Our Korea Connection: An Australian couple's amazing story of a calling to rural Korea in the early 70's and its continuing connection to their lives

By Jo Bell and Kevin Bell

“I really don’t want to go to Korea! It’s a freezing cold, colourless place where people only wear khaki and fight wars!”
For two, fourth generation Australians in the early 1970’s, the only vision of Korea they had was from recalling newspaper articles about the Korean War in the 1950’s, when many Austr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arirung Pty Ltd
• Release date: Mar 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648273622

Jo Bell

Jo Bell was born in Sheffield and grew up on the fringes of the Derbyshire Peak District, leaving school just after the Miners’ Strike. She became an industrial archaeologist, specialising in coal and lead mines. A winner of the Charles Causley Prize and the Manchester Cathedral Prize, she was the first Canal Laureate for the UK appointed by the Poetry Society and the Canal & River Trust. She lives on a narrowboat on the English waterways. Kith (Nine Arches Press) is Jo Bell’s second collection of poems.

Book preview

Copyright:

This book is copyright © 2018. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without permission from the author. Every effort to comply with copyright requirements has been made by seeking permission and acknowledging owners of source material used in the text.

Disclaimer:

This book is a collection of memories and reports. Information gathered has come from a wide variety of sources; minutes books, newspapers, library archives, academic reports and other digital and online material, and not limited only to the sources acknowledged here. The personal stories and memories by individuals recorded here are their version of events and have been both provided and reproduced in good faith with no disrespect or defamation intended. Every effort has been made to ensure the researched information is correct. No liability for incorrect information or factual errors will be accepted by the author.

ISBN:

9780648273608 Paperback

9780648273615 Hard Cover

9780648273622 eBook

Printing:

Lightning Source | (AUS)

Design cover and interior:

Pickawoowoo Publishing Group

Printed & Channel Distribution

Lightning Source | Ingram (USA/UK/EUROPE/AUS)

Thank you Dear God for opening this pathway to Korea for us.

Thank you Columban missionaries for taking us into your family.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: Our Early Beginnings

CHAPTER 2: The Joining of Our Lives

CHAPTER 3: Our Korean Beginnings

CHAPTER 4: The Action Starts

CHAPTER 5: Getting Into Korean Life

CHAPTER 6: Our First Closure

CHAPTER 7: Re-Opening

CHAPTER 8: The Family Grows, and the Pathway Changes

CHAPTER 9: Winding Down Again

CHAPTER 10: Becoming Established Aussies

CHAPTER 11: A Surprise Return in 1999!

CHAPTER 12: Family Re-Connects with Korea

CHAPTER 13: Another Korean Adoption and an American Wedding!

CHAPTER 14: A Re-Union Visit

CHAPTER 15: Farewelling Friends, 2011

CHAPTER 16: More Korea Connections and Another Visit

PREFACE

I really don’t want to go to Korea! It’s a freezing cold colourless place where people only wear Khaki and fight wars!

For two fourth generation Australians in the early 1970’s, the only vision of Korea we had was from recalling newspaper articles about the Korean War in the 1950’s, when many Australians died of the cold as well as the war. As a child, that image of Korea was imprinted on my mind, and it was the last place in the world I wanted to go to. However, we had been offered an opportunity to go and work there as lay missionaries.

This is the story of how accepting that offer in blind faith completely changed and unbelievably enriched our life journey, including our family, and their children, in fact forever.

Map of South Korea

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We really have received a close family connection with the Columban missionaries, from the time we first met some priests in Bacchus Marsh, when they came up from Essendon to be locums at our Parish when our priest was ill. We were fascinated to hear them talking about their Mission work, and when we told them we wished to work as lay missionaries, they gave us the connection with Korea. Over the next 45 years, they have treated us as part of their family, wherever we visit them in Perth, Seoul, Jeju, Japan, Manila, Ireland and Melbourne. When we went to Melbourne to watch Peter play in a Grand Final with the Kangaroos, they were delighted to provide accommodation in their magnificent Essendon Centre, and even more delighted when the Roos won the Grand Final!

