Vertrek

By Keith Paulusse

Vertrek is a lively, wide-ranging social biography about fifteen postwar Australian-Dutch families, taking central stage is the Paulusse family. Candidly narrated by Kees Paulusse, the son of Dutch immigrants to Melbourne in the early sixties, this chronicles the familys adventure and his own perceptions and experience. Vertrek begins on November 9, 1961, when his family sails Australia bound on the iconic Dutch colonial liner Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.

This fast-paced and intriguing social biography resonates with the indomitable spirits of postwar Dutch immigrants. This vivid chronicle details the lives of fifteen divers Dutch families whom Kees befriended when he became a postman at Portarlington, a fishing village where his dad, Piet Paulusse, and other Dutch families operated scallop fishing boats. Every day, frustrated and homesick, young Dutch women waited in anticipation at their front gate letter box for therapy talks to Kees, de Postbode (Keith, the Postie).

This biography is a story full of Joie de vivrethe joy of living; its contagious, uplifting, and even humorous. The easygoing manner of Australians was a great equalizer to our somewhat driven Dutch nature; no worries and a fair go resonated with everything will be all right.

The resourceful, tolerant, artistic, and freethinking Paulusses quickly formed friendships with native-born Australians. Aussies resonated with links of Dutch historical strands that made up the Australian identity, begun in 1606, when the Dutch discovered, mapped, and named the worlds fifth continent New Holland. The mythological retired Australian Gallipoli soldiers called Anzacs also wanted to make friends with this young Dutch postie, who talked like the Belgians, whom they met at Ypres and Passchendeale.

Arriving in at the Migrant Assimilation Camp, the Paulusses were urged to drop their native language, cultural norms, and values. Culture shocks were relentless for this liberal Protestant Dutch family whose values clashed with a monoculture conservative Angloceltic society that was years behind in attitude and sophistication. Living in a transit Caravan Park, the family came face to face with human rights abuses. Confronted with the White Australia Policy, inequality of women, nonrecognition of Aborigines, the stealing of babies from unmarried mothers, and the stolen generation of Australian aborigines, all were awareness incubators for the familys later involvement in social justice.

This biography begins in the effervescent cultural cauldron of the counterculture movements. Not only did the pill change sex from procreation to recreation but completely changed the mores of conservative Australia. Despite the antiwar movements popularity, the Australian government was about to conscript eighteen-year-old Dutch boys to fight in the killing fields of Vietnam. As of old, the Dutch revolted, tens of thousands started a new exodus of Vertrek back to Nederland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781499031768

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Keith Paulusse.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014920359

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-3175-1

                Softcover         978-1-4990-3170-6

                eBook              978-1-4990-3176-8

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Rev. date: 03/06/2015

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Contents

Thank you, team

Glossary

Introduction To my readers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Select Bibliography

To my omas and opas

Cornelis (Kees) and Francien Paulusse

Andries and Elizabeth de Blaeij

Their children, Piet and Bets, my parents

Thank you, team

When my parents were here, they encouraged me in every way possible. They have transitioned, and now my family and friends have inspired me and taken an interest. I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to all; without your positive energy and enrichment I could not have completed Vertrek.

A special hug and thank you to my sister Liz Marsland for her encouragement to keep going

To Dean R. P. Edwards, for offering positive and constructive criticism, hard to swallow but necessary: thank you, Dean.

I also thank my Dutch friends for reading some portions of the manuscript: Adriaan Kans, Annemieke Vlieger, Piet de Blaeij, Yvon Davis, Tinneke van Kooten, Mirka Bandura, Astrid Verburg, Claire Van Driel.

My Australian friends: Megan Jaworski, Monique Edwards, Dean Edwards, Adi Gondo Hartono, Charlie, Helen Driscoll, Nazanin Shobeiri.

My Italian friends: Stefano Cattaneo, Andrea Simone, Franz D’Aversa, Claudio Coriazzoli, Attilio Benzoni

Photographs: A special thanks to my friend and professional photographer Kai Jiang for taking photos of the first fleet of ships models made by Piet Paulusse my dad. To my Dutch friend Hans van Dijk who took the picture of The Johan van Oldenbarnevelt on the day of our departure 9 November 1961. Thank you to my friend Bob Sonter for the use of his picture of Fitzroy Falls in New South Wales for the front cover.

