Never Enough Dutch

Never Enough Dutch A SSISTED IMMIGR ANTS FROM THE NETHERL ANDS at Bonegilla

Post-war immigration In 1947 Australia launched a bold immigration program to boost the size of its population. A larger workforce would help economic development; a bigger population could better defend the country.

The aim was to increase population from immigration by one per cent per year. Initially Australia encouraged people from the United Kingdom and displaced persons from war-torn Europe to come. As the supply of the displaced slowed about 1951, Australia negotiated migration agreements with the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. By 1961 it had received assisted immigrants under similar agreements from Malta, Greece, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Finland and the Scandinavian countries.

Other countries were to follow.

In December 1950 an unusual joint meeting of the Immigration Planning Council and the Immigration Advisory Council at Albury inspected Bonegilla and decided that it could provide temporary accommodation for assisted migrants, as it had for displaced persons since 1947. The accommodation was basic, but there was a nation-wide housing shortage.

NAA A12111, 51/20/1; A438, 1950/7/749.

Front cover: The Drommel family unpacked in a recently improved cubicle room. Border Morning Mail 26 July 1952.

Never Enough Dutch - Assisted Immigrants from the Netherlands

Bonegilla

'Never Enough Dutch'

Many of the assisted migrants from non-English speaking European countries were accommodated on arrival at the Department of Immigration Reception and Training Centre at Bonegilla. This was a former army camp not far from Hume Dam on the Murray River. It was about 12 km from Wodonga, over 300 km from Melbourne and 600 km from Sydney. Bonegilla became Australia’s largest and longest-lived reception centre, taking in Displaced Persons from 1947 to 1953 and other refugees as well as assisted migrants between 1951 and 1971. Altogether over 300 000 people entered Australia via Bonegilla.

In post-war Australia, the Dutch were one of the first and one of the largest groups of non-British assisted migrants.

Most of the Dutch came during the 1950s; the largest intakes in 1950-52, and in 1954-56. By 1961 125 000 had arrived. The majority (56.5 per cent), but not all, were assisted.

They were ‘fine types; ‘hard working’ and ‘thrifty’. They ‘settled down with so little friction’; they ‘quickly merged with the Australian community’. They were ‘model assimilators’ becoming ‘invisible migrants’ as they inter-married within the host Australian nation and used English as the home language.

The Australian Government and the media welcomed Dutch immigrants. They were ‘fine types; ‘hard working’ and ‘thrifty’. They ‘settled down with so little friction’; they ‘quickly merged with the Australian community’. They were ‘model assimilators’ becoming ‘invisible migrants’ as they inter-married within the host Australian nation and used English as the home language. The Australian Government frequently expressed a preference for British migrants over all others, but the Dutch ‘were the most attractive alternative to British migrants because they assimilated well’.

Australia tried hard to attract Dutch immigrants. In 1954, for example, it issued 35 000 pamphlets and circulated 139 copies of publicity films in the Netherlands. It set the over-ambitious target of getting 25 000 per year.

Through the 1950s the Netherlands Government encouraged emigration. The Netherlands seemed to be over-crowded, for it was experiencing widespread unemployment and food and housing shortages.

It seemed strange that Australia had only 7.5 million people, while a place often referred to as ‘half the size of Tasmania’ had 10 million people. Australia needed some of the Dutch ‘surplus workers’.

Never Enough Dutch

1

Receiving assisted migrants Migration agreements specified the arrangements for selecting and transporting migrants. Australia was obliged to supply the newcomers with temporary accommodation on arrival and to help them find employment.

Like the Displaced Persons before them, the assisted migrants were expected to give their labour in return for their passage. At selection they were asked ‘Are you prepared to take any kind of work?’. They signed contracts that specified those over 16 years-old would work as directed for two years. As employment often depended on language fluency, they also agreed to ‘use every endeavour to learn the English language’.

Employment officers at reception centres assessed suitability and dispatched workers to jobs where they were needed in remote areas, industrial centres or capital city factories. The migrant’s wishes ‘were taken into account’, but repeated refusals of offers of work could lead to loss of social service benefits.

The assisted migrants who arrived early resented the ways in which their professional or trade qualifications were ignored. They were expected to start in labouring jobs or as domestics. However, they received award wages. Australian trade unions were protective of the interests of existing members and did not want the newcomers to undermine wages or conditions. The Dutch generally found work plentiful and wages higher than those in Holland.