Columban Sisters really looked after us with their medical care, providing a Hospital at Mokpo, Korea, where 2 of our sons were born, and their wonderful medical carers, especially Dr. Sr. Enda, both in Mokpo and Hallim on Jeju. We also have enjoyed visiting Columban Sisters in Seoul and Ireland over the years when we travel.

Poor Clare Sisters on Jeju in Korea were loving sisters for us, and loving aunties for our children. They also gave us much spiritual growth. We still enjoy attending Mass at their Chapel, which has become the Kumac Parish Church.

We also thank and acknowledge PALMS (Paulian Association Lay Missionary Society), which trained us to be Lay Missionaries back in 1972. They appointed us to go to Lombardina in the Kimberley, however we were asked to give up the family house to a new nursing sister who also had family… so they could not accommodate us. However, we went to Korea instead, hence our Korea Connection. We did move up to Broome in 2010 and often go up to Lombardina… a special place! PALMS gave us a good opening to accept different cultures and people.

We thank and praise our dear departed Parents, who humbly tolerated our unusual life choices, taking us far away from them. They were always glad to see us and our increasing family, and they supported us in any way they could. We also thank and praise our six sons and one daughter, their spouses and the 16 grandchildren which we have so far. They do not regard us as being crazy to have taken up our Korea connection, in fact those who remember living in that country are somewhat grateful for that very different experience. Peter is also grateful to us for bringing him to Australia as our adopted son as he has had a great AFL football history, and is now enjoying working on the ABC radio.

We are very grateful to all Korean people who have been part of our lives over the last 45 years. We still enjoy meeting up with Korean people, even in Broome! When we greet them with their language, they treat us as dear relatives, and we feel like that too.

CHAPTER 1

OUR EARLY BEGINNINGS

Jo’s Story:

My mother was born Essie Janette Draffin, the first child of Amelia and Robert Draffin, who at the time had a dairy farm in Traralgon, Gippsland, Victoria. They later moved to a farm at Clarkefield, 40 km North of Melbourne. There were seven children in the family, but sadly their Father died of facial cancer when the youngest was only a baby and Essie (my Mum) was twelve. Mum had to grow up quickly to care for her siblings, as their mother was stricken with grief at losing her husband so prematurely. A ‘swagman’ called Jack Humphries came along and offered his help, and built himself a hut on their farm, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. Grandma must have recovered enough to send Mum to Kyneton District High school, which was an hour’s train ride North from Clarkefield. Her younger siblings stayed home and helped on the farm, but Mum trained as a primary school teacher, working around country Victoria for a few years. My Grandma had a grand piano, and all her offspring learned to play it. Both Mum and her sister Mary became piano teachers.

My father, Gibson Charles Hawkes was born in Bendigo. He had no siblings, and was apparently somewhat pampered by his ‘two aunts and an uncle’, one of which was his Mother. He chose not to leave Bendigo to attend University in Melbourne, but to study industrial chemistry at the Bendigo Institute of Technology. He regretted this decision for the rest of his life, and strongly encouraged his children to get a university degree! Being his first child, I was under a lot of pressure to achieve what he had not. However, he was very proud of having been involved with the gold rush prosperity in Bendigo, and would spend much time showing us photos of his influential friends. He owned a small flash sports car which he liked to drive to Melbourne, where he was introduced to Mum by a mutual friend. They married in 1942, a very modest war-time wedding with no fancy white dress.

They moved into a small duplex house in Pascoe Vale, a short distance from the Essendon Football ground. I was born six weeks prematurely on the 17th April, 1944, in the Sacred Heart Hospital, Moreland, on the day after Mum’s birthday. In my teen years I used to accuse her of having had a wild birthday party which initiated my birth. She didn’t really appreciate that! Apparently I spent my first few weeks in a humidicrib, a tiny red baby, described by Dad as like a skinned rabbit! I do have some early photos of being held and looked at adoringly by my parents after I made it home. Mum always ‘worried over me’, obviously never quite losing her anxiety for my survival. My family were church-going Anglicans, strong in practical faith, especially Mum who played the organ in Riddell’s Creek Church for a number of years. However, not only was I born in a Catholic hospital, apparently I was baptised in a baptismal gown loaned to me by a Catholic friend… although not in a Catholic Church.

