Finding My Feet

This is my story.

As a young child in Germany from 1943-1945, in and out of bomb shelters, who doesn’t know any better since he has never experienced anything else.

As an unhappy adolescent in the 1950s, who doesn’t like his home and wants to join the French Foreign Legion.

And as a young man in April 1960, who is disillusioned about his present life and seeks a new future in another land.

It was to Australia that I came, with 1400 others, in an old ‘bucket’ built in 1930, called SS Castel Felice. Very happy, actually, as for the first time in my life I feel as free as a bird; can do my own thing in my own time.

You will read about my life above and about my trials and tribulations as a vagabond in Oz. The people I have met and worked with, everlasting friendships, and travels between the old and the new country until I meet the love of my life and settle in the far west of Sydney.

K.D. Hopper was born Karl Hopperdietzel in 1937, into a working-class family in Linden, a suburb of Hanover, in the state of Lower Saxony. Experiencing the ravages of war at an early age already, and subsequently a poor education as a result of the destruction of basic infrastructure during the bombing of his hometown, he had long been disillusioned about the way his life was panning out until the idea of a fresh start in another country.