Dutch workers were dispatched from Bonegilla to work in places all over Australia. Department of Immigration publicists wanting to show the work opportunities available photographed Jaap Strijbis working in Sydney about 1960. With his wife and three children, Strijbis passed through Bonegilla on his arrival in 1952 and subsequently worked in a meatworks, then as a truck driver before starting his concreting business. NAA 12111, 1/1960/16/40.

2

The Dutch at a changing Bonegilla Little work had been done on the former army camp before the Displaced Persons arrived in 1947. Some improvements were made after a health scare in 1949 and in preparation for the reception of assisted migrants in 1952. After demonstrations and riots in 1952 and again in 1961, there were further changes. However, the buildings retained their military character. Eating, washing and laundering facilities were communal. Bonegilla was isolated – well away from both Albury and Wodonga – and even further away from Melbourne and Sydney. The physical isolation of Bonegilla and conditions at the centre may have strengthened the pressure on migrants to take up employment offers.

The first contingents of assisted Dutch migrants arrived during difficult times.

bed mats and window curtains. The mess huts and kitchens were also lined and painted. The improved facilities were intended for British migrants, but very few of the British came to Bonegilla. It irked the non-British, including the Dutch, that one group of migrants was privileged with a higher order of accommodation than others.

The first large contingents of Dutch arriving under the new migration agreement came at a time of economic downturn.

There were demonstrations and a riot at Bonegilla in July 1952 when Italian migrants grew distressed at not being offered jobs and having to stay at the reception centre for a prolonged time. They demanded, ‘Give us work or repatriate us to Italy’. Hans H., a Dutchman, recalled ‘minor demonstrations of wildly gesticulating and tablethumping Italians’ weeks after the riot.

1949-53 About 10 000 Dutch came to Australia before the first Netherlands-Australia Migration Agreement was put in place in 1951. The early arrivals included farmers and former servicemen under the Empire and Allied Ex-servicemen Scheme. Many of them arrived as the flow of Displaced Persons increased with the availability of additional shipping. Bonegilla doubled in size to accommodate over 7 000 at any one time. Centre staff had difficulty in coping with up to 10 000 newcomers per month. Another reception centre was opened at Bathurst.

It, too, was a former army camp. Most of the early Dutch arrivals were directed to Bathurst before it closed in early 1952.

After demonstrations and riots in 1952 and again in 1961, there were further changes. However, the buildings retained their military character. Eating, washing and laundering facilities were communal.

Families were separated when work was found for the breadwinner and there was no accommodation for dependants. Non-working women and children were sent to holding centres established at former defence force camps in smaller centres like Uranquinty, Benalla, Cowra and Parkes. After 1952, some blocks at Bonegilla were used as a holding centre for dependants when the breadwinner was at work elsewhere. Nearly all those affected objected to family separation.

Some of the facilities at Bonegilla were improved to prepare for the arrival of voluntary assisted migrants in 1952. The former army huts in 3 of the 24 blocks were divided into tiny cubby-hole size ‘cubicles’ (slightly less than 4m x 3m) for privacy, then the walls and ceilings were lined and painted. Each cubicle was fitted with a chest of drawers, Never Enough Dutch

3

The Dutch who arrived in 1952 were told to go and find their own jobs.

The local press was sympathetic to the Dutch and tended to contrast their stoic behaviour with that of the excitable Italians. Stories appeared to reassure the local community that not all the migrants at Bonegilla were restive. The newly arrived Dutch were ‘fine types’, ‘splendid’ and commendable migrants. Their children were well behaved.

Some, like Piet Drommel (see cover), spoke English and had skills which would make the search for work easier. Some were ex-servicemen who had fought with the Allies. One, Peter Vries, had even lived just around the corner from Fanny Blankers-Koen, the sporting heroine Australians warmed to as ‘the flying Dutchwoman’. FW Jacob, a Burrumbuttock farmer declared, ‘the Dutch are very fine workers – top-notchers and are usually experienced with the land’. Alex Sellars, a local headmaster, thought the implicit contrast with the Italians was unfair and insisted the Italians too, were clean, healthy and good workers.

