53 years ago, today.

Artist: MrJoop
previous browse art next

53 years ago, today.

We boarded the little private bus, outside the railway station, in Gouda, The Netherlands and headed for Amsterdam.
At the quay-side, I posed one last time with my best girlfriend and my best boyfriend and the rest is history….............
I haven’t stopped telling about it, particularly since retiring from from teaching.
If you are the one person who has not read about this before, please go to:
My story, here
........or several pages here, on Redbubble or practically anywhere on the net!!! :)
.
Ria soon got sick of my aerogrammes filled with lessons from me on how to learn English.
But Piet and I stayed in contact. I visited him in the furniture store, in The Hague, ( which he ran for his father, who owned a furniture factory), in December 1969. And again, in December 1971. This time at his home, with his wife, daughter and son. But things went wrong. There is now the occasional contact (Christmas Cards. Some letters and some email contact.).
.
.
The little bus had dropped our friends, Gerda, Gerard and daughter Netty (6) and myself (12) and my parents, off in Amsterdam, to board the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and it then drove on to the coast.
.
There, as we were going through the final lock, and on to the North Sea, we saw them all, one more time, down below.
.
My friend, Piet, raised his arm, to cover his face, and that broke the dam. My mother and Gerda van Hoon had been cheerful. Had put on brave faces. It had been the men who had been most keen to migrate.
.
When they saw Piet raise his arm, my mother often told after-wards, she thought: What have we done? We are going to the other side of the earth and may never be back. What have we done to these two boys who may never see each other again?!?
.
It all did not work out too badly and we did see each other again. :)
.
Our parents swapped with another couple and so our parents shared a cabin and Netty and I shared with a couple, returning from a holiday, back to the Netherlands.

.
There was one stop on the five-week sea journey. It was at Port Said. We were world-travellers for the first time.
Several times, as we wandered around the city, we were warned not to go down side streets. We basically didn’t.

.
My father had a state-of-the-art camera with him – a box-brownie- style basic little metal box.

.
Gerda van Hoorn ( in the white blouse, at the back) and I reminisce, via Skype (She is back in the Netherlands) every so often and I believe that she has told me that we did also stop off, in Aden, at the other end of the Suez Canal but the scary thing is that I do not remember this.
In this photo we obviously are not all wearing the same clothes, as in Port Said.

.
It all worked out fine.
There are now four of us left. Gerda and her daughter, in The Hague.
My father and I, in Sydney.
That front yard, in the picture to the left, was outside the old house where the two families first settled after leaving the migrant hostels and had a rally lively, fun, good time.
Yes. There were arguments. Yes. Sometimes some were not talking with others. But is was an exciting, good time. (The two sets of parents, were upset a few times when, we, the chilren had had an argumet and had long ago settled it, but it then took the parents a little longer.)

This picture was taken when we first explored the neighbourhood, around the last migrant hostel that we stayed in, in Matraville.
Please check out my stories, here.
.
In the house in Flint Street, Matraville, each couple had a front room, used as bed-sitting room. A place to be independent sometimes.
In my parents’ room, once again, I was getting my mother to tell our relatives, back in the Netherlands, via the reel-to-reel tape recorder, all about our lives here.

In the other front room, Gerard was sitting and contemplating our lives here.

But there was a common living room where we all spent most of our time to gether, like settling down once a week to sit and watch: I Love Lucy!

This little visitor was the daughter of Dutch friends.
.......
As my mother’s Alzheimers became worse, she tore up this picture of us all dining, on a special occasion, when the ship’s captain was present.

.
Flint Street, Matraville. Late 50s. Early 60s.

.

.

.

.

.

53 years ago, today. belongs to the following groups:

Days Gone By (Photographs must be twenty years or older and include people please), Dutch Touch, Everyday Life, History and Nostalgic Art and Photography