Jan Willem de Jong

Story

My parents met in Paris where my mother Giselle Fernande Bacques was working and studying. My mother had come from Morocco, where she was born, to Paris to meet a French man. Instead she met my father, a Dutch man, and moved to the Netherlands with him. They communicated in French and she taught herself Dutch by reading cookbooks. They had three children – my brother Gaspard (27.9.50), my sister Therese (6.12.52) and myself Henriette (7.2.60). My father was offered a position at the University in Canberra and he came to Australia to have a look. They decided it would be a good place to raise children. My mother was very happy to come to Australia as we were living near her mother-in-law who had not accepted her.

My father flew to Australia. My mother and the children came to Australia by ship. I only remember being bribed to go to the kindergarten on the ship with icecream. I ate the icecream and then ran away. There was a concert on the ship and I was dressed up in red crepe paper as Little Red Riding Hood and hated it. I also got scarlet fever on the way. The ship was the last to pass through the Suez Canal before it was closed for many years. The trip took six weeks.

We arrived in Fremantle, lining the rails of the ship lilly white and sweating in the heat. The ship then sailed around to Sydney where we disembarked. Then we travelled to Canberra where we settled. We stayed in a block of flats, which has since been demolished, with other newly arrived families. Not long after we moved into a house where my parents remained until my father’s death. We brought our car with us, a left hand drive Volkswagon beetle. It snowed in Canberra the first year that we arrived but that was the last time. I remember the heat and the brightness of the sun. My mother brought us all little identity discs with our name and address and we wore those so that we could be returned home if we got lost. My siblings were older and my brother had learned English at school but I did not speak English. I learned quickly and the children at school delighted in teaching me to swear. They all thought that I lived with my grandparents as my parents were older than most of the other parents. My parents were invited out and asked to bring a plate. My mother thought this was very strange but OK maybe they didn’t have enough plates for everyone so she took empty plates. My father hated the BBQs that were so popular, “eating burnt meat with your fingers” was not his idea of fun. I remember people being wary of us as my parents spoke with an accent but mostly it was fine as there were many people from different countries in Canberra.

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