4

The Italians had also protested about the food they were served, the lack of heating and the paucity of the recreation facilities at Bonegilla. Their protests hurried along the renovation of other huts to bring them up to the new standard set for the British. Their protests also spurred changes in food rations. After the riot, the Italians got macaroni, spaghetti, salt and cheese. Their mess was the only one to get olive oil and garlic. The Dutch got more potatoes. The food was still prepared by cooks who were recruited from the earlier Displaced Person intakes and often did not appeal to the Dutch. The Dutch particularly disliked the frequency with which mutton was served.

FW Jacob, a Burrumbuttock farmer declared, ‘the Dutch are very fine workers – top-notchers and are usually experienced with the land’.

The Border Morning Mail thought the Van Dyken children looked ‘a little amazed’ on arrival at Bonegilla in July 1952 as they sat and waited patiently for their parents to unload and sort luggage.

Unlike the displaced persons who arrived as a mix of nationalities recruited from European refugee camps, the Dutch arrived by ship as large single-nation groups. They were greeted for official welcomes in the Bonegilla Theatre by the Director speaking through a Dutch interpreter. NAA 12111, 55/22/120.

Never Enough Dutch

5

Publicists boasted with this photograph that new Dutch arrivals were greeted with a hearty meal even after 10pm. NAA A12111, 55/22/78.

By 1956 the dining rooms at Bonegilla had become more ‘family friendly’ with tables to seat 4 to 6, tubular steel chairs and ‘washable plastic top tables’. The kitchens now had electric stoves and deep-fat fryers. By 1961 a 28-day schedule of menus replaced the previous 7-day schedule.

NAA A12111, C61/22A/20; Bulletin 11 November 1961, p.14.

6

1953-61

1961-71

Immigration authorities worried about how well the Dutch accepted the accommodation conditions. They grew concerned during 1953 when ‘strong comments on our camps’ appeared in the Protestant press and the media generally in the Netherlands. Such bad press would affect the recruitment drive.

There was a riot again in 1961, this time initiated by German and Italian migrants who were not readily placed in employment during another economic downturn. Herman Kortenhorst, the Dutch immigration officer stationed at Bonegilla recalls, ‘[Protesters] screamed and demonstrated with banners, finally smashing the employment office, breaking windows and throwing chairs and typewriters out of the window’. Some Dutch on-lookers were hurt in the resulting melee with police. The protesters of 1961 made few complaints about the food or facilities, but further improvements were made in the wake of the riot.

After the difficulties encountered in finding sufficient jobs for migrants, the Government cut back its intake for 1953 before increasing it again in 1954. In the twelve-months lull, further attempts were made to improve the feel as well as the fabric of Bonegilla. More buildings were renovated.

Trees were planted. A primary school opened to cater for the children of migrant staff employed at the Centre.

Amenities funds, raised from canteen sales, were used to equip two buildings as children’s hobby huts, to buy library books in a variety of languages and to support a voluntary Dutch school run by 23 women for 400 children. YWCA and YMCA officers were employed to organise recreational activities such as boxing tournaments, soccer, basketball, volleyball and table tennis competitions, card parties, dance evenings, family picnics and sports afternoons for the children.

In 1954 Colonel HG Guinn DSO who had served as a director of migrant centres at Bathurst and Greta took charge at Bonegilla. He was disappointed that Bonegilla was ‘still an army camp’ with no heating, unlined messes and deep-pit latrines. He set about a relatively inexpensive site improvement program, establishing gardens and planting more trees, while he sought additional funds for building changes. For Guinn, Bonegilla had to move beyond simply supplying the bare necessities of a temporary staging camp.

He fostered the notion of Bonegilla as a supportive country town community. As at Bathurst and Greta, he encouraged engagement with the local community through cultural exchanges, competitive sports, concerts, handicraft and cooking displays. He shared the centre’s facilities with local groups. He was proud of the way the Bonegilla migrants continued to raise money for community charities. ‘We were’, he declared, ‘more or less an ordinary country town and functioned as such’.

Economic conditions improved in the Netherlands during the late 1950s and 1960s. By 1961 the Dutch were importing Italian and Spanish workers. There were fewer reasons for people to emigrate and many who had left earlier returned to the Netherlands. Some said they had only been prepared to commit to a two-year stay in Australia and had always intended to return.

Australia worried about migrant departure rates. Unlike the early cohorts of Displaced Persons, assisted migrants retained the ability to go back home if they did not like their new country. Ten per cent of the Dutch arriving in Australia in the 1950s and forty per cent of those arriving in the 1960s did not stay.

