John Robken
| First name | John |
|---|---|
| Last name | Robken |
| Country of Origin | The Netherlands |
| Date of Birth | 7/15/1945 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1954 |
| Submitted by | John Herman Christiaan Robken |
Story
I was eight years old and home was a small second storey apartment in Amsterdam. Cooking was done on a primus single burner stove in a tiny narrow kitchen. Space was at a premium for 2 adults and 3 children. The need for better accommodation, wages , prospects and a lifestyle that my parents aspired to all seemed to be beyond their grasp in the latter part of 1953.
Emigration to Australia, a land of opportunity, seemed to be the solution. When the idea of leaving Holland was first mentioned thoughts of leaving behind Uncles, Aunts, Grandparents etc. weren’t exactly foremost in my mind. Some time later I realised that it may be a long time before I saw any of them again.
Some weeks later we found out that our family had been accepted and we were actually going. All too soon we were boarding the “Sibajak” in Rotterdam and I realised looking down on the dock that I had never seen so many people in one place at anytime before. It was soon time for visitors to leave and for us to say our last farewells. Everybody had streamers that they were throwing to the crowd on the docks. Holding on to each end of these streamers thousands of families and friends maintained a last fragile link with each other until the slow movement of the ship broke each link one by one. Who knew when or if these links would ever be reconnected; in my case it took 40 years.
The days passed quickly and as I had explored most of the ship, life settled into a routine. We saw Gibraltar and Malta in the distance as we passed and it wasn’t much longer before we berthed at Port Said. The sights, sounds and smells were very new and exotic and I couldn’t wait to get ashore. I remember walking down the street looking at stalls and wares for sale when we were approached by an Arabic man. He talked to my parents for a few minutes then he left. It wasn’t until later that I found out that he wanted to buy my younger sister! Of course they refused but from an eight year old brother’s point of view the proposition had some merit!
The weeks rolled on and I have memories of children diving for coins in the Suez Canal, snake charmers in Ceylon and the fun and games enjoyed by the passengers as “Neptune” ruled over all when we crossed the Equator.
I was especially excited the morning we were to berth in Melbourne, this was my opportunity to get first hand experience of what life would be like in our adopted country. Our final destinaton was to be Sydney but at least we would be allowed to go ashore here. Standing on deck on a grey, overcast morning we got our first view of the Melbourne skyline. My disappointment grew as visions of rustic buildings, dirt streets with kangaroos and horse drawn transport quickly faded. Clearly what I was seeing, while not the same as what we left, was certainly more civilized than I had imagined. The disappointment didn’t last long, there was so much that was new and I wanted to discover it all.
It turned out that Sydney wasn’t to be our final destination; it seemed that my parents, along with many others were convinced that Brisbane was the place to be. The remainder of our trip would be by train which would take another 2 days travel. The big open spaces amazed me and the hundreds of rabbits seen running beside the railway line was a sight to behold. Meals were provided at railway stations, (dining cars didn’t exist) and the frequent stops for meals and stretching our legs made the journey slower than it should have been. My father used to worry me at these stops as he always seemed to be the last one back on board and on several occasions I thought that he had been left behind, which upset me terribly. Fortunately he wasn;’t and we all made it safely to the Wacol immigration camp.
I started school there to learn the English language andI was delighted to find that they used the same alphabet and numbers; this wasn’t going to be so hard after all. Six months later I had enough grasp of the language to attend Darra State School with my sisters. My father meanwhile found work as a painter with Qld Rail and my mother worked for herself as a dress designer/seamstress.
I’m not sure if my mother and father ever achieved all their goals by emigrating, I suspect not!
As for me I have made this country my home, served in her Armed Forces for more than 20 years and taught her youth at TAFE Colleges for aother 20. I am an Australian, but just a little bit of me will always be Dutch.