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Holmesglen Hostel
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dvsineke
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 11:30 pm    Post subject: Holmesglen Hostel Reply with quote

My family arrived in Australia from Holland in1957 and, after a 6 week stay in Bonegilla Migrant Camp, we moved into the Holmesglen Hostel and stayed for 2 years before moving to a new house in Boronia in early 1960.
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kate fletcher
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 12, 2012 11:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been trying to remember your family at Holmesglen, and recall a very kind Dutch lady who took me to the wash-room and bandaged my knee after I slipped on the gravel slope between the kindergarten and the swings on the grass by the white picket fence.

She was slim, very tall (or seemed so to an 8 year old) and had long fair hair tied back. Perhaps your mother? I remember that she had blond children younger than me.
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aussienomore
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:35 pm    Post subject: Re: Holmesglen Hostel Reply with quote

dvsineke wrote:
My family arrived in Australia from Holland in1957 and, after a 6 week stay in Bonegilla Migrant Camp, we moved into the Holmesglen Hostel and stayed for 2 years before moving to a new house in Boronia in early 1960.



My name is Kees Postma and my family arrived from the Netherlands to Australia in 1958. Then on to Bonegilla from station pier where once father arrived at Bonegilla father said, "here we will die" He was in near panick and within two day he was on the train back to Melbourne (that famous swinging of the lamp to stop the train to Wodonga from Ebden at the emplacement in the paddock at Bonegilla)

Anyway your father worked for a dutch painting company my father started and he was employed for a number of years. I hapen to have three photographs, one of your parent's featuring their twelve and a half marriage celebrations at their new home in Boronia.

At least in two of the photographs from the sixties you are pictured.

I will be pleased to show you these if someone can tell me how to upload them on this site.

Kees from the Netherlands Aussie no more.
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kate fletcher
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 9:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm another Aussie no more from Holmesglen, now living back where I started in England

My parents and I lived on the hostel 1958-62, so we must have often seen your family in those days, although I can't place your name. I was 8 when we arrived, so perhaps you were much younger.

I have no idea how to get photographs on the site, but I am sure someone else will be able to help you.
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aussienomore
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 1:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

kate fletcher wrote:
I'm another Aussie no more from Holmesglen, now living back where I started in England

My parents and I lived on the hostel 1958-62, so we must have often seen your family in those days, although I can't place your name. I was 8 when we arrived, so perhaps you were much younger.

Thanks Kate for replying.

I have no idea how to get photographs on the site, but I am sure someone else will be able to help you.


I arrived in Melbourne station pier in June 1958 on the liner Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Because of it's difficult name for english speakers also known as the JVO and stayed in Bonegilla for two weeks. My parent's were scared of the vast distances and empty countryside so my father left us at Bonegilla to return to Melbourne only after two days stating "here we will die if we stay" (figure of speech)

Two weeks later he sent for us and we settled in Holmsglen hostel staying untill my parent's could rent a house in Hollywood grove Carnegie. We were at Holmsglen only for a short while. It was here we met the Dutch family Kors. Even then we were always taking photographs and I have three pictures of them.

I lived in Australia for ten years and like to think at the end I was more Australian than the Australians. I certainly tried to be.

In 1967 the tide turned for me. Canberra passed a law where non Australians (those without the Australian nationality) could be conscripted against their will if needed to serve in the Australian armed forces. As a foreigner I got called up right at the time Australia was embroiled in the Vietnam War.

Since I was not yet of adult age (then 21) my father absolutely forbid it saying "you are still a child and under my supervision" besides I have seen wars before and no son of mine is going to fight in any foreign army.

That was the end of the lucky country, best country in the world or whatever you wish to call the Australian continent for me.

We left Australia where we had entered it 10 years before on Melbourne station pier now in style on the ss Fairstar.
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kate fletcher
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

After the terrible experiences that the Dutch people had to face during the Second World War, your father's reaction to a son being called up for military service in the Vietnam War is totally understandable.

My parents never really considered Australia their country either, but after years of studying Australian history and geography in school, I thought of myself as an Aussie, and had great difficulty settling back into English life after our return.

The English thought that I was bad-mannered, and I thought they were all hypocrites.
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Phyl Phyl has been starred
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 10:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you send your photos through to Len at about 150 kbs. he will post them onto the site. Smile
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aussienomore
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 9:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kate that "English attitude" as compared to the "rough" Aussies, evident as far back as 1788, is just the slight culture difference. No mater you fought yourself back.

As the Germans had no chance to win the war, let's say from 1943 onward, desperate measures were now taken by these nazi's to continue it at least as long as possible. The rest of the german nation followed.

My father was forcefully taken from his home in the Netherlands to Friedrichshafen on the Boden see. A small town in Germany on a big lake with Switerserland across the water. Today the manufacturing place of the famous ultra-luxury car Maybach. During WWII father was put to work for the maybach company producing motors for the tiger tank, unquestionably the best tank of the war. Thank God not enough could be made. Anyway my father was imprisoned, with a great number of others, in barracks situated around the former huge hal of the then defunct zeppelin factory.

When the British and Americans came for them in 1944/1945 these workers were the first to be bombed. Father lost a number of his countrymen, as others, and he had to forfeit his own life nearly three times. It was a miracle he survived before he was able to make "neutral" Switzerland.

Jews were, without pardon, executed behind the barrack camp.

When our family was housed as migrants, "new Australians" was the kind name in those days they gave us, in our new country to be, the lucky country and the best in the world, first at Bonegilla near Wodonga and later at Holmesglen, Melbourne, my parent's only had the urge to leave this "camp" as soon as possible.

They were grateful, even for their migrant hostel time stay, to Australia for the new start given to them in this huge (unpopulated) country.