My Fitness Instructor and Personal Trainer, for without a fit body one cannot get a fit mind Alfie Vielma at Bodylivin (see Alvaro Vielma on Face Book)

Influential friends: Ewen Tregelis-Smith and Dolf Boek and my Canadian friend Frank O Hanson

The reading group of the School of Languages and the many discussions that were had about multiculturalism and assimilation helped to test assumptions that I may have had. Not forgetting the wonderful editing team and advisors at Xlibris, thank you.

Glossary

Aussie Australian

Clog wog derogatory name for an Australian Dutch person

Nederlander Netherlander, Dutch person. Nederlands Dutch language. Nederland the Netherlands

Oma Dutch for Grandmother. Opa Grandfather. Tante Auntie. Oom Uncle

Piet or Pa my dad, my father. Bets or Mum my mother

Gezellig I use the word gezellig or gezelligheid. This word more than any other word describes the core national psyche of Nederlanders. Gezelligheid (being gezellig) happens when companionship, style, ambience, food, drink, environment, and genuine human loveliness all converge in one moment in time, place and space. This can happen many times during the day; it’s a sort of happy serendipity but much more. Gezelligheid is a noun, verb, and adjective, just like love in English.

Vertrek is a captivating Dutch word meaning departure or leaving; it can also be one’s living and working space: ‘What is your vertrek like?’ The word nearly always conjures up hope, expectations, courage, audacity, bravery, resilience, grit, verve and nerve, finding new directions. Or it can mean transitions, leaving one for another. No wonder that one of the world’s largest non-Dutch carmakers uses the Dutch word vertrek as a brand name. This social biography has many vertreks and transitions, commencing with our Amsterdam departure, Melbourne arrival, Bonegilla migrant assimilation camp, building first house, 1960s counterculture movements, death of a child, the death of President Kennedy, the moon landing, marriages, HIV AIDS,,, tuition-free School of Languages. The biography finishes with Bets and Piet’s last and final vertrek.

Introduction To my readers

I was but an eleven-year-old Dutch boy living in the maritime port of Terneuzen in the province of Zeeland when I, my parents, and two younger sisters migrated to Australia.

As a boy, I was interested in the typical things most boys are interested in, building cubby houses, go-carts, or digging tunnels, playing soccer in winter, swimming in summer, and numerous bicycling tours through the polders of Zeelandic Flanders with my cousins or with my Karel Doorman scouting group and friends. The only way I was different was that I liked reading books in English, Dutch, and German, and I liked telling stories and acting them out in pantomime; above all, I was curious.

Vertrek is a captivating Dutch word meaning departure or leaving; it can also be one’s living and working space: ‘What is your vertrek like?’ The word nearly always conjures up hope, expectations, courage, audacity, bravery, resilience, grit, verve and nerve, finding new directions. Or it can mean transitions leaving one for another. No wonder that one of the world’s largest non-Dutch car makers uses the Dutch word vertrek as a brand name. This social biography has many vertreks and transitions, commencing with our Amsterdam departure, Melbourne arrival, Bonegilla migrant assimilation camp, building first house, 1960s counterculture movements, death of a child, the death of President Kennedy, the moon landing, marriages, HIV AIDS, post- tuition-free School of Languages. The biography finishes with Bets and Piet’s last and final vertrek.