At 19 months, I became an older sibling when my sister Gail was born. A vigorous little full-term this time! We spent our early years playing together in our back yard, since there was a polio epidemic happening in the late 40’s, so we were not allowed out on the streets. We used to love catching a train to Clarkefield to spend time on Grandma’s farm, with cows, calves, chooks everywhere and a large population of cats which fed on the spare milk. Back in Essendon, I remember setting up a ‘cowshed’, and standing dolls and teddies on all fours so they became cows. A beach bucket became a separator, harvesting the cream from the milk. My sister did not appreciate being dragged out of bed at dawn to enact this milking game! But that’s when you milk cows!

Jo (R) with her sister Gail and Granny Draffin at her farm in Clarkefield… around 1949

When I was 7 and she was 5, our baby brother John was born, and soon after that we moved to Wantirna South in the foothills of the Dandenong ranges on the outskirts of Melbourne. We lived in a house belonging to an uncle of Mum’s for a year whilst Dad looked for a farm to buy. He was keen not to live the rest of his life in the city. We enjoyed our brief stay in an area which was near to some nice forest, and we walked to school through market gardens, sometimes sampling the sweet corn.

Somehow, my parents managed to buy the 44 acre Rannoch Farm at Riddell’s Creek when I was 8 years old. In order to have some hope of paying for it, Mum was to run a dairy farm, while Dad continued to work in Sunshine, an outer suburb of Melbourne, in his profession as an industrial chemist for Taubmann’s Paint factory. Mum’s uncle bred Ayrshire cattle, and provided us with some cows to start off with. Later, since we were marketing cream to the local butter factory at Romsey, we gradually changed to Jerseys, bred by Mum’s brother-in-law, Laurie Veal at Cohuna. The jerseys were a little smaller, and had a more cooperative temperament and a higher butter fat production. The bull was the only problem… we were warned he could cause fatalities if we ventured into his paddock.

Later on in the fifties, we changed the farm enterprise to sheep, since it was less time and energy consuming for Mum, who was expecting our last sister in 1959. We had one hundred crossbred ewes, and bred lambs for sale at 3 months old, using meat breed rams. Assisting Mum and Dad with sheep farming prepared me for some work I did in Korea a bit later on in life.

After walking home one mile from Riddell’s Creek State school, my sister and I would change into work clothes; bring in cows, set up milking machines and separators, feed chooks, ducks, calves, pigs, dogs and cats. Once inside, we could prepare vegies for dinner whilst Mum did the milking, and we listened to ‘The Children’s Hour’, an ABC radio programme which entertained and encouraged kids in music, art work and writing competitions. We were both members of The Argonauts Club, and occasionally our compositions got read out over the air. Our little brother John spent some of his time in a box in the cowshed, and the rest of it exploring cupboards in the house, maintaining his food intake! At weekends we used to have great fun playing with our neighbours the Knewstubs, who had a dairy farm adjoining ours. They had a parallel family to us, and a creek ran through both our properties, providing endless opportunities for Saturday afternoon fun for us four girls. Their little brother John was much the same age as ours, so they became great mates for the rest of their lives.

By this stage, people were asking What do you want to be when you grow up? Around the age of 9, I was given a Dr. Doolittle book. Dr Doolittle was an animal doctor, who was so close to animals he could understand and speak their languages. So he was a very effective animal doctor. Until then, I had never realised there were such people as animal doctors… I guess we looked after our animals as best we could, but never used a vet. Anyway, a passion was born in my heart to become an animal doctor! Having heard about flying Doctors in the North West, I dreamed some day of being a flying animal doctor… in the Kimberley, even though I didn’t even know the name of that place! Much more could be written about those happy rural primary school days… the first place I remember feeling ‘at home’.

