The Dutch Courier
is a monthly
publication,
published on behalf
of the Associated
Netherlands
Societies in
Victoria Inc.
Presentation of ‘The Dutch Down Under’, Melbourne, Immigration Museum
12 February 2006
By Frank Mollen, deputy Ambassador, Royal Netherlands Embassy Canberra
This year we celebrate that the Dutch were the first Europeans to set foot on the Australian continent. In 1606 the crew of a small Dutch East India Company ship, the Duyfken, captained by Willem Janszoon, explored and charted parts of the West Coast of what is now known as Cape York. Between 1606 and 1770, over 40 other Dutch vessels sailed to this new land, that was first named New Holland and later became Australia. They mapped large parts of the West, North and South coasts, but the Dutch of the time, who were looking for spices and other tradeable goods, never stayed in this land. They perceived it, more than anything else, as barren and inhabited by unfriendly native tribes.
It was not until the 19th century that the Dutch regained some interest in Australia, this time as emigrants. And it took until the years after WW II for this interest to increase to the extent that over 160.000 Dutch people packed up their belongings to find a new, and often uncertain, future in a new home country, literally at the other side of the globe.
The early explorers of the NEI Company were brave men, who took to the sea with their basic instruments, looking for unknown worlds. The emigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries, however, were also to be admired for their courage. How many of us, here today, would be ready to just ‘pack ourselves and our families up and go’, unsure of what was waiting for us, having to leave friends and loved ones behind and not knowing when, or even if, we would ever see them again. Nowadays, travel is relatively easy, and telephone and e-mail allow us to stay in touch with whoever we want at very short notice, but in those days that was both much more complex and much more expensive.
The book that I have been given the honour to introduce, The Dutch Down Under by Professor Nonja Peters, describes these challenges, and many other aspects of Dutch emigration to Australia, from Holland as well as from the Dutch East Indies. After the war, the Dutch economy was not doing well, while Australia needed labourers. Farmers and metalworkers where some of the professions that were in high demand and Holland had too many mouths to feed. For the Dutch civilians and military from the Netherlands East Indies, some of whom had already been evacuated to Australia to flee the Japanese invasion, there was the additional complication that they were not welcome anymore in what is now Indonesia, but had also been away from Holland too long, to feel at ease in that country, that had its own problems and was not really waiting for them. Therefore, many people thankfully took the opportunity to start afresh in Australia.
The Dutch immigrants were thrifty, hard-working people. Their no-nonsense, open, but also proud characters made them reliable labourers and businessmen. Even nowadays, when talking to older Australians, I am often told ‘the Dutch were the best there was’. They knew how important it was to integrate into the new society and they spread out over the land instead of congregating, like some other immigrant groups from Europe. In many a family it was ‘english only’ as soon as they had arrived, somewhat to the detriment of their Dutch roots. They were described as ‘model immigrants’, assimilating as quickly as they could. Of course, that does not mean things were always easy, far from that.
Dr Peters has managed to put together a fascinating book, for which she deserves nothing but praise. The Dutch Down Under documents a treasure of information about all those Dutch that came to Australia, from the early navigators of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, through the early immigrants of the 19th century and the Netherlands East Indies troops of WWII, to the large waves of the 50’s and 60’s. It provides a valuable source of information, and will surely help in keeping this history of the Dutch and their contributions to Australian society, alive. We are very grateful to Nonja Peters and all her co-authors for this.
I would just, by way of conclusion, like to acknowledge the contributions, enthusiasm and hard work of a few people and organisations, who made this all possible:
Publishers Wolters Kluwer and its director in Australia, Willem van Zanten. Once the idea for the book had been born, Wolters Kluwer were so kind to guarantee its publication.
The Erasmus Society and its former and current presidents, Loes Westerbeek and Isabelle Roosenburg. Loes and Isabelle are the unofficial guardians of modern Dutch culture in Victoria; with their boundless energy they come up with many interesting initiatives and ideas, and they also often support us at the Embassy, for which we are very thankful.
I also want to mention Dr Hans Sondaal, my previous Ambassador, without whom the 2006-celebration would never have come to be. Hans finished his time in Australia at the end of last year, but he is enjoying the celebrations from his new home in Holland.
And last but not least, Dr. Nonja Peters herself. On behalf of the Embassy, I would like to express our sincere appreciation for her never-failing energy, ideas and actions in many Dutch-related fields. Herself an emigrant child, she has become our anchorwomen for anything to do with emigration, and we can always call on her when necessary. She has really contributed to ‘putting Holland on the map’, esp. in West Australia. And she has produced this wonderful book, that we are about to present. Just to illustrate Nonja’s standing in the Netherlands: at the recent gala event opening the commemorative year in The Hague, which was attended by many dignitaries, Dr Peters was seated between the Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Mr Pieter van Vollenhoven, husband of the Queens sister Margriet. Truly a place of honour and totally deserved.