This is my story about post-war Dutch Australian migrants and my family; it is not a story of dysfunctionality, not one of rejection, divorce, abuse, drugs, sex or violence or any other front-page sensationalism that would sell tabloid newspapers. It is not a narrative of ‘poor little old me’, even though I was only thirteen when starting work in an Australian butter factory, or being spiritually abused on a Drysdale market garden farm. It is a story of how a young boy grew up to a young man in the midst of experiencing cultural shock, war in the classroom, and coming face to face with human rights violations on a grand scale in a country that had no Charter of Human Rights and no protection against such violations. The sensing of spirituality and sexuality, the gradual awakening of all the senses of being a boy progressing to manhood, experiencing empowerment and understanding words like courage, resilience, pride, and grit gave me self-confidence; it’s a story of awakening. The narrative of Vertrek is influenced by my own family, including fifteen other Dutch families and many Australian friends long gone. Their stories have remained alive; they were my significant teachers and mentors. Their ability to love and their sincerity can be appreciated even when they are far away, and if their virtues are no longer actively expressed, they still sustain and inspire me.

This biography is a story full of joie de vivre—the joy of living—and hopefully, dear reader, you will find it contagious, uplifting, and even humorous. The easy going manner of Australians was a great equalizer to our somewhat driven Dutch nature; no worries and a fair go resonated with ‘everything will be all right’. In the 1960s the ordinary Australians believed in everyone should be given a fair go in an egalitarian kind of a way; it was the ideal that everyone be included. The Aussies had always been welcoming, albeit we had to make the first moves in being friendly and sociable, always smiling and reaching out the hand of friendship. The journey on the iconic Dutch ship of state, the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, is when a true conscious awakening began and the world was opened to me by meeting many different people, including an Australian couple who took me under their wing to teach me Australian English; Noelene and Jack came from Benalla, a Victorian country town.

Because I started work so early in life, I met many First and Second World War soldiers. I worked and played with them; they were different Australians who believed in real mateship, who coined many Australian words we no longer used or have forgotten because we are now more globalised than Australianised. I worked with people who helped pull the KLM Uiver DC-2 out of the mud at the Albury racecourse in 1934 when it was participating in the London to Melbourne air race. The odd thing that I noticed was that everyone I met at work or at school with had a Nederlands connection or some Dutch influence. This led me to believe that the Australian identity, whatever it is, consists of many Dutch historical strands. Even Aboriginal words contain hundreds of Nederlands words, evidence of the hundreds of Dutch castaways having mingled with the indigenous people four hundred years ago.

From a young age, I was encouraged by my parents, Bets and Piet, to create and craft my own identity; nothing was foisted upon me. I was to make my own decisions, though they would supply materials, tools, and opportunities. We were not intellectuals, but ordinary people who read serious books, made works of art, and observed people and society. In our humble family library, I was surrounded and influenced by a wide range of writers, artists, great thinkers, scientists, and monks. These were the means I used to craft my identity.

I knew from an early age I was different in my empathy and compassion for people—I found it difficult to see bad in people; I still do. The Calvinist notion of utter depravity and sinfulness from the days of one’s birth did not hold water with me. No parent would look at their newborn baby and say, ‘Oh, you little evil wicked baby’; none of us accepted this. There was no obsession with sin, right or wrong; sin originally meant ‘missing the mark’, and when I’d missed the mark, I was encouraged to pick myself up, learn, and start again. Right and wrongs were explained through the laws of nature; you’d know you burn your hand on a hotplate. I knew if I showed poor behaviour I would get poor behaviour back, so I refrained from bad behaviour. I knew from my observation that most people are decent, kind, and good. Both my parents, Bets and Piet, were pacifist and hated war and the denigration of people through character assassination in the form of gossip or stereotyping groups of people. They did not believe in physical punishment; neither would they use fear or guilt to change our behaviour.

This social biography is not an academic work, because it deals with hands on reality, as it happened, and did not go through any filtering of interpretations, or try to fit anyone’s ideology; in the end, perceptions are reality. I did apply the rigors of academia in that every historical fact was verified. Many people were interviewed over copious cups of latte in many of Melbourne’s and Geelong’s cafés. Naturally my journals over the many years were read and checked over. Peer reading groups were formed to offer constructive criticism; amongst these were people living on the margins who had good reading and writing skills, the kind of people marketers and spin doctors would not give the time of day to. My School of Languages, where I teach conversational English and clear thinking for international students, migrants, and refugees, were also reading the Vertrek manuscripts and giving valuable feedback. Of course I’d place snippets of Vertrek on Facebook to test out reactions and solicit views and experiences different from mine. Included in the reading groups were history and legal study students from Melbourne University. Everybody’s opinion was of equal worth. Dutch Facebook friends in the Netherlands were asked to critically comment, and they did! As one would expect from the fair but firm Dutch.

