house and couldn’t believe our eyes. ‘Look at that! Wooden planks on the inside walls, not even nailed on straight, caked with grease, and the grease is full of dust!’ The planks were weatherboard, usually meant for outside walls. The floors were either scuffed wood or worn linoleum. The bedroom walls carried ugly smudges; the windows had apparently not been cleaned formonths, or even years. My mother, my sister Liesbet and I would be doing most of the work to put things in order. We surveyed the scene together, staring incredulously and sighing. ‘It’ll scrub up into something decent,’ we philosophised. It would just take some women’s work and a bit of women’s imagination; nothing new.
Some furniture had been left behind, and under the old couch in the living room we found a large Bible with a brass clip and gilded edges, and sensational nude figures of Adam and Eve and other vivid half-clad characters from Jewish history. Bethsheba was there, and the Sabine women being carried off to be raped. The Bible, to the Catholics of the Dutch south at least, was almost a heretical thing, something read only by vile Protestants. Alas, because of our prejudices, the precious book was not recognised for its historical or artistic value. It was promptly burned in the backyard incinerator, a 44-gallon metal drum.
The longed-for boxes of furniture and other belongings finally arrived from the waterfront, but they had been broken into. Heartless Australian wharfies must have taken our silverware. Most of my mother’s precious embroidery, sewn in her younger days before she had children, was also missing. It was so sad, but we could only accept the situation, as most migrants were treated in the same way. ‘Melbourne wharfie’ was synonymous with ‘thief’ in those days.
There were no dolls for me; they weren’t stolen, they’d never been packed. ‘There wasn’t enough room,’ my parents said in soft voices, conspirators who had decided that enough was enough. My tears were huge, not only at the loss but at this betrayal. ‘I’ll buy you another doll sometime,’ my father said, feeling sorry for me. Still, he must have hoped that I would forget, for one day when we werewindow shopping he told me sadly that the dolls were really too expensive and I had to wait. ‘Till when?’ I was trying to pin him down to a date, to an event, or a tangible time. But I already knew it was time to resign myself to a life without dolls.
My mother, sister and I set to with a tremendous will and made that greasy gardener’s cottage spotless within a week. The three older boys—stocky Adrian, nine; curly-headed Markus, seven; and little five-year-old Willem—gathered wood for the chip heater and helped our father. We all minded the littlies—brown-haired and brown-eyed Berta, aged two, and blonde toddler, Teresa, who was only one.
Brother Leo, from the Redemptorist monastery up the street, stopped by a lot. Leaning his bicycle against our backyard fence, he would watch us climb the enormous pine tree in the yard. He told us about The Age newspaper. ‘The red map of Australia, printed on the top left corner of the front page, proves that The Age is owned by Communists, and it’s best not to buy it.’ It was the time of Bob Santamaria, when the Catholics versus the Communists issue occupied political and Catholic minds.
In a few weeks the whole house was renovated; a shed was built for mending shoes and making windvanes; then a garage was built for the Chevrolet; and later still, a granny flat to house my three Australian-born brothers. They arrived over the next seven years, and would do as they pleased, rejecting their parents’ old-fashioned and other-world discipline. The weedy paddock near the house was transformed into an extremely productive vegetable garden, and trees were planted as well. The best was a willow tree, which soon grew big enough to support a swing.
As for the grounds at Genazzano, my hardworking
Some furniture had been left behind, and under the old couch in the living room we found a large Bible with a brass clip and gilded edges, and sensational nude figures of Adam and Eve and other vivid half-clad characters from Jewish history. Bethsheba was there, and the Sabine women being carried off to be raped. The Bible, to the Catholics of the Dutch south at least, was almost a heretical thing, something read only by vile Protestants. Alas, because of our prejudices, the precious book was not recognised for its historical or artistic value. It was promptly burned in the backyard incinerator, a 44-gallon metal drum.
The longed-for boxes of furniture and other belongings finally arrived from the waterfront, but they had been broken into. Heartless Australian wharfies must have taken our silverware. Most of my mother’s precious embroidery, sewn in her younger days before she had children, was also missing. It was so sad, but we could only accept the situation, as most migrants were treated in the same way. ‘Melbourne wharfie’ was synonymous with ‘thief’ in those days.
There were no dolls for me; they weren’t stolen, they’d never been packed. ‘There wasn’t enough room,’ my parents said in soft voices, conspirators who had decided that enough was enough. My tears were huge, not only at the loss but at this betrayal. ‘I’ll buy you another doll sometime,’ my father said, feeling sorry for me. Still, he must have hoped that I would forget, for one day when we werewindow shopping he told me sadly that the dolls were really too expensive and I had to wait. ‘Till when?’ I was trying to pin him down to a date, to an event, or a tangible time. But I already knew it was time to resign myself to a life without dolls.
My mother, sister and I set to with a tremendous will and made that greasy gardener’s cottage spotless within a week. The three older boys—stocky Adrian, nine; curly-headed Markus, seven; and little five-year-old Willem—gathered wood for the chip heater and helped our father. We all minded the littlies—brown-haired and brown-eyed Berta, aged two, and blonde toddler, Teresa, who was only one.
Brother Leo, from the Redemptorist monastery up the street, stopped by a lot. Leaning his bicycle against our backyard fence, he would watch us climb the enormous pine tree in the yard. He told us about The Age newspaper. ‘The red map of Australia, printed on the top left corner of the front page, proves that The Age is owned by Communists, and it’s best not to buy it.’ It was the time of Bob Santamaria, when the Catholics versus the Communists issue occupied political and Catholic minds.
In a few weeks the whole house was renovated; a shed was built for mending shoes and making windvanes; then a garage was built for the Chevrolet; and later still, a granny flat to house my three Australian-born brothers. They arrived over the next seven years, and would do as they pleased, rejecting their parents’ old-fashioned and other-world discipline. The weedy paddock near the house was transformed into an extremely productive vegetable garden, and trees were planted as well. The best was a willow tree, which soon grew big enough to support a swing.
As for the grounds at Genazzano, my hardworking
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