Life goes on, and by 1956 I needed to go further afield to continue my schooling, since Riddell had no secondary school. The more financially advantaged kids went to boarding schools, but we couldn’t afford that, so Mum organised for me to board with an Aunt of hers in Essendon, from where I could walk to Essendon High School… regarded as one of the top five academic high schools in Melbourne. Students were supposed to sit an entrance exam to achieve selection, however, because I came from a small country school they allowed me in because I had been Dux of my school. I enjoyed EHS, once I got used to finding my way to the appropriate classroom… a big change from a 35 child school to a 1000 student institution! (I still have nightmares about not being able to find the right classroom!)

I found boarding in Essendon difficult though, finally allowing a stray dog to follow me home to Auntie Gertie’s, causing her to suggest I would be better off living at Riddell and travelling daily! Dad modified his travelling to drop me off for a school bus from Sunbury or Keilor, which took kids to EHS, which is how my sister and I got to school over the next few years. This required leaving home at 7am, and returning at around 7pm. However it was worth it to live in the country and with our family. In January 1959 a little sister, Rachel was added to our family. Carrying her round in public accompanied by our 45 year old Mum, people would sometimes wonder which one of us was her Mother! She was a very cute little doll for me.

I began to realise that high academic achievement would be required if I wanted to study vet science. I found maths a bit of a challenge; however I was determined not to let anything destroy my dream. Too tired to study at night, I adopted a routine of getting up at 3am, and studying in front of the kitchen stove until 6am, when the rest of the family got up to start the day. This got me through the maths, physics and chemistry which I needed to access vet science. My Dad tried hard to persuade me to study medicine instead… A far more suitable profession for ladies! However, I felt I couldn’t handle the emotional stress of dealing with humans in life-threatening circumstances, but I could calmly assist animals, and re-assure their owners in similar situations.

After a second year 12 at University High School in Melbourne, I was accepted into the first year of the new Veterinary Science faculty at Melbourne University in 1963. With the aid of a Commonwealth scholarship and living allowance, I was also accepted into Janet Clarke Hall, a women’s residential college at Melbourne University in Parkville. A whole new life opened up for me, as I became friends with Arts students, and had more spare time for recreational activities. My attraction to animals resulted in me concealing pet mice in a basement, and a pet possum in my wardrobe in first year. As the only vet student in this ladies college, I was regarded as a bit of an oddity, and absolutely forbidden to identify animal bones in the college stew! I nearly got expelled for tying the formalin-preserved body of a rat we had finished dissecting onto a pull-down light-switch cord, causing my friend to shriek as she found herself grabbing a rat to turn on the light! However, on the whole they accepted me, and we would spend hours from 10pm till 2am drinking coffee and discussing the vital issues of the 60’s… politics, sex and religion. My opinions were not always in line with those of my peers, but it was good practice for future life to debate with them. As my vet course went on, I had less and less time to do this, as the contact hours were at least three times those of Arts students! Interestingly, in those days professional degrees were regarded as ‘trade tickets’, somewhat inferior to ‘pure academic’ University degrees. However, my friendship with Arts students expanded my social experience of University, and I am still friends with them.

Halfway through 4th year, it was decided to move us vet students to Werribee, previously famous as the site of sewage disposal for the city of Melbourne! My friends were somewhat dismayed that I was leaving their culturally rich environment to live at the ‘sewage farm’. The vet faculty had established a hospital, surgery, pathology laboratory, and farm vet practice with the local dairy farmers, where we were to get our practical experience of the course. Living quarters were the last priority, so we lived in temporary quarters designed for dairy technology students… all males, so the four female vet students enjoyed a bathroom equipped with a new stainless steel urinal! My college friends were fascinated, and christened it ‘The Fountain of Youth’, addressing me as ‘The Keeper of the Fountain of Youth’!