Most people have at some stage of their lives had one, two or more mentors. One of my mentors, although I did not ever meet him was Stud Terkels, no he wasn’t Dutch but an American, from Chicago.Stud was an oral historian of the ordinary people, the people academics and politicians usually ignore. Vertrek is an oral history; even though I started writing my Australian chronicles since I was eleven I also spoke to thousands of people and listened and recorded their stories in photos and in writing. The Australian Aborigines have oral histories, the whole of the Bible is an oral history. God did not dictate it, people verbalized it.

Studs wrote a dozen or so books, the book that touched my mind and my heart was, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression He interviewed countless people across a wide spectrum of socio economic status. There were no experts, if there were there were also counter experts. Perception is reality.

To a large degree I followed Stud’s lead in writing VERTREK because I felt it gives everyone a voice. Through my approaches of listening, observing and talking to people touching what they had created, art work, tasting what they cooked and seeing what they had planted. I gained inspiration from everyone I met. Everyone!

There was a concern by academics who said that oral histories really did not count, as people could not recall accurately things that actually happened. Can anyone recall accurately what happened all the time? The academic argument was settled in 1997 when The Supreme Court of Canada said that oral history is as valid and reliable as written history.

*     *     *

Each chapter in Vertrek is a story on its own, yet all chapters follow chronologically. I refer to Piet as my dad and Bets as my mum; sometimes I call them Mum and Dad. This is done to break monotony. Holland is not used in this book. Holland is the name of two provinces in Nederland, North Holland and South Holland. I rarely say I come from Holland because I don’t; I come from Zeeland in Nederland. This confusion was caused by the English to obfuscate the Dutch trading empire; there has always been a love-hate relationship between the English and the Dutch. The English have won out by calling us Dutch, which we are not, but we are stuck with it. In this book, I refer to a Dutchman as Nederlander and Nederlands as the Dutch language; I used both Nederlands and Dutch for the sake of not having too much Dutchness. I hope this did not sound like a lot of double Dutch. Often there are flashbacks, comparing a particular situation with today, such as when we received mail which had been on a boat for five weeks, I might compare that with an email or Facebook message received within nanoseconds from the other side of the world.

Many more people around the globe during the last fifteen years have become aware of Nederland’s contribution to world civilization. Major books about Dutch culture, history, and philosophy have been published, not by dutch authors but American and English, by such as Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, and Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813. Jonathan I. Israel’s Radical Enlightenment or Lisa Jardine’s Going Dutch are popular books for the serious readers; these books are distributed worldwide highlighting the meaning and relevance of Dutchness in nation building. It always astonished me when I heard many an old Dutch Australian say to their children, ‘You’re in Australia and only speak English, forget your Dutch.’ What a short-sighted view; we are now global, and the more languages we speak, the more cultures we understand (as languages define cultures) and the more competitive we are.

The new social media has created vibrant new virtual Dutch communities, no longer in a cultural isolation bubble. On Facebook, hundreds of new arrivals are joining such social media as Stuff Dutch People Like, Dutch TV. Dutch connections. The new generation of Dutch people now settling in Australia are asking the same questions we asked when we arrived almost sixty years ago. The difference is that answers are instantaneously given: Does anyone know how to get dual citizenship? Can I make friends without going to the pub? Can you give me a recipe on BBQing kangaroo? Where can I meet Nederlanders? When is the borrel avond (drinks evening)?

Nowadays, Dutch backpackers take Aussies as partners. I am glad Aussies have good taste; the Dutch are pretty and handsome. Most new Netherlanders settling in Australia are professionals who speak excellent English; I am told that most come here for one general reason being that Nederland is vol—Netherlands is full. That is such an old reason which many of the post-war Dutch used sixty-five years ago. I smile and say Australia has a more high-density urban population than the Netherlands; Sydney has five million inhabitants, Melbourne four million, Adelaide two point two million. Traffic jams in all the cities can take many hours. Interesting to note is that not one Dutch city has over one million people. The majority of Australian Dutch live in high-density urban population areas.