The Border Morning Mail was pleased to report stories of Dutch migrants, who after a return visit to their former homeland, decided that Australia was better and came a second time.

‘[Protesters] screamed and demonstrated with banners, finally smashing the employment office, breaking windows and throwing chairs and typewriters out of the window’.

Never Enough Dutch

7

Leon Touw, a Dutch journalist and radio commentator, was one of many who thought Australia lost its migrants by not providing appropriate initial accommodation and after-arrival care. Touw pointed out that Arthur Calwell, the first Minister for Immigration and initiator of the immigration program, acknowledged he had made a mistake to place British migrants in hostels when they had been recruited from sound houses in Britain. But Calwell failed to empathise with similarly placed Dutch migrants.

Letters home to Holland, Touw said, did not always paint a glamorous picture of life in Australia. Few Dutch were recruited through the 1960s. Only 1 400 assisted and 500 unassisted Dutch people arrived in 1966, far fewer than the ambitious 25 000 target of the early 1950s.

The Australian Government decided in 1965 not to include Bonegilla in renovations it proposed to migrant accommodation elsewhere. It announced in 1968 that Bonegilla was to close. About half of the migrants were now arriving in smaller groups by plane rather than ship. Many already had English and skills that meant they were readily employable. Those who came to Bonegilla were spending only two or three weeks there. Most were gravitating to cities where they could seek out their own jobs, find private accommodation and receive support from ethnic organisations. The former reception and training centre in a distant country district was now deemed sub-standard, too expensive to run and redundant. Bonegilla closed in 1971.

Migrants were assured that an individualised interview with an employment officer and an interpreter would precede an appropriate job placement. NAA A12111, 1/55/22/74.

8

White Australia, Indonesia, the Dutch and Bonegilla In 1949 the Dutch East Indies became Indonesia. Many of the Dutch who had lived in Indonesia applied to come to Australia in the early 1950s and again, after 1958, when Indonesia pressed its claims for Irian Jaya (Dutch West New Guinea). Some applicants were rejected because they were of mixed race, partly Dutch and partly Indonesian.

The contentious White Australia Policy prevailed immediately after the war. People who had been given wartime sanctuary when Japan invaded the Indonesian islands had to leave Australia if they were of Asian appearance.

Nevertheless, the High Court upheld the appeal against deportation of Mrs O’Keefe, a Dutch woman of Indonesian descent in 1949. Dutch ex-servicemen were admitted ‘subject to the men being of European descent’. Assisted and unassisted migrants were subjected to an appearance test based principally on skin colour.

Migrant selection officers in the Hague were instructed not to accept the medically unfit, war-time collaborators, communists or people who were not white. Many applicants were of mixed race, often part Indonesian. The selection officer had to decide it they passed a sixty per cent European, forty per cent non-European appearance test. If unsure the officer might ask the applicant to produce documentation about and photographs of their grandparents. Nobody was told why their application was rejected.

The dictation test, used when necessary to implement the White Australia Policy, was abolished in 1958, and the policy was abandoned in 1966. In 1966 all Dutch people of mixed race were directed to Bonegilla.

Supporting the Dutch Unlike other migrant donor countries, the Netherlands provided officers to care for its emigrants after arrival in Australia. Dutch immigration officers and/or social workers lived and worked at Bonegilla. They included Theo Bakkers, Herman Kortenhorst and Brigid Huizinga.

Even after the number of arrivals dropped in the 1960s, the Royal Netherlands Embassy kept track of the Dutch people resident in Bonegilla and their endeavours to find work. By the 1960s the Netherlands Emigration Board had arranged with Australian banks and building societies for home loans to Dutch families.

Dutch ex-servicemen were admitted ‘subject to the men being of European descent’. Assisted and unassisted migrants were subjected to an appearance test based principally on skin colour.

Never Enough Dutch

9

Facing some of the hazards of life at Bonegilla

Brewing coffee secretly

In 1997 Nico van Dalen, a professional artist of Dutch descent now living in Australia, produced a set of fifteen cartoon-style drawings as part of the exhibition ‘Where Waters Meet: the Dutch Migrant Experience in Australia’.

Van Dalen, who was a Bonegilla resident himself, brilliantly depicted life as a migrant at Bonegilla, with a Dutch sense of humour. The original drawings, of which these four are examples, are on display in the ‘Where the Waters Meet’ exhibition at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience Heritage Park.

