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A poetic connection with Portarlington

‘Say not – when yesterday you gave Your child to sleep beneath the wave, That could it lie beneath the sod ‘Twould nearer seem to you and God” Written for Mrs. Calhoun on the day of my departure from Portarlington.  With love from Olga Straubel’. 16/6/81.   Retired s econd-hand bookseller Ted showed me a poem by Olga Straubel in an old scrapbook he had acquired fifteen years early. Many of the pages are filled with symmetrically placed die-cut Victorian paper ornaments of flowers and animals printed in Germany. Occasionally there are pressed ferns. Ted contacted me, not because of the scrapbook, but because there are also two carefully handwritten poems that seem somewhat out of place. One is signed by Olga Straubel, an early teacher of Portarlington and Ernst's mother. A brief history of Olga Straubel Johanna Maria Olga Straubel (known as Olga all her life) was born in 1860 and lived in Richmond. Her family were staunch members of the Melbourne German