She stepped outside into blazing heat. Having learned the necessity of conserving energy when it was hot, she walked slowly to the tram stop, and after a short wait was on her way. She liked the Melbourne trams, so clean and uncrowded, and she’d never known one to break down. She liked so much about her new country: the relaxed and easygoing people, the availability of anything and everything; she liked the perfumed bleaches and detergents, and the little price tickets on all the goods; and creative little touches like the plastic greenery in the butchery displays. And Australian shopping was bliss. Her all-time favourite shop was the huge Myer Emporium. With six upper levels plus a basement, and occupying almost an entire city block, Myer’s was a paradise of private enterprise. Everything from furniture to frocks was sold there, in a myriad of styles and colours and sizes. She loved the variety found in the West.

Even the cars here appealed. There were so many brands and in a multitude of shapes and colours, and she loved the fresh, tangy smell of Australian petrol — clearly Soviet vehicles ran on a different fuel. And Australian food. It was so abundant and so easy to buy that once she started cooking for herself, she made sure to allow ample time for shopping. Who would have thought, she wanted to say to her mother, that shopping could be so enjoyable?

When she first moved into the saddlery she had indulged in takeaway food. How greatly she had indulged. Two or three times a week she ate an Australian hamburger made by a Greek man whose shop was just a ten-minute walk away. The hamburger was enormous, with a thick meat patty, fried onions, a whole egg, cheese, lettuce and pickled beetroot, all sandwiched between the halves of a toasted bread roll, and dripping with tomato sauce. She bought hot, salty potato chips cooked by the same Greek man. (The first time she ordered chips, she asked for ‘the minimum’, expecting eight or ten chips, and was surprised to discover that the minimum was really a meal in itself.) And chicken, she loved the salty oozy Australian chicken cooked on a rotisserie. She could resist most of the cakes — her mother had been an excellent pastry cook — but not the pineapple donuts available from her local milk bar. And as an act of both freedom and defiance, she ate a banana every day: at home, bananas might have been wombats for all she ever saw one. Her favourite dessert was preserved fruit floating in condensed milk.