The Australian population census 2011 statistics show that out of a population of 21,507,719 the number of people who spoke Dutch at home was 37,246. The number of people who identified with Dutch ancestry was 335,494. The number of people who were born in Nederland was 76,049.

Throughout Vertrek, I use the word gezellig or gezelligheid. This word more than any other word describes the core national psyche of Nederlanders. Gezelligheid (being gezellig) happens when companionship, style, ambience, food, drink, environment, and genuine human loveliness all converge in one moment in time, place, and space. This can happen many times during the day; it’s a sort of happy serendipity but much more. Gezelligheid is a noun, verb, and adjective just like love in English.

I have lived fifty-four years in Australia; although I have visited Nederland countless times, my identity would be more Australian than Dutch, primarily because of Australian influences. I have dual nationality even though I became a naturalized Australian in 1964. I had to because I started work with the PMG (postmaster general’s department); to be awarded scholarships for studies, one had to be an Australian citizen. The Dutch government did not recognize my naturalization because it was done when I was a child. Both my parents remained Dutch, although they were permanent citizens of Australia. Now forward to reading, you will meet amazing and exciting personalities they come alive and you will fall in love with their character. Even though this is a biography, the question many of my readers online are asking is what happened to Maarten and Henk and is Jack still alive? A follow-up biography is already started; I am thinking of calling it The Polder Boys in Oz. I have included a glossary to explain the few Dutch words used in Vertrek. I am happy to answer any questions and engage in conversation through social media. The Dutch and Manderin translations will follow this English edition of Vertrek I wish you all happy reading.

Regards,

Keith

Chapter 1

In every conceivable manner, the family is linked to our past, bridge to our future.

—Alex Haley, author of Roots

The sun shone brightly on a cloudless perfect day on the last Tuesday in the month, September 30, 1924. Skipper Cornelis Paulusse, my grandfather, called Kees for short, hurried excitedly and with great strides, his black wooden shoes clattering on the cobbled stones as he made his way to the Terneuzen town hall to record the birth of his and young wife Francien’s fourth child and second son.

Het Stad Huis (Dutch for town hall) was the place to register births and deaths. The Paulusses’ kinfolk annals show that they had been making this journey over the cobbled stones since 1594,the year the town hall was built after Prince William of Orange granted city rights. ‘What’s your new son’s name?’ Mijnheer (Mr) Huizinga the registrar asked Kees. ‘His name is Pieter Paulusse, we will call him Piet.’ Thereupon, Kees’ signature was placed as the informant. As the custom was all the menfolk at Het Stad Huis received a large Dutch cigar, congratulations were said, and the women employees received Belgian chocolates that Kees had purchased cheaply in Ghent, Belgium two days ago when he had to deliver 200 tonnes of sand at a glass factory. He was going to sail there again in a couple of hours as soon as the felicitations were over.

Kees was well known for his humanitarian aid during World War I when Nederland was neutral and Belgium was invaded. He sailed his sailing river clipper ship De Scheldestroom laden with food and medicine to relieve the impoverishment of the war-ravaged Belgian population. Everyone knew that the Germans and the English were shooting at his ship. Yet De Scheldestroom sailed through it all. They called it the miracle ship and the devout Catholic Belgian saw the hand of God over this good ship.

The town hall’s women employees wanted to know how Kees and Francien were going to cope with an extra child as living space on De Scheldestroom was limited. It had just one small cabin, serving as a living and sleeping quarters for two adults and now, with the birth of Piet, four children. Kees told them that they managed through utilizing every small space. Piet’s baby cot was the hull of a yet unfinished Tjalk model ship which Kees was in the process of building for Queen Wilhelmina. It was destined that Piet’s entire childhood was to be spent on De Scheldestroom.

