Trevor Vanderputt

Story

In 1964 my young family left India for a new life in Australia after having lived there for five generations under the Raj of England and my Dutch heritage. My family carried the name Vanderputt.

In 1953 I married Jean Rose Ford and we were blessed with four sons. We felt the effects of Post World War II and after Indian Independence we had the perception that there were better opportunities for our sons in Australia.

In India, I worked for a British office equipment company for 13 years holding a Factory Manager\’s position in Calcutta. I also enjoyed a good life both socially and sporting. For me, migrating to Australia was a big decision but for the sake of our children we made the move to a new country in Australia. I was lucky that Gestetner UK organized employment for me in Gestetner Australia.

We arrived in Sydney in July 1964. The sensational British pop group The Beatles had arrived in Australia the week before. Their music was playing on nearly every radio and the top tune of the week was It\’s Been a Hard Day\’s Night. We rented a place in Manly on the road adjacent to the famous beach on a block of old fashioned units called Dungowan. Everything we noticed we couldn\’t help comparing straight away to what we had experienced in Calcutta as a young family. We had never owned a washing machine in India as we had laundry men who collected all the dirty clothes and household linen once a week. We had never had to prepare or cook our meals or even make our own cup of tea as domestic servants were relatively inexpensive in Calcutta at the time. Then came the general household cleaning chores, we had people known as ‘sweepers\’ to do this. Suddenly my wife had a load of heavy work to do herself, and the days of being the memsahib had suddenly come to a halt.

A visit to the local butcher had been a rare venture as our Cook in India always did this job. The next stop was the green grocer. Even shopping for groceries was an entirely new experience! We learnt that brinjals were known as eggplants and ladies fingers were okra. The list of different names for the day-to-day things we required went on and on.

We lived in Sydney for 5 years before I accepted a position with the US firm Remington Rand as Sales Manager in West Australia. Five years later, I was back with Gestetner, my old firm, in Perth and then in Melbourne as Branch Manager.

Field Hockey was my special love from days back in India and being closely involved; I was appointed Director of Coaching and Development for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Hockey Association in Canberra from 1981 to 1984. My first task was to attract coaching candidates from the hockey fraternity in Canberra. My aim was to build up a group of good coaches. I organized coaching camps which were extremely well received.

My next project was the establishment of MINKEY, short for Mini Hockey. I started from scratch, convincing numerous Primary School Principals to agree to 30 minutes of coaching the kids each week. In two years we grew from 12 teams to 130 teams. MINKEY was so well received that the South Australian Hockey Association invited me to Adelaide to expound as to how to run a MINKEY programme. The introduction of a Hockey Unit into the Sports curriculum at the then Canberra College of Advanced Education exposed potential sports administrators, coaches and journalists to hockey. This was one of the more memorable highlights of my work in Canberra.

In 1984, I left Canberra with a heavy heart to return to Perth to enable my wife and me to witness and assist with the growing up of our grandchildren. Gestetner appointed me as State Manager, West Australia. In-between this, I organized and managed two hockey trips to India. A senior\’s tour consisting of a project for Australian internationals in 1978 and a junior tour of under 18s in 1987.

In 2003, I published my book entitled ‘Hockey\’s Odyssey! From Dhyan Chand to Charlesworth’. The book is the outcome of my lifetime of dedication to the game of hockey. It is one Anglo-Indian\’s perception of the glory days of hockey in India from the thirties to the mid sixties. It is a view of Australian hockey from 1964 to 1987 seen through the eyes of one who has been: Director of Coaching for the ACT Hockey Association, Member of the Glebes Hockey Club in Sydney, Coach of the Camberwell Hockey Club in Melbourne and last but not least a Player and Coach at the Crickiters\’ Hockey Club in Western Australia.

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