Peel Street

January, Melbourne, hot mid-summer. The holidays fizzle in a kind of endless dryness. A heat haze off the bitumen and the ache of the afternoon sun. A bunch of kids starts grade six at Peel Street School. It''s the high tide of the post-war migrant boom; every term there''s someone new - from England, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Holland, Russia... It''s a magical year, the last year ...