'Wanna job in the Snoweez matey?'

10

First encounter of the arachnid kind

Learning the 'Pride of Erin'

Never Enough Dutch

11

In 1959 Dutch Embassy arranged for Max Tailleur, a Dutch comedian, to visit Bonegilla. Similarly it arranged for a visit and exhibition in 1961 by Cornelius du Buy, a former Dutch table tennis champion who had migrated to Australia. NAA A12111, 1/1959/23/25.

Calwell believed the welcome hand of co-religionists helped migrants to assimilate. Most of the Dutch joined Catholic and Presbyterian churches that were well established in Australia. Some, however, joined in smaller Dutch-only congregations of the Dutch Reformed Church, a Calvinist group based on the teaching of the Gereformeerde Kerk.

Gippsland and others to jobs and houses in the Ballarat and western districts. About 30-35 arrived each month during 1953 and 1954. Some of the Father Maas scheme migrants spent time at Bonegilla. Fr Maas successfully lobbied the government to lift its veto of Dutch families with more than four children.

From the beginnings of the immigration program the Catholic Church had moved to provide support to new arrivals. Fr Leo Maas of Geelong, then Kew (Melbourne) devised a scheme to bring Dutch farming families to Australia. He helped settle some to share farming in

At Bonegilla during the early 1950s Fr Baron was assisted by a Dutch and an Italian priest. On Sundays there were four masses – one in English, one in German or Polish, one in Dutch and one in Italian.

12

Fr Bernard van Stokkom had supported the Dutch at Bathurst before moving to Bonegilla where he was Catholic chaplain to the Dutch from 1952 to 1969. He won exceptional regard during his many years of service.

Rev Hans Mol, Presbyterian chaplain to the Dutch at Bonegilla, 1952-54.

Mol became a university scholar with an international reputation in sociology.

The Dutch liked to be self-reliant. Baukje De Wolf with bikes the family brought with them to Australia.

Bonegilla Collection ARM 99.027.

Never Enough Dutch

13

Rev JJ (Hans) Mol led in introducing a Dutch ministry within the Presbyterian Church. After he arrived in Australia in 1948 he helped with Dutch/English services in Presbyterian churches in Sydney, then at Bathurst before moving to Bonegilla in 1952. At Bonegilla he organised an annual conference of Dutch ministers in Australia. The conference continued to meet there each year through the 1950s. Mol bemoaned the loss of ‘solid Dutch Presbyterian [families]’ to Canada, Australia’s chief rival for Dutch migrants. He tried unsuccessfully to imitate the Father Maas scheme. In 1954 he visited Holland to recruit more Dutch clergy for Australia.

Beyond Bonegilla Some Dutch families found jobs and accommodation close to Bonegilla as others did near other migrant centres such as Greta and Wollongong. By the 1971 census there were quite a few Netherlands-born residents in Lavington (119), North Albury (58) Wodonga (54) and West Wodonga (68).

Australia’s housing shortage was so bad it could have crippled the immigration program. There are many stories of the struggles migrants had in getting started.

Lutheran, Catholic and Presbyterian clergy at Bonegilla in the early 1950s met all new arrivals. Each helped his denominational group deal with a variety of problems.

Mol remembers that, apart from giving pastoral care, he ran a kind of labour exchange using Presbyterian and other networks. After evening devotions he provided opportunity for people to talk over their concerns and expectations about work, accommodation and the Australian way of life.

A Dutch float in a community event in Lavington in 1957. John Hengstmengel, family photo album.

14

Johannes and Elizabeth Hengstmengel constructed their first half-house amidst other Dutch homes in the Griffith and McDonald Road area of Lavington. A house was a proud achievement.

Never Enough Dutch

15

Local community organisations, particularly the CWA, later the New Settlers League and then the Good Neighbour Council offered friendly welcomes. The Albury North – Lavington Presbyterian Church arranged visits to Bonegilla to meet migrants, particularly the Dutch.

Over the first ten years most arrivals focused their energy and time into getting established. They had little time for community or public life. Yet Dutch self-help groups, principally concerned with caring for the less fortunate, were set up. Mr D Van Wyck and Mrs De Graf headed a Netherlands Association of Albury and Lavington that was to be known as ‘De Uiver’.

