TRAVELS FROM 1992 to 1994

Whilst still living in the north of Holland in 1992, our travels were limited to bicycle rides around the town and its surrounding rural areas and dunes. These all had great bicycle paths. It was all very pleasant, although freezing at times. I made a few train journeys with my children too.

After Marisca had worked at a flower farm during the summer holidays, she flew with Brianna to the family in South Africa for a two-month visit. They had to stop in London, England, but were escorted very well by the flight attendants. I am immensely proud of the two of them handling an international flight so well. They had a wonderful stay with the family, did lots of dress-ups with their Oma Zwiers and saw a fair bit of South Africa. Brianna even rode an ostrich! Petrus joined them in the middle of their stay and in the end the three of them flew from Johannesburg over the Indian Ocean to Australia.

At that point I also made the big migration back to Australia with Sabrina and Carl. Much of the packing was done before Petrus had left and the crates had been sent to Australia and I handled the rest afterwards, some of it with the help of friends and neighbours.

From Schiphol we flew directly to Singapore and left a day later by bus to a seaside resort in Malaysia. Most of the time we ate supermarket food that I had brought with from Holland because the hotel food would be too expensive. It was quite tricky to get active Carl to sit long enough in the highchair in the restaurant for our one and only meal out for the day, but we managed.

We had fun watching thousands of bats fly from palm tree to palm tree in the early evenings, experiencing the hot humidity of the equator and cooling off in the pools together with tonnes of Japanese and Chinese tourists. Many of the Asian travellers wanted to take pictures of Carl and Sabrina. Carl clung like a monkey to mum. He was not going to oblige.

Sometime later we travelled back to Singapore, did some sightseeing with Carl in a sling (saw markets, temples, museums, Little India, Chinatown, and a gem factory). Two days later we flew to Brisbane where a Dutch friend picked me up. Australia again! This is now home, but the ambivalence never leaves one. If we had three feet, one would be in South Africa where we were born, the other in the Netherlands with whom we have cultural and philosophical attachments and the third here in Aussie country- the nearest we can get to our roots and the smells and sunshine of our childhood.

Petrus, Marisca and Brianna arrived two days later. I was thrilled that we could all be together again. A week later Petrus heard that he could get a drafting contract in Mackay, 1000 km. from home. This was a bit too much for all of us to accept. The suitcases were scarcely unpacked and here we were packing them again to be able to stay with Petrus in a caravan for the next few weeks. I was dying to start the big clean-up and fix-up at home and the kids really were hungry for settling in, so we were quite unhappy to go. But it was still a lovely experience driving up north and experiencing Mackay.

April 1994: OUR HOUSE AND GARDEN

Initially it was a shock to see our garden and walk into our house. It was very dirty, and the garden was barren. Either our tenants or the rental agent’s refuse removalists had pulled nearly all the plants out. Now, months later, much work has been done and I feel used to everything. Definitely a feeling of home again. I have planted and dug till I dropped and so did Petrus. The girls also lent a hand. Carl pulled plants out again and again, but it’s looking good and green around here nowadays. We have got the pool going, put a tyre swing up and dug an enormous sandpit, now filled with soft Stradbroke Island beach sand. We have a vegetable garden going and I am trying to establish the lawns. We still must treat the fruit trees this autumn. I also made a patio with pavers and pebbles.

WORK

Petrus has had some drafting contracts since returning to Australia; enough to keep us going and we try to be patient because of the economic climate. With all the settling-in we had to do, I was thankful for his couple of weeks home in between contracts. Petrus is mostly doing CAD (computer aided drafting) now. Now he works about 18 km. away from home and mostly rides his bicycle to work at 6am. returning at 6 pm. in the late afternoon.

I do all sorts of work. I have a certain percentage share in Petrus business as his partner, mostly for tax reasons. Officially I am his “secretary”. I have my own office at home and use it very well for personal writing, research, organising things for homeschooling, La Leche League work when there is some, etc. Homeschooling takes a big effort, as does housekeeping, gardening and being a mother. Some days I am vibrant with energy, other days certainly tired.

The kids (apart from Carl) all still have one household chore to do, just like Petrus and me, whether it is cooking, dishes, laundry, or the clearing of their own rooms. I keep a job list that must be followed strictly otherwise mum goes nuts. Apart from this I have a certain Maria coming over once a week for 3 hours to help me give the house a good clean-up. It is costly but worth the sanity of a six-person household where there is a toddler included.

HEALTH AND FOOD

We have all been amazingly well considering the fact that we have come into a different country with new germs again. The kids have only been really sick once and Petrus and I have had headaches (which parent does not). In Holland the kids had one cold virus after the other during our two-year stay there.

Food: Initially we ate very “mixed-up”, getting ourselves settled in. Now we are getting more organised and more vegetarian by the day. I reckon we will always be eating chicken and fish, but we are only eating red meat once every week now. There is such an abundance of beautiful fruit and vegetables available here in ‘the subtropics anyway. My next step is to get hold of organically grown fruit and vegetables because of all the chemicals used in the production of the usual supermarket vegetables. We are trying to let our main protein intake, other than the above, be eggs, beans, nuts, and dairy products. Unfortunately, because of our fast modern life I do sometimes succumb to fast food.

WHERE WE LIVE

We live where Ipswich and Brisbane and Moretonshire meet. We live on a hill, so we are happy that we will never be caught in a Queensland flood. We have many Eucalyptus trees across the road and to our right. Near us there is a lovely acreage where the owner allows a couple of people to keep horses. Brianna used to go there very often, tending some acquaintances’ horses, and brushing them, hoping to be given a chance to ride one of them. She has had a few turns and enjoyed the galloping tremendously. She has a horse-riding helmet (Marisca’s old one) and really wishes she could get many more chances to ride- or better still: buy her own horse. Carl also loves to go see the “horsies”. He likes to be carried in a sling, i.e. when he is not insisting on walking or running by himself.

NEIGHBOURS

I have come to know most of our neighbours. None of them are close friends but we are all there to help each other out, such as with helping to carry a cupboard down for a garage sale, getting little palm trees or ferns from them, watering their garden when they are gone and them watering ours or feeding our pets, borrowing the odd tool or egg for pancakes on a rainy Sunday.

Our back neighbour is originally from Holland. Another neighbour is originally from Zimbabwe. Petrus knows a very friendly guy from Angola and his Australian wife and kid. Other than that, we know another family who has Dutch and Yugoslavian connections. Goodna is quite a multicultural community. It is a pleasant experience for the kids to grow up here.

Written in 1994

Names other than my own, have been changed to protect people