Little was Kees to realize, as was the case throughout the centuries, that his young family would go on sacrificing their lives through circumstances of times to come. Momentous earth-shaking events were just around the corner. The Great Depression, World War II, and the 1953 storm floods ravaging Zeeland and Piet’s migration to post-war Australia awaited. The Paulusse family, like many other families, would continue to be enmeshed with major historical nation-building episodes, for good or ill.

All the children were home-schooled by his mother, Francien van Aalst, occasionally attending a variety of primary schools when there was no cargo as it often happened during economic downturns. Every few weeks, the ship would be filled with cargo for delivery anywhere throughout Nederland, Belgium, Germany, and France. All the children, including Piet, worked as deckhands as soon as they could walk. A shipping family such as the hospitable Paulusses inevitably made friends in every port. There were always streams of interesting visitors, friends and foes alike coming on board De Scheldestroom for coffee and gezelligheid. They came from many different backgrounds; Piet’s social skills and amiability, acceptance and tolerance for all cultures and customs began to be developed at an early age. Tolerance and multiculturalism were the hallmark part and parcel of successful Dutch commercial philosophy.

None of the Paulusses’ children were baptized into any religion. They considered church important for people who had no philosophical scope by which to find direction across the hidden paths of life. The Paulusses were Dutch liberals from the eighteenth century as influenced by the enlightenment of the seventeenth century. Their ideas were to respect people’s differences. They were commendable citizens, and emphasized respect for all cultures, religions, and ideologies and the great dictum that we should inclusively love one another unconditionally.

During the 1930 years of economic crises, Piet’s father Kees repaired pleasure craft for rich clients such as De Vermast’s timber merchants and De Vroegops market gardeners and commodity traders in wheat and flax. Their yachts would usually be placed in De Scheldestroom’s empty cargo hull, converting it to a maritime repair shop. Piet and his brothers Kees and Bram would help their father with the repairs of yachts and also carry out maintenance on De Scheldestroom, removing rust, painting, and repairing sails. There were no engines in those days of sailing power, no heavy fuel bills, and no pollution.

The eldest boy in the family was Jan Paulusse, who owned an automotive repair garage in Terneuzen. Two months before the German invasion of the Netherlands, Jan was mobilized to serve on a Dutch Navy minesweeper. When war started, a German Luftwaffe Messerschmitt dive-bombed the Dutch minesweeper, the bomb shrapnel wounded Jan. His wounds became infectious and consequently killed him.

Bette, the oldest sister, was married to Ko Den Ekster, a dredging specialist working all over the world building harbours, dredging canals and oil installations. Their house, located along the renowned Schelde Shipyard was at the beginning of the Second World War bombed by Allied bombers trying to destroy the hulk of the incomplete and un-launched passenger liner Willem Ruys. The Allies did not succeed in destroying the almost completed passenger liner in Vlissingen situated on the mouth of the Western Scheld River, an entry point to the Port of Antwerp, strategically important for the Germans and Allies. The Paulusse boys, Piet, Bram, and Kees manned the lifeboats of the uncompleted Willem Ruys to rescue people from drowning when the Allies bombed the dykes in 1944 when the country was inundated by the sea and hundreds of Zeelanders drowned. At the same time, the water installations on the Willem Ruys converted saltwater to sweet water for the whole populace of Vlissingen. The Willem Ruys later became MS Achille Lauro, famous for having been hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985.

Janna, the second eldest daughter, married Adriaan De Zeeuw, a Dutch Labour Party activist. Janna read many books, and was involved in social justice issues but suffered poor health and died at forty-eight years, soon to be followed by her husband. Sadly, they were not long upon the earth.

Kees Paulusse, Piet’s younger brother, one of my favourite uncles, the third son, joined the Dutch Navy as an electronics engineer and served on the aircraft carrier HM Karel Doorman and saw service in the Dutch East Indies. After the war he joined the KNSM (merchant navy) and married Dolly Does.

Bram Paulusse, the fourth son, also joined the Dutch Navy as a communications engineer stationed at Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea. Bram married Rie Zeilemaker and they had one son; he perished with fifty-seven other people when a KLM Constellation, the Neutron, crashed at Biak on its way home to Nederland in 1957.