Prompted by the new Dutch presence, Australia as a whole rediscovered its early links with the Dutch explorers, Dirk Hartog, William Janz and Abel Tasman.

The Albury-based Dutch took to reminding the local community of its Dutch links. They organised a fair in 1957 to commemorate the emergency landing of the KLM ‘Uiver’ in Albury during the London- Melbourne air race of 1934. For many years afterwards Geesje and Herman Blom promoted and worked for an Uiver memorial.

In 1960 KLM sponsored a Dutch exhibition in the Mechanics Institute.

John Hengstmengel, family photo album.

16

Remembering Bonegilla Memories of Dutch responses to Bonegilla appear in stories in the Bonegilla Collection at Albury Library Museum.

Others have been published in Dirk Eysberste and Marijke Eysbertse, Where Waters Meet, 3rd revised edition, 2007.

Even more recently, Dutch stories from Bonegilla appeared on the Belongings Migration Heritage Centre website.

Many of the Dutch had only fleeting contact with Bonegilla, staying there for only a few weeks. Others found jobs there or nearby and have firmer memories of it as a special place in their life histories. All remember it within the context of challenges of migrating to a new land. Memories of the place jostle with the pressing concerns of learning the language, finding a job and finding accommodation.

Those who arrived as children now smile indulgently at the recall of sunburn and fears of swooping magpies, nasty spiders, possums, bull ants and snakes, before the family grew accustomed to the Australian sun and wildlife. They remember the perils of deep-pit latrines and the embarrassments of bathing in immodestly enclosed showers. They recall food indulgences: cheap chocolates, loads of bread and jam, pineapple, cocoa and vanilla milkshakes. They remember adults being stressed: ‘I remember mother crying’ or ‘I remember separation from father when he was required to work elsewhere’. Teenage Dutch girls remember being told to be wary of the single Greek or Italian men at the centre. The young remember the rude connections they made between similar words in Dutch and English.

The memory fragments that have been collected convey a kaleidoscope of migrant experiences. For most, Bonegilla was something to be endured rather than enjoyed. It seemed that Bonegilla was part of an immigration program that ‘had not been “thought through” in terms of people, merely numbers …’ (Cornelius Vleeskens). Those who were challengeable coped best.

Memories of the physical setting have endured. The heat, the cold, the sun, the flies, the space, the muddy surrounds, Lake Hume, twisted gum trees, long walks to Albury.

Facilities at Bonegilla were not suitable for families. Many recall their disappointment at the style of accommodation offered them. They use terms like ‘shacks’, ‘chicken sheds’, ‘cubby-hole size cubicles’. The military character of the buildings and the nearby army presence made Bonegilla a ‘camp’, a ‘barracks’. Some baulked at German being the common language used by most of the early immigrant groups who were employed at the centre when the Dutch arrived. The bureaucracy with its queues and its regulations was not easy to live with. Many baulked at the communal eating places, washrooms and laundries. No one liked the inconvenience of having to walk 150-200 metres to latrines in one direction and just as far to showers in another direction. Not everybody was happy with the food. The place seemed to be permeated with the smell of mutton being cooked. A few likened Bonegilla to a concentration camp. Some claimed conditions in Australia had been misrepresented to them. Immigration authorities noted that ‘the Dutch did not favour the [Bonegilla] type of life and, while they accepted it, they tend to move more rapidly than most other nationalities to private accommodation’.

Memories of the physical setting have endured. The heat, the cold, the sun, the flies, the space, the muddy surrounds, Lake Hume, twisted gum trees, long walks to Albury.

Never Enough Dutch

17

Anne Hawker (nee Verloop), on the right, aged 17, when she was working in the X-ray department at Bonegilla in 1953.

Bonegilla Collection, ARM 96.1139.

Anne Hawker remembers: ‘… we were allocated our two little rooms, which were as sparse as could be. Naked little light bulb, no heating of any sort and the beds were soldiers’ beds, chicken wire beds with black blankets and our luggage had not yet arrived….

[When we went to bed] every time we moved the beds squeaked. I could hear my parents giggle and laugh. And then we were all laughing and giggling every time the beds squeaked. That night at Bonegilla a lot of people cried, arriving there the way we did, but we actually laughed – I think that probably was a good sign about us, adapting to the way of life in Australia.’

