At the age of 15, Roland Breckwoldt packed his bags on the outer fringe of Sydney and caught the train to Brisbane without telling his parents.
He wouldn’t be back for nearly three years, spending his time along the Gulf of Carpentaria and in outback Queensland living life as a cowboy and a ringer.
It was a big change for the boy born at Waranga Military Hospital while both parents were under military guard at the Tatura internment camps during World War II.
Mr Breckwoldt’s father, Alfred, was arrested on Christmas Eve 1941 in Sydney, in the middle of putting candles on the Christmas tree.
He was eventually moved to Tatura alongside wife Ilse.
Mr Breckwoldt will return to Tatura next month to speak at GV Libraries about the book he has written about his life.
His father, who fought in the cavalry division of the German army in World War I and was awarded an Iron Cross, fled Germany in 1933 as Adolf Hitler rose to power, moving to Shanghai.
Alfred ended up marrying his wife’s doctor’s daughter following a divorce, before arriving in Australia in 1938.
Mr Breckwoldt got a job at 15 as a laboratory botanist, but before he’d turned 16 the lure of the outback called him north.
A letter from his half-brother Helmut, who was working in regional Australia, had sparked the dream.
“It’s no exaggeration to say the decision was instantaneous,” Mr Breckwoldt said.
“I went in and resigned the next day and wrote a letter to my brother.”
His book tracks his journey across northern Australia and his time at Augustus Downs ranch on the Gulf.
“The vision I had in my mind of the world was very different; when I got there it was a conglomerate of corrugated iron sheds and the men were very, very rough,” he said.
“They were good to me, there were myths about them picking on new kids but I never saw that.”
Mr Breckwoldt learned how to ride for the first time, just one of a multitude of skills he otherwise never would have learned.
Mr Breckwoldt will be speaking at Tatura at 7.00pm on Tuesday 27 September.
His book The Ringer is available at all good bookstores, including Collins Bookstore in Shepparton.