It was in Holmesglen hostel we met various other dutch in their nissen huts, among them the Kors family.
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kate fletcher
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 10:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Miracle is indeed the only word to describe your father's survival of the Second World War: clearly a man of immense courage and determination.

After such terrible experiences, his need to get away from the 2 migrant hostels as quickly as possible is so understandable.

My parents were schoolchildren when the war started, and spent many nights in air raid shelters and underground railway stations during the blitz, but England's sufferings were nothing compared to what the people of the Netherlands had to endure.
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aussienomore
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 1:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kate,

I ask you not to see this as courage let alone immense courage on my fathers part.

For the most time father was scared to death.

He was a young man and thinking of my Mother and returning, they had just engaged and this kept him alive in these german camps.

Using seven mile boots.... the Germans needed slave labour to keep their extensive war industry going. The nazis terrorized the countries they occupied and took away their able citizens to work in Germany. British and American air power bombed the hell out of these german concentrations of war time industrial factories.

1+1=2
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kate fletcher
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Courage isn't a lack of fear. Courage is going on when you're terrified.
Courage is retaining enough faith in humanity to build a new life and have children after witnessing the worst of mankind's brutality.

Therefore I still maintain that your father had immense courage.
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aussienomore
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kate,

Well?? but father always seemed to know quickly what to do and he immediately recognised Bonegilla and Holmesglen in the fifties for what it was.

He got us into Holmesglen hostel quick smart. It could also have been a migrant hostel in Sydney of course. For father a big city would give us more chances in the antipodes instead of Bonegilla on some weir near the snowy mountains in the never never.

We were city people.
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kate fletcher
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My parents and I were city people as well, and after London, Holmesglen was the untamed outback. I thought the bush began with that bit of scrubland at the back of the hostel, and the railway journey into Melbourne was my parents' lifeline.
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aussienomore
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 11:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kate,

We seem to have things in common.

I remember Holmesglen in 1958, I was nine years old, as divided into two parts by a bitumen road with wide gravel edges on each side. On this road a dutchman on a bicycle, he had brought it with him from the Netherlands, got run over by a drunk driver and was thereafter in a wheelchair and a invalid for the rest of his life. He (can't remember his name) spent years at Holmesglen. Result for us was that we were never allowed to ride bicycles in Australia. The trafic on this road was not heavy. The lower part was where the nissen huts were and here lived the migrants. We occupied a hut somewhere in the middle. The upper section situated on a slight hill was occupied by some buildings. Walking up to the right was the canteen and to the left I remember a small building with a TV. This room was always dark with faces peering at the tv screen.

At meal time and always hungry my parent's suggested to go ahead before them. Immediately through the door of the canteen to the left was a counter where food was dished out by women. At the end a bread bin. I remember if you dug in this bread bin deep enough the bread would become stale and mouldy. It was always adviceable to take only the very top slices. I think this bread bin was not emptied out regularly but just new bread slices added each day.

My brother and myself would take portions of chips and jelly with cream which always seemed to be on the menue. We mixed the cream from the jelly on the chips. It was the beginning of our rougthening up.

At the Warrigal road end were golf fields separated by a creek. We used to wade through this creek to find golf balls. Occasionally we stole a few balls, remembering one golfer running after us shouting.

I was enroled at the Jordanville primary state school. Each morning what seemed to me a rickety old schoolbus would appear and we paid the bus driver threepence. This bus would travel through the suburb streets just being able, we heard excessive grinding of it's gears while the driver was battling making us children wonder if it was about to explode, to make one particular steep hill.

Each week with the raising of the southern cross all replying in unison 'I love God and my country; I honour the flag; I will serve the Queen, and cheerfully obey my parents, teachers, and the laws. Each morning we were marched to class under the observance of our teachers, a few boys hitting the drums while some girls played the recorder. (the Queen was the British Queen, thousands of miles overseas and head of the Australian state)

At Jordanville school the classes were at least 48/50 children in size. I was put in the back and no attention was taken that as a child I could not speak english. A scared little dutch boy in an incomprehensible world I had to fend for myself. Academically I learned very little at Holmesglen.
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kate fletcher
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Things in common indeed!

I was under the bicycle ban as well, and banned myself from the school bus because I was convinced it would explode one morning, so I had to leave at least half-an-hour earlier for school than the other kids did. I went to St Mary Magdalen's, next to the Jordanville school, and we were summoned from the playground by an air-raid siren and had to march into line to the 'Stars and Stripes Forever' of all tunes. I actually doubted these memories, but Aussietrekker somewhere else on this forum confirmed them. Because the school was a religious one, there was no vowing to Australia or to the Queen, only to God. A lot shorter.

My parents and I started off in a hut in the middle of the hostel, but were later moved to the end hut of the front row, opposite the Rec and cantten but separated from them by Power Avenue.

I remember the boys collecting golf balls, and the rumours that they were paid vast sums of money (whole sixpences) by golfers for return of those balls.

Canteen bread was as forbidden to me as a bicycle, my mother insisting that we bought our own private supply. I think it was the heat in the steamy canteen that caused the problem with the lower layers inside the bread bin, but whatever the reason, I never tasted hostel bread. I remember big urns of pink-coloured milk, hot in winter, room temperature in summer. Sickly! The canteen was run by a husband and wife called Eiberius (not sure of the spelling.) 2 of their children, Horace and Monika, went to the same school as me.

We had about 60-70 children in each class. This wasn't too much of a problem for me as an English speaker, but a Dutch girl called Gertruda, who sat next to me because we were both from the hostel, couldn't cope at all with lessons in an unkown language, yet there was no help from the teacher who merely spoke louder to her as though the problem was deafness. It must have been like a nightmare for Gertuda, just as for you and your brother, and it made me realize how lucky I was that my parents had emigrated to a country where English was spoken.
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