18

The trick of feeding possums that lived in hut ceilings appealed to residents of many nationalities.

Bonegilla Collection picture source unacknowledged, but see Bery Bebic (Yugoslavia, 1949) file.

Adults, too, remember language embarrassments.

Sometimes encounters with a difficult English teacher left unpleasant memories. Julius Visser, who worked as an interpreter across six languages, recalled how at a job interview he addressed a senior bank official by his first name, because he was told that Australians expected such informalities. Dutch women remember how the difficulties of giving birth were complicated in hospitals where only English was spoken.

Remembering the Dutch It is not possible to distinguish the impact of the Dutch on Bonegilla or Australia from that of any other national group. Nevertheless, politicians, immigration officials and the media promoted national stereotypes that helped them encourage the nation to accept the immigration program.

National stereotypes, however contestable, showed how the native-born were pre-disposed to deal with strangers.

• The Dutch were praised for their initiative. They found ways to get work when none was generally available. They organised a voluntary school when little attention was paid to the needs of school-aged migrants. They made their bare cubicles cosy with simple furnishings. They used primus stoves to supplement the fare with food more to their liking.

They ‘made a go of it’ – and that made them seem assimilable.

• Good Dutch footballers, table tennis and billiards players were warmly welcomed for they could represent Bonegilla in local competitions. Bonegilla Limited was undefeated in its first season in the district football competition in 1954. The very tall Peter Rott won local 50-yard freestyle swimming championships.

• The Dutch were one of the first assisted migrant groups to arrive as families. They came as the government’s policy shifted from mustering manpower to ‘population building’ through family units. If changes to the food fare at Bonegilla are attributed chiefly to the agitation of Italian migrants, so, too, changes to make Bonegilla more ‘family friendly’ might, in a similar large measure, be attributed to the agitation of the Dutch.

• One of the functions of Bonegilla was to help people from other lands become accustomed to Australian ways. However, along with other nonBritish migrants the Dutch helped to Australianise Australia. Bonegilla was founded in a British Australia. There were big celebrations of the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 and the Royal Visit to Benalla in 1954. Paintings of the Tudor monarchs and coats-of-arms were on permanent display in a recreation hall known as Tudor Hall. Union Jacks were as common as the Australian flag. By the early 1960s the nation had begun to reconsider the way it celebrated Australia Day and to insist on an Australian Governor General. While the Dutch became naturalised at a higher rate than migrants from other nationalities, some Dutch baulked at forswearing allegiance to their monarch. Along with other non-British migrants, the Dutch helped Australians make the move from imperial to native nationalism.

They used primus stoves to supplement the fare with food more to their liking.

They ‘made a go of it’ – and that made them seem assimilable.

Never Enough Dutch

19

Remembering The Dutch may have been the invisible migrants of the 1950s, behaving as assimilationists wanted them to, but half a century on the cloaks of invisibility have slipped.

As they grow older, many Dutch-Australians begin again to cultivate interest in Dutch things, be it following football in the Netherlands, revisiting old recipes or recalling old songs. DutchCare Ltd offers ethnic specific support to the aged in Victoria. In old age, many of the Dutch seem to prize anew conversing in Dutch, Dutch cuisine, playing

Dutch games, listening to Dutch music and living in surrounds with Dutch furnishings, including, for example, representations of windmills and Dutch landscapes, souvenir clogs and Delft blue chinaware. Once migrants who merged so well with the host community that they became invisible, aged Dutch-Australians find links again with the land from which they came.

The media seemed to think that the most distinguishing feature of the Dutch was the size of some Dutch families.

At Bonegilla the Bentvelsen family pose without their father, Cornelis who had found work in Melbourne. Left to right back row: Antoinette (12), Lucia (13), Johannes (15), Mrs Antoinette Bentvelsen, Cornelia (16). Centre row: Catharine (5), Hendrika (6), Antonius (7), Geertruida (8), Maria (10), Roberius (11). Front row: Leonardus (3) and Wilhemus (2). Border Morning Mail 21 October 1959.

20

References

To find out more

p.3 - Perceptions of the Dutch cited by immigration officials and politicians in several places eg NAA A445, 170/3/4. Agreement - NAA A2567, 1956/43. Resentment about non-recognition of qualifications – Jules Visser, Border Morning Mail (BMM) 14 August 1997.

