The longtime Wodonga resident has been asked to talk about her life by several community groups since the German Austrian Australian Club highlighted her migrant experience in a Facebook post late last year.

On Wednesday, members of Albury’s Laurel Club listened at Legacy House as Mrs Stahl talked of her arrival from Germany in December 1959.

She and her husband Heinz and their young children got to the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre by bus at midnight.

An official yelled at them for being late.

Mrs Stahl told The Border Mail her husband had spent five years in Canada before they married and the couple intended to return there.

“But they closed the border,” she said. “So we decided to go to Australia.

“And I’m glad I didn’t do it the other way, Canada’s too bloody cold all the time.”

Australian life brought with it new experiences.

“The birds, the kookaburras when you hear them, I never heard that before,” Mrs Stahl said.

“And then the mutton,” she added with a grimace, not impressed with the meat available.

Heinz went to Melbourne for work but finding a rental home for them all proved difficult.

“No house for people with children, and I had six, so there you are,” Mrs Stahl said.

The family lived at Bonegilla for three months before Heinz took a job first in Baranduda then at the Eskdale sawmill.

Mrs Stahl said they enjoyed this time, but felt the children had to travel too long by bus to get to school at Tallangatta.

“Sorry I say Tal-lan-gat-ta, I can’t say it the other way,” she apologised to her audience.

So the Stahls returned to Wodonga in 1965 and Mrs Stahl has lived there ever since. Both she and Heinz worked for Uncle Ben’s, now Mars Petcare, with Mrs Stahl a cook in the kitchen.

“I worked there for 24 years, shift work, and I had six children and we went like that, he go, me go,” she said, demonstrating the comings and goings with her hands.

A valued club member of the German Austrian Australian Club for more than 50 years, Mrs Stahl is now a life member.

“Edith is currently on the committee and still makes beautiful tortes,” the club said in its post last year.

Mrs Stahl said her husband died 15 years ago.

“It’s very hard, you ladies might know that too, it’s not that easy,” she said to the Legacy widows.

She invited them to come and visit her club.

“That’s my story, I know it’s not a very big story, but it’s big enough for me,” she said, as her audience applauded.