rudolf boelee - blijdorp
DESCRIPTION
The title refers to a suburb of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where I and most of my family and friends grew up.TRANSCRIPT
Blijdorp portraits Rudolf Boelee
Rudolf Boelee
Blijdorp portraits
Art Work, Words, Design
Rudolf Boelee
Additional Information & Images
Anita Henzen -‐ Boelee
Ronald Vander Bosch
Cornelis Van Vliet
Tom Stuip
Jay Boelee
Onno Boelee
Matthijs Boelee
Joyce Frieders-‐Bosch
© Rudolf Boelee, 2010
Published by Hotsource
http://www.hotsource.co.nz
Rotterdam
This electronic book is a memoir and shows manipulated photos and commentaries of me, my family and friends, in a time span from about 1920 to the present in 2010. After the death of my eldest sister Frans, it really dawned on me, that I was now one of the last of our line and I am aiming to preserve some of history for the future. I decided on making this electronic
picture book for easier access worldwide. The title of the book Blijdorp refers to a suburb of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where I and most of my contemporaries grew up. My early childhood was during the war and what happened during that time affected me and my contemporaries deeply. Living and growing up in a bombed out city and all the terrible things that happened during the German occupation: the deportation and extermination of the Dutch Jewish population,
the random shooting of civilians to deter resistance1944-‐45. It is an interesting fact that the majority of my y left the Netherlands as soon as they were old enough. My brothers: Onno settled in Auckland, New Zealand, Jelle, first in New Zealand and then went to France and now lives in Les Angles near Avignon. My cousins: Ronald in New England, Joyce in Kansas, US. Cousin Tom spend a considerable amount of time in the US but came back to the Netherlands in the
s. He is a musician and the opportunities to play the types of music he wanted to, were better in Europe then the US. I have lived for the greater part of my life in New Zealand, a country roughly the size of England, with a small population of about 4½ million people. New Zealand society is still quite rural in its attitudes and due to its isolation that means that people usually have large networks of family, friends and acquaintances. So too for us, over the years we have had meaningful long term friendships, with many individuals and family groups. The new Facebook era has promoted that even further. I like to thank those that helped me fill in the blanks in my knowledge and supply me with information and images of family members I knew very little about. Rudolf Boelee, Christchurch, March 2010
1930 1970 Blijdorp
Family
Outbreak Second World War
Bombardment of Rotterdam
Holocaust
Hunger winter
Liberation
Post War
Cold War
Friends
Jazz
Family
Arnhem
Hitch-‐hiking
Army
Merchant Navy
Brothers
Cousins
Immigration
New Zealand
New Family
Children
This photo was taken in the my grandmother Aartje Boelee -‐ de Haard, my aunt Alie and my grandfather Jan Boelee, all were born in Rotterdam. Tante Alie, now in her nineties, lives in a retirement home north of Rotterdam. Opa Boelee was a foreman in the grain harbour in Rotterdam. From people who worked for him, he was a legendary figure. He could move any number of the large barges moored alongside the ships waiting to be loaded, just by using his voice. During the depression he made so much money that my grandmother bought a motor launch by emptying his pockets while he was asleep.
As a child I was very fond of him. He was a very kind to me, he had chickens and rabbits in the backyard and I was allowed to help grind the grain and feed the animals. He could speak any number of languages, known
Russian, Polish, German etc.
In my teenage years I did not see very much of my grandparents because of personality problems between my mum and my grandmother.
rom left to right grandmother, Frans Tak -‐ Habich, below my mother Anneke,
eldest sister Frans. Opa and oma were orphans and opa was brought up by his
for the Holland America Line. This company was one of the most modern ones of the day, everything was done electrically from weighing anchor, steering and loading. Working with power was a dangerous job on a heavily rolling ship. Tante Lien worked in the Rotterdam office, for the same company, a beautiful Art Nouveau building
Oma was taken in by a rich family. She was taught how to cook and in time became a head cook, catering for up to 40 50 guests. Her baking was legendary. Their house in the Lombokstraat, Amersfoort was beautiful but incredible cold in winter, except in the kitchen. The warmth and the smells were so delicious.
After opa retired from the merchant navy, he worked as an electrical technician at Soesterberg, a military airfield. His job was checking cables buried by the Germans, who had been using these to launch V2 rockets, intended for England.
Bram Boelee My father was a member of the AJC (Arbeiders Jeugd Organisatie), the Dutch Socialist Youth Movement in his youth. He trained as an electrician and became an electrical engineer by going to night classes at the MTS (Higher Technical School). Until 1957 he worked as an electrical
power company).
