Reijo Paattakainen

Story

Born on 19 May 1935 I was the youngest of two children to my parents Otto Vilhelmi and Iina Esteri Paattakainen. My brother Mikko and I lived in a village called Viiala, today part of the city of Akaa which is located about 150 km north of Helsinki, Finland.

My parents were workers on a large farm which produced grain and milk. There were about 5000 inhabitants in Viiala. Many people were employed by three local factories, i.e. a file factory, saw mill and leather factory.

I attended primary school for 4 years and high school for 8 years graduating at the age of 19 years. In order to obtain proper qualifications I applied to and was accepted by the Finnish Air Force Aerial Combat School, Kauhava, where I learnt to fly, completing an 11- month training course for Reserve Officers and Military Pilots 1955-56.

Having finished my compulsory military service I completed a one-year training course for airline pilots organised by Aero (Finnair) and became a DC-3 co-pilot with the said airline company in 1957.

In 1959 I joined the Finnish Police Mobile Branch and completed a training course for junior constables. Later on I attended two training courses at the Finnish Police Academy. My last training course was for Police Sergeants in 1969.

My father died in 1970 at the age of 68 and my mother passed away in 1976. She was 77.

My brother died in 2007, aged 79 years.

In the latter half of the 1960s I started planning to leave Finland for Australia because my family and I were not happy with our housing and employment conditions in a small frontier village called Vainikkala, about 30 km from the city of Lappeenranta in south-eastern Finland. I was serving there as a police sergeant in the capacity of passport control officer at the Finnish/Soviet border railway station. During my police career I have also served with the UN peace keeping force in Nicosia, Cyprus (UNFICYP) in the capacity of Military Police Platoon Commander of Finnish Battalion #1 in 1964. My brother-in-law and his family had migrated to Australia in 1958. They gave us a positive view of the life ‘down under’, which was very tempting.

The fairly remote frontier village, nowadays part of the city of Lappeenranta, did not offer any future to me and my family comprising my wife, Eila Inkeri, nee Kolehmainen – I married her in 1957 – and our three school-aged children.

My family and I left Finland by air on 22 September 1971.I was 36 years old. We flew from Helsinki to London where we stayed overnight. Our flight tickets were paid for by the Australian Government. We arrived in Sydney on 25 September 1971. I was the only one who spoke English in my family.

After landing at Sydney International Airport the first thing that happened to us was the spraying of the cabin. Some passengers did not know why. The first impression was that we migrants were some harmful pests which had to be fumigated before being allowed to leave the aircraft and enter their new country.

In Sydney we were received by my brother-in-law and his wife. We had not seen them for 13 years. My brother-in-law had a formwork business and I got my first job as a carpenter. After their arrival in Australia he had built a house in NSW which had been rented by some irresponsible tenants who had damaged the house so badly that it required major repairs. He had another house in Canberra where his family of 11 people lived. My brother-in-law and his wife told us before our migration to Australia that we could live in one of their two houses after our arrival, which was misleading.. So at first we had to stay in their Canberra house accommodating two families, 16 people in total! ‘A crowded house’ indeed. Furthermore, we were not told that my brother-in-law was in the state of being bankrupt. He had to sell his Canberra house. Our two families had to move out and rent a fairly big house for all of us. This was obviously very unsatisfactory. There was no privacy whatsoever. If I had been aware of the financial and housing problems of my brother-in-law before leaving Finland, we would never have migrated to Australia. A few months later my brother-in-law finished his contracts in Canberra and moved to Queensland with his family. My family and I did not want to go with him as I did not like the job as a carpenter. I wanted something better for my family. My wife did house cleaning. She did not speak English at all.

I approached some potential employers for work. They told me that I was ‘overqualified’ for their jobs! At one stage we wished to return to Finland. Fortunately we did not. A friend of ours o

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