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All about me.......

These photos have popped up, while searching for something else.......

They're of me.

The telegram had arrived. The cheeky application had backfired. Graduated from Wollongong Teachers College, I applied for a position in Sydney. I hoped to avoid country service. Instead, I was appointed to Riverstone Public School, Primary Department. With my parents, I drove out to Riverstone, from Matraville (Now Hillsdale). From Matraville, Riverstone, an outer-Sydney suburb, *felt* like _country service_. In my father's volkswagen, it was a 45 minutes' drive, on a quiet, sunny Sunday. I posed outside the school grounds. . When I travelled there by public transport, the first day, after the summer holidays ( Bus to Central. Electric train to Blacktown. Diesel train to Riverstone.) I discovered that this was the original school building, but now only the separate Infants Department. . As I left the train and the station, there was a man, walking ahead of me. He took the same turns as I did. Turned out to be Les Noon, with whom I'd be teaching. . The real school (primary department) was another two blocks away. It was 1964.

My father was president of the Netherlands Society in Bankstown, a social club, which had grown out of a Dutch amateur theatre group. K.L.M. Royal Dutch Airlines made charter flights available. These flights were filled with members of the various Dutch organisations which flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, in Sydney and elsewhere. In December (School summer olidays), 1969 my parents and I went back to visit Gouda, for the first time as a family, since we migrated in 1956. (My mother had been back by ship, in 1964, not long before her mother passed away.) We were allowed to sit in business class seats, in the DC10, because my father was president. I enjoyed those winter days, in Holland so much, that I did the trip again in December 1971. No business class seat, that time! Again I stayed with my favourite aunt, starting my scrapbook, while I was there! (Photo). (I included a 3-day train trip to Paris. It was much more fun, in 2005, when my daughter was there as well. Standing just below the Notre Dame, on a bleak winter's day, in January 1972, I realised that it's more fun to do this with other people.)

In 1997 I was back again, in the Netherlands and took advantage of the deal which included a trip to the U.K. and Ireland. While I was taking the bus tour of Great Britain, happily posing in Killarney, beside a sign protesting against abortion, the broadcasters of Radio Gouwestad were awaiting my return to Gouda to do two hours with me, on the topic of being back in the city of my birth. I felt very important. I'd found the internet a year earlier and that's how they'd found me. There were two programs. One included pre-recorded segments, put on tape while I was driven around in the rain, through the streets where I grew up, talking about what I remembered. For the other some Gouda residents who had known me had been invited to participate. This included the boy who had lived in my street, with very strictly religious parents. They belonged to what was called by many: The Black Stocking Church. He was now a man, who'd been a sailor and forgot to tell me, when he invited me for coffee, that he lived above a sex shop and that from his window we were looking out on the apartments of "the girls". I have since blamed the coffee, served in mugs that tasted of detergent, but after fleeing to friends in The Hague, the next morning I woke up covered in hives.

I returned home to Sydney where I was now retired (a bit early) to care for my aged parents. (One had Alzheimers. The other, already an asthmatic, had now had a heart attack and other health issues. Feeling a little trapped, sitting at my computer, in what I'd started to call my nursing station (granny flat) the president of the Free Beach Association turned out to be a sympathetic listener. Urged me to come and spend a few hours on the beach followed by coffee. I was soon on the Free Beach Association committee, as it gave me an outlet for my 'skills'. I looked after the website. I "published" the newsletter, for which Bob, the president of the FBA of NSW provided the content. River Island Nature Retreat, to which I'd first gone a few years earlier, now became a more frequent escape.

The FBAofNSW was disbanded and I found (Was taken to....) Hazelhurst, Art and Crafts Centre, where I rediscovered my urge to paint. There *had* been one other major interest, via Bob Reed, I found myself involved with the Keep Australia Beautiful Clean Beach Challenge, and, affter making all sorts of arrangements for the care of my father for those few days, from 2002, until 2007, in September, every year, I was off assessing beaches. Most enjoyable

....and then I turned 65!!!

......."I loaded up my little green volkswagen, at the end of January, 1967, with my piano accordion, little portable typewriter and other similar teaching aides and, following the route recommended by the NRMA map, set out for Maude.

