north east regional extra | March 16 - 22, 2022
nemedia.com.au
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March 16 - 22, 2022
◆ NEW LIFE: Gerrie Versteegen, along with her parents and six siblings came to Australia from Holland in 1950 on the Volendam.
PHOTO: Belinda Harrison
A birthday to remember
GERRIE Versteegen’s fifth birthday might have been 70 years ago, but it’s not one that she has forgotten in all the years since. It was the day the devastating Lurg to Moyhu bushfires tore across the landscape and Gerrie, along with her six siblings - older brothers Lambert, John and Bill, older sisters Helena and Carolien and younger sister Susy - and parents wondered just what
they had got themselves into having moved to Australia two years before. “We had only heard of the wildfires that could happen in summer in Australia, and here we were experiencing it for ourselves,” Gerrie said. Originally from the town of Someren in the south of Holland, Gerrie’s parents William (Wilhelm) and Henrietta Van Der Weerden came to Australia to give their children a bet-
ter life following World War II. “Dad had a stock and general carrying truck business and after the war ended they were encouraged to migrate to another country,” Gerrie said. “Their choice was Canada or Australia but they had friends already here in Moyhu, so they chose Australia. “A local man by the name of Terence Johnson sponsored them to come directly
to Moyhu, bypassing the Bonegilla migrant camp near Albury and they were given a house in Bartley Street to live in until they got settled by another local identity, Mrs Joe Shanley.” Gerrie was only three years old when the family caught the bus in Someren and travelled the 135 kilometres to the Port of Rotterdam where they boarded the ship to Australia. The journey on the Volen-
dam took six weeks and they sailed via the Suez Canal, arriving in Fremantle on November 20 and into Melbourne on November 27, 1950. Being so young, Gerrie doesn’t remember much of life in Holland or the journey to Australia - life for her started in Moyhu. “The first day that really sticks in my mind was the day of that fire,” Gerrie said. “Mum had my birthday cake
in the oven at home when we were told we had to evacuate. “Dad worked for Holdenson & Neilson butter factory in Moyhu and we were put on the back of a cream truck, like the one he drove when he first worked for them. “We were taken into Wangaratta to a family who took us in for the duration of the fire, which I don’t think was that long, just frightening.
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