Jvo 

3 creative works found

• The making of modern Australia. We hostel kids were part of that...
  by MrJoop

  The A.B.C., here, in Australia has a website, called: The Making of Modern Australia...

  The A.B.C., here, in Australia has a website, called: The Making of Modern Australia where quite a few of us, have been telling our stories. / One of mine was about what it was like to live in the migrant hostels when my parents and I arrived from the Netherlands, in the mid-fifties. / / . / / (My mother and I sitting outside our nissan hut, in Villawood Migrant Hostel.) / Migrant hostels (That I lived in) tended to be ex-army camps and were given the fancy name: Migrant Reception Centres. / . / They were extremely basic. / . / My parents and I moved through: / Bonegilla ( near Albury), / Scheyville (near Windsor), / Villawood (near Chester Hill) / and / Matraville (on Pozieres Ave.) / (Not the Bunnerong Rd Hostel. That was for British migrants). / . / Some years ago, I saw a play, produced by my children’s drama teacher, when they attended Macdonald College, Strathfield.) / The play was set in Scheyville Migrant Hostel. / It gave my Australian-born son and daughter an insight into a small part of my life. / / Since then, there was also a Reunion organised by the Parks and Wildlife Service, at the Scheyville Hostel site. / I saw many ex-residents there. A very successful event. Met no fellow Dutch immigrants there, that I might have known but wasn’t expecting that. / . / / Scheyville, in about June, 1956, was my first experience of being in 6th grade, in Australia (for a few weeks). / / (Stopping off, in Port Said, while travelling to Australia, on the J.v.O.) / . / There have been quite a few functions, e.g., at Bonegilla, and I know that there is a museum there. As, I’ve been informed, there is one, on the Scheyville site. / . / When I attended the reunion, at Scheyville, it was a beautiful, sunny day and there really were many groups of people, enjoying picnics. / But none of the groups were ex-Dutch immigrants. / . / Luckily one of these Dutch migrant “children” (We are now in our 60s.) has taken the initiative and some of us are getting together on the eighth of August, 2009. (8/8/09), at John van Klooster’s place. / / Hostel life was definitely not all as wonderful as the information services (in the Netherlands, ans also here) had wanted us to believe but….... / ....my parents developed an extensive network of friends in these hostels and they joined the Dutch clubs and for many, many years had a very busy social life, involving not only relatives invited from the Netherlands but the many friends, made in those bare, basic, hostels. / Naturally, we ‘kids’ were busy going to school, getting careers and ‘spreading out’. / It is actually due to the van Klooster family that my parents and our friends, the van Hoorns, decided not to return to the Netherlands, when the two years were up. / We camped on their block of land, in Leppington and for the first time were out of the hostel in Matraville and life outside was not so bad! / From the hostel we moved into an old house. / / (Entertaining myself, in the backyard of the old house that we moved into, after Matraville Hostel.) / / (Four schoolfriends, at my birthday party, in the old house. Hans & Jelle, were Dutch and we are still in contact. We still use Dutch when we meet.) / . / I am still in contact with the two boys from the hostel in Matraville, with whom I attended South Sydney Boys Junior High/Maroubra Bay High School. / Our parents were friends. / . / It was via the website schoolfriends.com.au which then became friendsreunited.com, that I have had contact with other ex-Dutch, ex-hostel residents, from my generation, who also lived there as children. / . / (I was 12 when we arrived in the hostels. I turned 65, last October.) / / (Entertaining the girl with whose family we migrated, when we lived in the hostel, in Matraville.) / Did you know us? The van Kloosters? The Jamas? The Muls? The van Hoorns? The Tillers? I could go on. / Please contact me via here / . / Jo / / (Entertaining my mother, on the migrant ship: J.v.O.) / . / / (Entertaining the residents of the Abel Tasman Retirement Village and St Nicholas.) / . / / (Hans and I still use Dutch, when we meet up. Just like in 1957, when we used to take the tram, from the hostel, in Pozieres Ave., Matraville, and then walk up Avoca Street, to our high school, in Randwick.) / . / / (We remain Tulips under the Gum Tree, as Eef ten Brummelaar proved, in this booklet.) / . / / (Not long ago, this fellow ex-Matraville Hostel resident and I shared memories of life in the hostel. For a young girl, then, not all as pleasant as it should have been.) / . / / (My migration experience, represented in this program booklet, celebrating the bond between Australia and the Netherlands.) / . / / (The Netherlands Society in Bankstown, enjoying a picnic, in about 1980.) / . / / (Early days, in Australia.) / . / / (First day. Off to high school, in Randwick, Jan. ‘57.) / . / / (What’s left of the hall, in Scheyville.) / . / / (Quoting my mother, crying, in May, 1956: ” Did I leave my neat, cosy apartment, for this? ” ) / . / / (But, after four hostels, the two families bought an old house, together, and had the best times, in their lives, for the next decade.) / . / / (We migrated, together on the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt -J.v.O.) / . / / (This way, I gained a kind-of sister.) / . / So, once again…........ / / . / / Let’s think about a reunion, for those of us who came, on the migrant ships and via, the migrant hostels, ........while we still remember those memories ….to share!!! / / . / COMMENT

• 

  53 years ago, today.
  by MrJoop

  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. / / . / / . / / . / / . / / .

• Making Modern Australia. My part in it......
  by MrJoop

  Suddenly there was a loud bang and the front doors burst open. Machinery flew through the building and my father and the young man climbe…

  My (small) part, in the making of modern Australia…............