On the Hay Plains, about 8 or so miles short of Hay, I ran out of petrol. It was getting to be late in the day." .........
READ ON
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......."In about 1960 or 1961, I started going along with Bob Potter to the classes he ran in various small halls in other suburbs and soon he did not always come along and I ran these small classes. I remember small halls in Cronulla, Panania and Randwick.
By then I knew the routines by heart. I played the records in the same order and called out the steps, exactly like Bob.">>>>> READ ON
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....."Luckily, in Australia, after first being offered a job as a farm-hand in Carcoar, ( where he would be able to slaughter sheep to get free meat. Mind you, he used to carefully take spiders outside in match-boxes because he did not want to harm them!! ); rejecting that and being sent to Sydney, to hold a broom only, in the railway yards, in Chullora, he luckily, found an identical family-owned mirror factory, in Newtown,"..........
READ ON
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...."“I left my neat, comfortable flat, in Gouda, for this?” my mother cried, when we entered the bare ex-army huts, in Bonegilla Migrant Hostel, in May, 1956.
In Bonegilla, my mother cried and I didn’t want to eat. In Scheyville the neighbours whipped their children. In Villawood we could hear EVERYTHING that the neighours were doing in their rooms, day or night,...."
READ ON
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......."One afternoon, with seconds to spare, I rushed from the building next door into the building where the studios were and some children who had been part of the previous program came out of the lift, giggling. Sure enough, they had pressed all the buttons and the old lift stopped at every floor before I could race into the studio; well after the program had started with recorded music and announcements. "
READ ON
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........"Think of my uncle as someone like, Eric Morecambe (of the British T.V. Shows, Moreambe and Wise). A real character, who brought along a video camera on a one-legged tripod, with which he stopped in the middle of Pitt Street and aimed at the office buildings above, making passers-by all look up there as well. "
READ ON
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......."To sing both the Australian AND the Dutch national anthems in full voice and great pride and emotion, at the conclusion of the great good-fun evenings, just before popping a tulip, flown from the Netherlands by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, in the ladies’ hand bags, to take home." ........
READ ON
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......"Suddenly there was a loud bang and the front doors burst open. Machinery flew through the building and my father and the young man climbed up on the roof.
They crossed to the roof of the house next door and found a crying woman there, holding a baby. They convinced her to flee. As they did." .....
READ ON
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......"Became a school teacher and went and told my role model, back in Gouda, in 1969, that, in Australia I had copied everything he had done when I was in his class from 3rd to 6th grade.
He had given me two or three lessons on my new little piano-accordion JUST before we migrated.
Here in Sydney, Maude via Hay and Bourke, for 37 years my pupils often started the days, having a READ ON

Meeting up with my ex-pupils, after 42 years.

Had dinner with four ex-pupils, last Tuesday.

It was 42 years ago that I said my last "Good afternoon, boys and girls." to them.
Ex-pupil Ian, who caused this to happen, mentioned this song, as the one he most remembered singing, in class, to the accompaniment of my (red) piano-accordion.


While I was still a student at Maroubra Bay High School, I believe and living in the old house, in Flint Street, Matraville, seeing the t.v., cartoon character, Bam Bam play his stone-age drum, while Pebbles accompanied their singing on her stone-age guitar, on our black and white t.v., for some reason had an impact on me.

My so-called _half-sister_ ( along with her parents and my parents we migrated to Australia together and shared this house - so, for quite some time it was like _being_ brother and sister) and I might be called _latch-key kids_.

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All four parents worked in factories. Left early in the morning. Came home in the early evening.
And so we watched t.v..
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Luckily she had chicken-pox, soon after we moved into the house and the adults decided we needed a t.v..
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I started teaching in Riverstone, outer suburb of Sydney, in 1964 and, from the beginning, bravely defied instructions and taught singing to my classes using the accordion, rather than the ABC radio broadcasts, over which we had no control and which came into the rooms via rather tinny-sounding P.A. Systems. (Think of the principal speaking, in The Simpsons.)
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Morning-town ride. This Land is Your Land. Waltzing Matilda. Botany Bay, etc., were the first songs I used.
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Apparently Let the Sun Shine in I must have used a lot, in 1967 in Bourke. I *was* a very sunny place (except that quite often the red dust blocked out a lot of it.)

No it isn't!!

This is not where the administration of the Dutch Australian Centre is handled.

The administration of the (now) Dutch Australian Cultural Centre, is taken care of, as it always was by a volunteer committee, called The Board, and is conducted in a light industrial area, further west of this purpose designed building.
The contents of the Dutch Australian Cultural Centre was moved there too and the report in the Dutch Weekly, published at the time of the opening of this museum, no longer apply: " Er staat nu een klein stempeltje in Chester Hill met een steving kloppend hart. " Roughly translated: _There now stands a small (Dutch-Australian) imprint , in Chester Hill with a strongly beating heart._

But management of the Abel Tasman Retirement Village realised that the building was needed for residents affected by dementia. However, subsequently it was realised that this building, designed to be a museum for preserving examples of Dutch-Australian heritage was not suitable for the use of residents with dementia and it was realised that the building was needed for the administration purposes, which were formerly looked after in the main building. Perhaps the planners of the village did not think far ahead enough about the expanding needs of the administration and staff.

Conversion is now complete and these needs can now be catered for in a much more spacious and conducive setting.

Meanwhile, the collection of Dutch-Australian heritage is somewhat uncomfortably accommodated behind the Dutch shop and restaurant, in Smithfield, hopefully kept as safe as possible from the dangers of dampness, which can be a problem there.

Chances of returning to suitable accommodation, similar to the purpose-built facility where _the heart was formerly beating_ are still remote. There _are_ advantages in the present location.

Possibly more Dutch-born people and friends and families come to the Dutch shop and restaurant than come to visit the residents of the Abel Tasman Village, the latter are not all of Dutch background.

Meanwhile, don't expect to find the Dutch Australian Cultural Centre, in Chester Hill. Come to 85 Market Street, in Smithfield, on Wednesdays and / or Sundays. Or contact us

The making of modern Australia and my part in it...

READ HERE

Dutch-born Sydney visual artists, come talk about it!

Please click on this picture and contact us.



Our website.

Dutch Fair

"Where the boys are!! (I want to know!) " by MrJoop [2622268-2] - RedBubble

"Where the boys are!! (I want to know!) " by MrJoop [2622268-2] - RedBubble

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