for the first time. |
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