Recorder, around 1960
Anita Oberlaender is in the third grade in Stuttgart-Rohracker when her parents decide to take the big step and go to Australia as part of the recruitment agreement. In October 1960, the family – consisting of watchmaker Paul Werner Oberlaender, his wife Maria Martha, and their two children Anita and Helmut – boards the ‘Castle Felice’ in Bremerhaven. For the musically inclined family, it’s a stroke of luck that they are allowed to bring a lot of luggage on the container ship. Thus, Father Oberlaender can not only ship his lathe but also the family’s musical instruments: himself with his accordion and concertina, Helmut with his harmonica, and Anita with her zither and – the recorder. In Germany, she learned the flute since the beginning of her school time in Stuttgart. Of course, Anita also takes her self-stitched flute bag with her. In a foreign land, the possibility to make music in the traditional family circle means a piece of home. Thus, some of the musical cultural diversity continues even in the far ‘Down Under’. The crossing takes more than two months: A day before Christmas, the ship arrives in Melbourne. About 50 years later, Anita Zeman, as she is now called, remembers the many long weeks of the crossing: how it felt for her as a child to ‘experience a great adventure’; the stopover in Port Said, where she saw palm trees for the first time and where people were dressed ‘as if they were walking around in their nightgowns’; the waves ‘as tall as five-story houses’; and the ‘magic and festivities’ during the equator crossing. Upon arriving in Australia, the family moves to Oak Flats in New South Wales, where the father initially works in the steel mill since there is no job for him as a watchmaker. Ten years after the family’s arrival in Australia, it’s time for Father Oberlaender to open his own watchmaking shop in Oak Flats.
