For the ten-year old Dutch boy who arrived with his migrant parents at Fremantle one intolerably hot day in 1950, Australia was an alien, almost incomprehensible land.

A clear-eyed observer with an outsider's perspective, the child grew up and was educated in postwar Perth, where he was gradually transformed into an Australian. The experience was a complex, testing and sometimes confusing process.

Like teenagers everywhere, young Willem asserted his identity in opposition to his parents and their values. As the only child of a disciplinarian father, this was a particularly bitter struggle.

There was, too, a growing awareness that the heart of his family's life was gnawed by an obscure mystery

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