Inge Koettig

Story

My name is Inge Koettig nee Griese, born in Berlin, Germany, 1925. Together with my older sister and younger brother my childhood was happy and comfortable. We lived in a flat but had a large garden (like an allotment) where we grew fruit, vegetables and flowers. I have wonderful memories of playing around our suburb and in the beautiful lakes and forests around Berlin. Life was good, innocent about the politics of Europe. When I was 13  years old, sitting in a small park near our flat I suddenly heard the thunder of a large formation of planes overhead and was instantly afraid. I ran home and was told that war had broken out and the planes were flying towards Poland. I didn’t really understand but my parents were very serious, after all, my father had served in WW1. Six years of terror and brutal war robbed me of my youth. Life would never be the same and finally bring me to distant shores.

In 1945 I finished my education and worked as assistant manager of catering in one of Berlin’s major hospitals. In some ways the time immediately after the war was even more brutal than the war itself, with extreme food shortages and attrocities of occupation. Perhaps such conditions made people willing to consider leaving their home and family. In 1947 I met Paul, a young displaced person from Sudentenland in western Czechoslovakia. He was studying at university and working at night as a hospital porter. He was one of 3 million people who had been exiled from their homeland with just a suitcase of possessions after the war because of their German heritage. We married in 1948 and had a little girl a year later.

Berlin was still in ruins and the future very uncertain. Our flat was in building half demolished by bombing. My husband belonged to an American discussion group frowned on by the Russian authorities. Some of its members started to disappear and Paul was afraid his turn might come too. We had heard of people migrating to distant countries and started to consider it too to make a safe life for us and our daughter. One day a neighbour brought us a newspaper article about the Snowy Mountains Authority in Australia seeking workers. To our surprise Paul was accepted despite his lack of specific trade or manual skills. The process was very quick and Paul left in March 1951. It took nine months to get permission for us to follow and we thank the farmer who sponsored that move. Paul saved up the money for the full fare and in November 1951 I farewelled everyone and everything I had known, and went to Genoa to board the ship ‘Oceania’. After the journey through the Suez Canal with sand and carpet sellers, on to Fremantle with its heat and little houses and then Sydney, my new life started in December 1951.

Coming into Sydney harbour was unforgettable. I had grown up in city of apartments and here were houses all around the water and when we docked at Woolloomooloo we were right in the city. I loved the Botanic Gardens and the city with the sun streaming down, everything peaceful and calm and the family together again. We went by train to Cooma and on to Hilltop, near Old Jindabyne, where Paul and friends had built a one room cottage without electricity or water. On the way, I was puzzled by vast areas of dead trees south of Canberra. Later I found out they had been ringbarked to make way for pasture.

At first life was a constant struggle and often very lonely. Most of the possessions I had brought were ruined by flood damage in Genoa before they were loaded on the ship. I worked hard to grow vegetables and keep chooks because they were often expensive to buy. We were always trying innovative ways to pay debts and get ahead Ð chicken farming, photography, dressmaking. We also contributed to the family back home for whom conditions were still very hard. Our little cottage was very isolated, so letters to family became a lifeline because there were few people to talk to. A second daughter was born in 1953. My husband was often away for a long time working his shifts and I often managed alone with the children. I learnt English in the first year.

We stayed in the Snowy until 1954 when we started roaming the country for work and stable existence. I missed my homeland for a number of years but never regretted making Australia my home. I was naturalised in 1966 and revisited Germany for the first time in 1972 when I knew for certain that I was now Australian at heart.

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