Although I was a bit sad to leave JCH, I did enjoy becoming totally absorbed in the veterinary course, especially as now there was much practical work. One of my favourite topics was bovine obstetrics, for which we had a brilliant lecturer, Dr. Val Sloss. He managed to set up very realistic models of pregnant cows, with the real pelvic bones of a cow mounted on a frame, with a rubber model uterus and cervix into which he put dead foetal calves which he picked up from abattoirs. He would create every variant of foetal malpositioning and challenge us to deliver them using whatever aids were available… with embryotomy as a last resort! I did not particularly appreciate my silly male prac partner filling my boots with water from a hose whilst I had both arms inside the ‘cow’! After I graduated, I found real cow obstetrics much easier than our prac exercises.

We had some particularly famous lecturers; Professor Doug Blood, (Large Animal Medicine), and Professor Ken Jubb, (Pathology), both of whom had authored the current global texts on their subject. Our other lecturers were all top quality, with much practical experience as well as academic brilliance. Being the first group of students going through the course, we were all on a steep learning curve together, which meant we developed close and friendly relationships with our teachers, which often persisted after graduation.

Towards the end of 4th year, we decided to have a student dance, as we used to do in other residential colleges. I was on the organising committee, and found myself in disagreement with another committee member about the colour of the cellophane with which we were going to cover the fluorescent lights to create a warmer ambience. He wanted blue, but I knew that would make us look like corpses, so I wanted red. Looking deeply into each other’s eyes, we decided on a compromise; blue one end, red the other and a purple strip where they overlapped in the middle. Brilliant! I think I had one dance with him, but he had brought along a girlfriend from Melbourne, so we didn’t connect. However, in the weeks that followed, we found we had more things we needed to discuss. He had a car and he went to church in Werribee, which I also liked to do, but didn’t have transport. So I asked him to drop me off at the Anglican Church before he crossed the river to the Catholic Church. He would pick me up afterwards, and to thank him I would invite him to my room for a coffee… and we would compare notes on our sermons… more options for debates. Then there were the ‘green sheets’ in the Age Newspaper, delivered to the common room, which had the whole week’s radio & TV programmes. We found ourselves competing for these, as we were both keen on listening to the classical music on ABC 2 and the green sheets would tell you the name & performers etc. Given that our family and religious backgrounds were very different, and we had hardly noticed each other for the first 4 years of the course, we were surprised to discover so many things we had in common. Eventually there was a staff versus students cricket game at end of term, where a keg of beer was provided… We found ourselves holding hands….

Kevin’s Story:

Iam the only child of George and Kathleen Bell, born February 20 1944. Dad was born the eldest of four children in 1906 in Heidelburg, an outer suburb of Melbourne. At the age of 14 he started work as office boy for Nycander and Company in Richmond, and retired 43 years later from the role of company secretary and book-keeper!

Mum was born in 1907 and grew up as the youngest of four children on a family farm at Bagshot, a little north of Bendigo. Her father was a civil engineer one of whose jobs was the construction of much of the irrigation channels in that area of northern Victoria. She was orphaned whilst in her early teens and finished schooling with her elder sister Mollie (Mary Josephine), boarding at a convent in Melbourne.

Kathleen and Mollie joined Nycander and Co. in the positions of secretarial duties, and there Kathleen met George! She had been raised as an Irish Catholic, and I presume George was accepted into the Catholic Church before the marriage.

The family home I remember was always in Oberwyl Rd, Burwood. It was a comfortable weatherboard house with features memorable for a child – a roomy under the house area, an asbestos shed with a dirt floor where wood, chook feed and timber were stored, and a seemingly large back yard. I recall many hours in all these areas. Chook pen and run were at the back, vegetable and flower gardens down one side and a lawn big enough on which to play cricket and footy – at least when I was young. Probably it was a very typical Melbourne outer suburbia at the time.

In my early years I recall ice, milk and bread being regularly delivered by horse and cart. For children it was a treat to be given ice fragments or fresh bread crusts by the delivery man. When home, my Father George would keep a sharp eye out for horse manure, and if deposited would swoop with bucket and shovel, thus augmenting the garden soil fertility. I don’t remember any competition from neighbours in this activity.