For migration generally - S Tan, The Arrival 2006 and James Jupp, ed. The Australian People, 2001. For the Dutch generally - N Peters, The Dutch Down Under, 2007 and K Velthuis, The Dutch in NSW, 2005. For Bathurst – C Panich, Sanctuary? 1988. For Bonegilla - Glenda Sluga, Bonegilla: ‘A Place of No Hope’, 1988. For Dutch experiences of Bonegilla – D and M Eysbertse, Where Waters Meet, 1997/2007 and the ‘Where Waters Meet’ exhibition at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience Heritage Park.

p.5 - Hans H - G Sluga, ‘Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre, 1947-1971, MA thesis University of Melbourne, 1985.p.121. Favourable reports of Dutch - BMM 26 August 1952. Changes after riot - NAA A1831, 1947/693. p.9 - Critical Dutch press - NAA A445, 170/3/4, 6 August and 8 November 1953, and A445, 170/1/24, 10 April 1953. Guinn – File ARM and BMM 1 July 1957. Dutch and 1961 riot - D Eysberste & M Eysbertse, Where Waters Meet, 2007, p.32 ; Returnees - BMM 23 September and 30 October 1959, 6 August 1963; Touw - BMM 9 September 1967. p.11 - Ex-servicemen - A445, 170/1/21; appearance tests H Martin, Angels and Arrogant Gods, 1988. People of mixed race directed to Bonegilla - NAA A2567, 1956/43, 15 May 1966. p.15 - A Calwell, ‘The Why and How of Post-war Migration’ in HE Holt, Australia and the Migrant, 1953, p.19. Fr Maas Migration to Australia, National Catholic Rural Movement convention, Albury 1953, NL. Dutch Presbyterians - J de Lange, ‘New Land, New Church, New Beginning’ in H Richmond & M Dukyant, Crossing Border, 2006, pp.68-81 and Hans Mol, Tinpot Preacher, pp.64-73, 2003, NAA. A445, 170/1/24. Solid Presbyterians - NAA A445, 170/1/24, 29 September 1953. p.16 - Tinpot Preacher p.66. Dutch self-help group BMM 26 May 1956, 19 November 1965, 27 January 1968. Celebrating the Uiver - BMM 18 July 1957 and 5 November 1958.

Acknowledgements The endnotes indicate several other books and articles this publication draws on. Unless otherwise cited the memory fragments are from the Bonegilla Collection at Albury Library Museum. Images are, as shown, principally from National Australian Archive (NAA), Border Morning Mail (BMM) or the Bonegilla Collection. Robin and John Hengstmengel made photographs available from their family album, I thank Dutch friends and associates for their comments and assistance. The staff of Albury Library Museum were a great help. The Bonegilla Migrant Experience Steering Committee made this work possible.

Series: At Bonegilla The Army at Bonegilla, 1940-71 (2007) Calwells’ Beautiful Balts – Displaced Persons at Bonegilla (2007) Never Enough Dutch – Assisted Immigrants from the Netherlands at Bonegilla (2007) Food at Bonegilla (2007, third edition 2011) Receiving Europe’s Displaced (2010) The Young at Bonegilla (2010) Greek Journeys Through Bonegilla (2011)

p.20 - Hawker: http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/ belongings/hawker/ note: the web site is no longer updated but is retained for research purposes. Vleeskens – Eysbetse & Eysbertse p. 6. Child birth - Panich pp.68-69. Rapid movement from Bonegilla - NAA A2567, 1956/43, 1 November 1957. p.22 - K Velthius, The Dutch in NSW, CSU Report http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/ heritagebranch/heritage/thematichistorydutch.pdf

Rubbing Shoulders with Post-war Newcomers (2013) Related works: Albury-Wodonga’s Bonegilla, Albury Regional Museum 2001 Reading Bonegilla: A guide for secondary teachers, Albury & District Historical Society, 2008 So Much Sky, written by Bruce Pennay [for the] Migration Heritage Centre, New South Wales Never Enough Dutch

21

The Bonegilla Collection at Albury LibraryMuseum www.bonegilla.com.au

The Bonegilla Migrant Experience www.bonegilla.org.au

Author: Bruce Pennay OAM, Charles Sturt University ISSN: 1834-6359 Published by Parklands Albury Wodonga PO Box 1040, Wodonga, Victoria, 3689 Š 2007 Reprinted by Wodonga Council, May, 2017