Twentieth-century memoir of a colonial Dutchman who as a boy escaped to Australia from Japanese-occupied Java and eventually became a global executive with ICI.

A Singapore-born young colonial Dutch boy, whose father suffered and died as a Japanese prisoner of war building a railway in Sumatra, escaped from Java with his mother and arrived as a refugee in Australia in 1942. Educated by Jesuits and then at the University of Western Australia and at Oxford, he had a career with ICI initially as an engineer, ending in 1993 following senior executive and Board roles in Australia, England, Canada and finally in the United States. His life from childhood in European colonies in Asia, spanned major changes in technology and the chemical industry. With his wife and seven children, he experienced and adjusted to a wide range of cultures and societies. During the twenty years of retirement in Melbourne, he has been active in mental health research at the University of Melbourne, Newman College, in support of palliative care, homelessness and refugees - the latter being where his story began.