Beginning university was , just as such things should be , an eye opener for me. I had never lived away from home before , and as an only child I had , I can now see , been both spoiled and cossetted , at least in the fact that I had never been denied a request which it was in the ability of my parents to provide .

Thus it was that in the small University College set in a country town as part of the decentralising of the larger city university, I found myself facing a very different kind of living . The university provided hostel accommodations in the country town itself and we students travelled about 8 kilometers out to the main campus , with its facilities , including a big communal dining room where we scholarship students took all our meals , even being bussed out there for breakfast ! Our town hostel was also communal , and about thirty students , including ex-servicemen who were on Defence Department scholarships , were housed in what had been an old hospital .

The main area of the building had had one very large ward and several private rooms of varying sizes , with the smaller rooms now generally housing two students . Outside the main complex were a couple of small buildings , one new , housing two students , and another smaller one , consisting of two conjoined but still single and private , rooms. I have no idea why I elected to take one of the latter two rooms ; perhaps because I subconsciously knew that I was not yet ready or mature enough to share intimate space .

It was not long , of course , before the hothouse atmosphere of a hostel brought most of us fairly close together .

Fred roomed with one other student with whom I had attended High School and as I used to drop up to the main building to chat with the old acquaintance I also got to know Fred very well. In fact , he would very often visit me in my small room and we found we had quite a few things in common.

He was short , dark haired , olive skinned , good looking and very athletic , built for the position of Rugby halfback and skilful with it . As for me , I was hopeless at anything faintly requiring athletic skills , saving my talents for a mediocre game of golf . He was born in the same month as I , but was a year older , and to my naive way of looking at the world , very suave and sophisticated , very worldly. I looked at him and wished that I had his accomplishments .

My mother , unwilling to let go the apron strings , would frequently send me small hampers , containing various items which in that era might well have been thought of as luxuries . These I often shared with Fred, and in doing so unknowingly generated the disdain of those towards whom I had less liking . But I was happy to bask in the knowledge that I had an enviable friend.

And so it went for three years, with my envying him his worldly wisdom , his self confidence , his physical and social skills

In our fourth year we each moved to the mother university in the city , he to do honours in Geography , I to do English honours . We saw little of each other in that year , and when in the next year we returned to the country college to do our Diploma of Education course I became involved with my future wife , and he with his , so our paths hardly crossed. When we were appointed to the teaching service , we lost touch altogether

Then , after forty years , we purchased our Dondingalong block , just outside the town of Kempsey , where he had lived and taught until his retirement .

I was a trifle reluctant to renew acquaintance , particularly as it was that at that time I first learned that he had lost two sons in the same highway accident and by now had developed a very bad heart condition . But in the end I summoned up the resloution , and bearing a bottle of the best red , dropped in to see him.

We chatted for a couple of hours , and then , just before I left his house , he confided in me

" You know , " he said , " I vividly remember coming around to your room , and having some of that canned chili con carne that your mother sent you . Chili con carne ! I'd never heard of it , and I was really envious of this sophisticated bloke who knew about such things "

Sadly , not long after we came together again , he died , but I still wonder to myself at how the person that I envied most in my youth had been equally envious of me .