From the days of primary schooling (St Dominic’s East Camberwell) I was afflicted by bronchitis and asthma of increasing severity, and would spent many weeks bedridden. Memories of those years include amusing myself with jigsaw puzzles, stamp collecting and reading endlessly – all the Enid Blyton books, and especially the William books by Richmal Crompton. Designing and constructing various amateur contraptions was also good fun. I was never bored. I have many more good memories including bonfire and fireworks nights twice a year.

Kevin with his ginger cat in his back yard, about 8 years old in Marcellin College uniform.

Perhaps having to occupy myself alone gave me the attribute of being able to perform seemingly boring repetitious activities – I recall throwing a ball for hours against a fairly narrow brick chimney on the back roof of the house, the motivation for accuracy being that if I missed, the ball either lodged in the spouting or went right over the roof to disappear out the front or on the road. Also making a model windmill from matches occupied me nightly for a year or so. Later on in the last year of school, with an interest in astronomy, I made my own reflecting telescope, starting by countless hours grinding a glass disk to become a perfect concave mirror. I was good at following instructions!

Weekends were spent with a group of local boys. As well as cricket in the summer and kicking a footy in the winter, playing cowboys and Indians was one pursuit. The Indians had in this case the more lethal weapons, being bows made from bamboo and arrows from sharpened split paling slivers. Better than imitation rifles sawn from wood. Scenarios enacted were obtained from Saturday afternoons at the local picture theatre, where one shilling (10 cents) would provide admittance plus a bag of lollies. Catching yabbies in the local creek was also fun. We would also make carts from bits and pieces of wood, with car ball-bearings for wheels. You can imagine the noise of half a dozen such carts racing downhill at speed on roughish road metal. Broadsiding around a corner at the bottom of the hill was the only means of stopping. Not so much traffic in those days, in fact never in my childhood did we own a car. After I went to Uni, Mum, then in her fifties, acquired a small inheritance and bought the first car, in which she drove George all over Victoria and beyond.

Going to the footy – every Collingwood game for the season except the distant match against Geelong – was of course memorable in the winter months. We would generally go with a few other boys and their dads. Tram, train, bus trips, Victoria Park, the MCG, big crowds, our idolised players (my jumper was number 22, the number of initially Bobby Rose, followed by Bill Serong and others). An improvised tightly wrapped newspaper parcel was the footy kicked around at half time and after the game and the ground would become a sea of small boys kicking footys. An autograph book with those famous signatures… Enough of the VFL.

I did actually have some regrets about not having siblings – probably mainly because this made me so different from nearly every other boy at school.

Following those few years of local primary school I was to spend the next 11 years at Marcellin College in Canterbury, a boy’s school run by the Marist brothers. Transport was by two trams, or in the latter half of the period, by bike. On the whole I did not have much difficulty studying, and came to really enjoy physics, chemistry and maths. They seemed to explain so many things! So I was often near the top of the class, which could have caused peer group problems, but fortunately I was passably good at athletic pursuits, and at school played in football and cricket teams and was in the swimming and athletic squads. Outside of school I regularly played tennis – for quite a while coaching on Sunday morning and at the local tennis club Saturday and Sunday afternoons. It was probably my best sport, and I played in pennants and city and country tournaments with modest success. I have pleasant memories of the tennis. The asthma continued to give a bit of grief but I didn’t let it stop me. I maintained middle distance running throughout, and for training and enjoyment would run all through the local suburbs, night and day.

In the latter years of secondary school I started to confirm in my mind a career in Chemical Engineering. Amongst other things I had the opportunity to spend time on the floor and in the laboratory of the place where dad worked, and in associated companies. From an early age I did enjoy this – starting with accompanying dad to work on Saturday mornings. The company made vinegar (Skipping Girl, still an icon) and fresh baker’s yeast, both involving biological processes.

However, we were encouraged to repeat year 12, (Matriculation) both to get better marks and earn a scholarship, and also to mature a bit!