At the age of twelve years, during the Depression, Piet was sent to be a deckhand on his uncle Gerrit Tanis’ newly built oil tanker De Nijverheid. He worked there until the outbreak of the Second World War when he went back to work on De Scheldestroom, to continue his education to gain his skipper qualifications by studying part-time.

Jacobus Paulusse, the brother of Piet’s father Kees, was a prominent member of the Dutch Communist Party and often visited on board De Scheldestroom, where discussions centred on the then-current economic, political, and war issues. During this time, politics became important to Piet’s sisters, who read widely of Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Abraham Kuyper and Spinoza.

Life on board for a shipper’s family meant that there was no specific gender-orientated work; all hands on deck also meant female hands, equality for all. Piet’s mother and sisters were also skilled sailors and could sail the clipper as well as any man. Sailing De Scheldestroom during the war was no mean feat; explosive mines were seeded by the Royal Air Force at night to interrupt food supply transports to Germany. Another danger was avoiding Allied bombing attacks on internal water lanes. Ensuring you missed the mines and the bombs, everyone sailing the ship required great sailing manoeuvring skills.

In September 1944, Zeelandic Flanders was liberated by the Allies who immediately organized the formation of over a thousand young Zeelanders; hence, the Zeeland Battalion formed. Over a thousand boys, including Piet, volunteered. Within weeks, they were moved as an auxiliary fighting force into Germany. The Zeeland boys were the first Dutch troops entering Germany as well as the first Dutch troops to enter Nederland and liberate Hilversum the radio city of Nederland on 10 May 1945. With Germany’s capitalization, volunteers were called to defeat the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies where they were to join in with Australian forces. At this juncture, Piet volunteered and met several Australian Army training personnel who were preparing Dutch troops for jungle fighting. While they were on their way to join the Australian troops in Borneo for the invasion of Balikpapan, Japan suddenly surrendered after two atomic bombs landed on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Zeeland Battalion, by now officially named 2.14RI, proceeded on to Indonesia to take control of the former Dutch colony. Their involvement there was seen to be a police action against Sukarno’s Indonesian Republican independence movement.

It is here where a personal conflict of conscience began for Piet that lasted a lifetime. On many occasions, he would say, ‘We fought the Germans because they invaded our democratic country, and we wanted to be liberated from Nazi oppression. Do not the Indonesian people want the same thing? So why were we fighting against the wishes of the Indonesian people?’ After four years of military action in Indonesia, Piet with his Zeeland Battalion returned to Nederland, honourably discharged as a first-class soldier. Most returned soldiers were given preference to work for government businesses; Piet started work as a sailor for the Provincial Ferries of the Province of Zeeland, a state shipping company providing ferry service links between all the islands and river crossings in the maritime province.

The Dutch economy was booming, and the Paulusses were booming with it. In 1955, he obtained a position as manager of OVET, a French stevedoring company. November 1960, he resigned because the moorings of the floating crane broke loose in rough weather, and one of the cranes lodged against the dikes. Although no damages or injuries occurred, Piet resigned because he was ashamed that it had happened on his watch. During the next nine months, he built model vintage ships and sold them to Mr Abeleven, a maritime antique dealer and author of a book called Zeeland vecht door (Zealand continues the fight). Mr Abeleven lived in the historical Zeeland town of Veere that attracted many tourists, and had a large American clientele eager to purchase Piet’s historic vintage ships. During one of his visits to Veere, Piet met up with some Australian WWII ex-soldiers and businessmen. Within four months of meeting the Australians, he took his young family and migrated to Australia. One may ask, ‘What drove him to take this drastic action?’ Perhaps it was disillusionment after the war or the challenge and adventure of a new beginning in what was touted to be the Lucky Country.

Piet met my mother-to-be, the love of his life, while he was in hiding from the Nazis with sixteen other Zeeland boys in isolated farms in the Emma Polder along the inundated lands of Safinghe. During the last phases of the war, the Germans were desperate for manpower and would