FOREIGNERS IN SYDNEY

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30406, 3 April 1964, Page 7

FOREIGNERS IN SYDNEY

‘All Want To Go Home’

“Perhaps it was the mood I was in, or just the way I felt at the time, but I found Sydney cold and uninteresting, the people morose and dull,” said Mr R. E. Hoyer, an American journalist on a brief holiday to New Zealand. His travel booking agent had told him to make sure of visiting New Zealand but had not been enthusiastic about Australia, he said. Mr Hoyer is the Munich bureau agent for “Stars and Stripes,” the United States services’ newspaper published in Darmstadt, Germany. The paper is a 24-page daily with a circulation of 150,000 distributed over Germany, England, France, Italy and North Africa. “You’ll find it wherever there are American servicemen,” he said. Without exception, he found all foreigners living in Sydney wanted to return to their own country. They seemed lonely and eager to talk to someone who was interested enough to listen to them, he said. He found his fumbling command of German evoked more interest and response from German people than did English in Sydney. Mr Hoyer said one of his main reasons for working in Munich was that it enabled him to travel widely during his leave from the paper. Instead of taking his leave when it was due he was able to accumulate it until he had sufficient in hand for a tour.