Not too long after we arrived, I was at a hotel in Botany, socialising with some friends from work, and a man named Walter Rook came up to me, told me I looked new to the country, and asked if I was looking to buy a house. He said he had some land in Brighton-Le-Sands, very close to the beach, where he was building two identical houses. Would I like to buy one? I told him I did not have enough money, and he told me that this wasn’t a problem – he would help me to secure credit and establish myself in Australia.
