Hans Colla
teacher, greenkeeper, proofreader-editor and word aficionado
Career
I was born pre-war (WWII, that is!) - just! - on 31 August 1939, in Holland.
This must have worried Hitler somewhat as he invaded Poland the next day.
I was the fourth child in a family of 11, eight boys and three girls We all migrated in 1955, landing at Station Pier
and settling in Portarlington. Australia's population increased by 13 that day.
After a few years at St Joseph's College (Geelong), I entered the seminary at Werribee to become a priest.
After 4½ years, I decided to save the church much grief and scandal and left,
ending up at Melbourne University to study French and Psychology.
I taught French in country high schools; this was followed by many different jobs, like taxi-driving, industrial painting
and a five-year stint of greenkeeping on a golf course. Eventually my career righted itself when I landed a ten-year job
of proofreading off-campus study materials at RMIT.
This was followed by another five years of editing engineering study materials at Deakin University at Waurn Ponds.
Marriage and retirement
Back in 1974 I married Joy, from Ballarat, who unfortunately died in January 2009 of multiple myeloma.
We have three daughters.
In my retirement, I continued my singing in several choirs, joined Probus and also started to teach a course at U3A,
called The Nuts & Bolts of English. The advanced second year of the course I called
The Nuts & Bolts & Washers of English. [No, I haven't named the third year The Mitre 10 of English!]
In my education and career I have been lucky to master several languages more or less.
I speak English and Dutch fluently, speak French reasonably well, some German, some Italian,
and I was grounded in Latin and classical Greek, with six months of Hebrew thrown in for good measure.
Writing
When I was younger, I used to make endless lists of words but never did any serious writing.
In retirement I have written several short stories for the Seniors Festival - of a fairly low standard (the stories, that is) -
but in the last four years, I have written a biography of my father: Louis, the unlikely migrant,
which is being printed in May 2010.
I have three other books in the pipeline, all to do with English, and at various stages of completion:
- When did you eat Mother? (finished but unpublished)
- When did Mother eat Frank? (unfinished)
The first two books are full of errors of all kinds found in newspapers, menus, signs,
which are used to teach certain points of grammar or idiom.
The next book is a most diverse book on the derivation of English words from other languages:
- The Book of Roots (unfinished and unpublished)
Hans Colla 31 August 1939 - 22 November 2011
A valued Presenter for the past two festivals.
Hans will be sadly missed.