Sunday & Monday, August 16 & 17 2009 (diary)

The weather is rather strange these days. Some mornings are heavily overcast. Through the day the clouds clear but there is an increase in the humidity, not so much on the Mango farm, but noticeable when I drive into Palmerston or Darwin. Other days it is clear and dry but with a restless wind swirling around, not unpleasant as it keeps one cool. I have managed to do my daily morning walk of 2.2 km so far every day except Sunday's when I watch the Insiders TV show on politics, business and sport.

Sunday late afternoon I spend with my son Jeroen and his wife Lisa at their home. They have completed the renovation of their kitchen which looks very good, quite contemporary. They have also created a pleasant, comfortable, and well fitted out and decorated entertaining area under the house where we spend a relaxed evening drinking wine and eating prawns (shrimps).
Jeroen and Lisa also recently bought a new boat, a large dingy with 40 horsepower outboard motor and well fitted out with GPS navigation and an electronic fish spotter. They have gone out several times already inland, cruising on some of the rivers, camping overnight with friends.

Monday evening it is bridge again with Mairead. She plays several hands very well, but I am getting too casual, playing 4 nights a week gets a bit monotonous. Only this week to go, then back to normal.   The mangos are growing fast now, we may have the first ripe ones within 4 weeks or so.

Tuesday, August 18 2009 (diary)

I have lunch at the Palmerston Library Bistro, crumbed calamari with salad and chips. I really enjoy coming here, the environment is very pleasant and the association its architecture has with the Dutch painter Piet Mondriaan makes this a very special place for me.
All outside tables are taken, so I have a table inside in air conditioned comfort. Later, when the main lunch crowd has left, I move outside, racing through the last pages of Michelle de Kretser's novel "of Love and the French Revolution" : The Rose Grower. It is a great story, painstakingly researched, brilliantly written, I love it.

It is Tuesday again, so my second acrylics painting class. I have taken a bottle of wine this time and I must say it loosens the wrist. I am a rough and ready sort of painter anyway. My teacher Donna Mearns tries to keep me on the right track, but succeeds only partially. If you want to see details, look at a photo, that is my motto. Donna is most helpful however and I learn a lot from her.   Lisa (my daughter in law) told me that she has had some lessons from Donna too in the past and loved it.
When I was doing my National service in Assen way back in 1964-65, Antien, I and some friends (our neighbours there) used to visit these hunnebedden (graves of the Huns, scattered all over the Dutch Northern province of Drenthe) in the middle of the night, drinking wine, singing songs, making speeches, having a great time.
The hunnebed I painted here is just outside the village of Rolde which I visited last year with Ank, the widow of Kees, one of my Primary school friends.

Thursday & Friday, August 19 & 20 2009 (diary)

When Antien and I with 2 year old daughter Babette emigrated to Australia it was all round a happy and most positive experience. We had deliberately planned our farewell party for our families during Christmas 1965 and left a few days later by plane arriving in Newcastle (Australia) on New Years Eve, in time to greet the new year (1966) in our new country.

We were welcomed there with open arms by all, BHP (the company who I had joined) with cheap temporary accommodation and household goods (while we were waiting for our own stuff to arrive by ship); the Commonwealth Bank, who had a special local Emigration section which went out of its way to help us with lots of practical things. And when, after 3 months, we bought a house the bank gave us a loan within just 5 minutes of me asking for one.   Two doors down in our street lived a born and bred Australian family (John and Val Reeves) with twins the same age as Babette, so we became friends with them very quickly, intergrating easily into the Australian way of life.

How different was the transition my German mother had to make when she married my Dutch father way back in 1936. I only fully started to realise this when I read one of her poems from that period, which my sister Wivica showed me when I visited her last year.
Although her home town Wismar was only a mere 400 km away from her new home Zutphen in the Netherlands (nothing compared to our journey to Australia) her reception in this town was far from friendly. The mood and attitude of the Dutch population (especially in the smaller towns) towards everything and everyone German was indifference at best, which grew during and after the war (WW2) from hostile to outright hatred. (Similar attitudes prevailed in the UK towards the local Germans and Italians, and in the US against their Japanese residents).

My father stood firmly by her side of course (and paid the price), but after bricks were thrown through the shop window of their Jewelry store on several occasions, they left parochial Zutphen, seeking safety in the country at their new home Martinshof.

After the war my mother was imprisoned for 18 months in a concentration camp (for little more than being a German living in Holland, although with her marriage to my father she had automatically become a Dutch citizen), and it was during this period that she wrote the following poem.

I still have my mother's wedding ring (shown above), well worn as you can see, but a brilliant example of the Niessing collection my parents distributed through their wholesale company Martinshof. I wear it occasionally, like for example this week, to commemorate and honour my mother's life.