Harry & Henny Nyhuis

Story

We came by KLM to Australia with our two small children, Diane (30-3-1956) and Barry (29-7-1959).

In those days it took 3 days and 2 nights of flying (we slept 1 night in Papua New Guinea,) and then arrived at Sydney airport. After having the first snow in Holland it was a pretty hot 100 degrees here!! And ladies were dressed up with gloves and stockings and hats of course!!

Via Melbourne it took another two nights on the train to arrive at the Oakbank station where we were picked up by a bus which took us to the Woodside Army Camp were we were placed in temporary accomodation in the famous Nissen Huts.

Being the middle of December all factories were closing down for the Christmas holidays and it was impossible for Harry to get work. Lucky that we were fed three meals a day and had a roof over our heads, every thing was taken care off for us. Once the factories opened again in the middle of January it didn’t take long for Harry to find a job as a Boilermaker/ Welder, and he started at Perry Engineering. Now he was on the payroll we were shifted to Glenelg Hostel to live.

After a few months we found accomodation at Springfield House, Fullarton, with Dr Madison and his wife; I helped with some housekeeping and Harry did some gardening and washed the car on Saturdays in exchange for a rent free flat.

The reason we left Holland was that it was still very hard to get reasonable accomodation after World War 2.

Harry found he was changing jobs freqently because of more money being offered. We moved to Malvern where we shared a house with an Italian family. I worked as a part time nurse across the road when Harry came home from his day’s work.

Being employed at the constuction of the Port Stanvac refinery helped to get us on our feet financially. We were able to buy our first house in 1964 at Osterly Ave, Bridgewater. What a joy and achievement until we found that it was eaten out by white ants, something we had never heard of!! We got to know our lifetime friend, Dave Peters , who lived next door, and became known to our children as “Uncle Dave”.

In 1966 we were blessed with the birth of our daughter Connie!

When my sister’s husband suddenly died of a heart attack, Harry and I decided that we needed to spend more time together. We sold the house and set up a Deli and Fish-n-Chip shop in Macclesfield. From there we went to the General Store and Post Office in Gulnare, then the Ampol Roadhouse in Gladstone.

Harry then became sole bread winner again as we were now able to buy an old house and pay off our car, after the many long hours we had worked over the years.

Australia proved to be a land of opportunities for us. We are happy and thankful to live here and have been fortunate to go back to Holland a couple of times and also had rellies visiting us.

We are Christians and have walked and prayed in faith, knowing that our Heavenly Father is always with us. He has blessed us with 11 healthy Grandchildren and 9 Great grandchildren.

Written by Henny Nyhuis, Kadina SA . 22-9-2009

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