During the depression in the thirties, my father had to work at some very hazardous jobs. His early death at 61 was definitely linked to the type of things he had to do to be able to continue his studies. My father was incredibly hard working. He had a large family to support. In my youth he had his day job and also taught both night classes and private students.
Anneke Boelee Tak My mother was the youngest of three
girls, she trained as a nurse and once qualified, worked first at a
TB sanatorium in the fishing village of Katwijk and later at the
Rotterdam general hospital.
She met my father about
1935 at a dance (my dad
was playing pocket chess
with a friend). Both my
mum and dad were really
good dancers! They were
married in September 1939
and moved into the
Navanderstraat 10 soon
after. The interior of their
apartment was
contemporary with great
furniture and lighting. My
parents were the modern
Labour people of their day.
These are some pictures from the thirties, all period (1938 1940).
These are my grandmother, aunts and uncles. Top: Frans Bosch-‐Tak, Bep Post-‐Tak with dog Maaike, Oma Tak and Frits Bosch. Middle: Bep and Wim Post on a double Decker bus. Bottom: My dad as a soldier in the
(four day walking competition) around Nijmegen. You really had to feel for that generation, first the Depression and then the war and all of them were only in their twenties!
They are looking happy enough though!
I was born and spend the first 13 years of my life in the residential complex De Eendracht , Blijdorp, Rotterdam. Designed by architect J H van den Broek and build in the mid-‐nineteen thirties, this complex has since become a national monument De has access from four streets, one of these is the Navanderstraat and our apartment was at number 10. Van den Broek designed his houses with the motto
the complex is U shaped with the opening towards Vroesenpark , so that every apartment had a view. We lived
there until 1953, a year after my sister Anita was born and we then moved to the Doezastraat 12b to a two level apartment, which meant that we all had a separate bedroom. The Eendracht apartments were really quite incredible for such small dwellings, there was no wasted space and it is a perfect example of a De Stijl attitude in design, by the architect to try
and improve the lives of middle to lower income tenants.
Blijdorp The Rotterdam suburb of Bljidorp was build between 1931 and 1940 and is surrounded by the filled in Noorderhaven with rubble from the destroyed city centre. De Schie canal and the railway lines going west and east. Blijdorp was planned to be the ultimate example of ideal housing design in the New Reality style of .
My father had been mobilised for a year during
He was garrisoned mainly near one the large river bridges called the Moerdijk. So when the Germans finally opened their large offence on the 10th of May 1940, there was initially minimal resistance from the badly trained and resourced Dutch army. The Netherlands had been neutral during the First World War and were hoping to stay out of this conflict as well. A day later fierce fighting broke out at the bridges of Rotterdam
And the Grebbeberg, so that the German advance was less speedy then ordered. To force the Netherlands to surrender, there were threats of bombardments like Warsaw. The experience for my dad during this time was one of endless retreat, their truck not starting with the German tanks just 200 metres away. He was part of a machinegun crew and when they had a clear shot at a low flying German fighter, he was then threatened with a bayonet by their most heroic, but by now completely terrified sergeantprisoner and had their uniforms taken off them so that German paratroopers could use these to infiltrate strategic targets further north.
Bombardment of Rotterdam The 14th of May 1940 was one of those catastrophic acts of violence, the bombardment of Rotterdam by the Germans. Many thousand people were made homeless in just forty-‐five minutes. There was no Dutch air force to speak of and the Luftwaffe pilots could pick out the buildings to bomb and which ones to leave. Only key buildings like the town hall, the post office, the central police station and the stock exchange remained intact, these were all buildings
Netherlands. Minor matters like the central hospital (where my mum had worked as a nurse until that year), where not part of that strategy and were destroyed. I grew up in a city with an empty centre.
All this came about through the Dutch marines holding up the German army for four days on the Maas bridge and it was only after Utrecht, Amsterdam, Haarlem and Den Haag were threatened with similar terror bombardments, that the Dutch chief of staff, general Winkelman decided to capitulate.
The city burned for a week and the intensity of the heat bend bricks in very strange shapes. My father was still missing and my mother was about to give birth to me. Flames surrounded the hospital when my mother went in.
1940 at 7.30 am at the Diaconessenhuis. The photo is of my mum and me and was taken at Vroesenpark still a park at that point. Later all the trees were cut down during the occupation for firewood and even the paths were dug up to try and burn the bitumen. Our apartment was on the top floor on the right.
Magic places These images show the back yard of Opa and O house at the Zwaerdecroonstraat Rotterdam and in the second image, the frontage of the house of Opa and Oma Tak, Lombokstraat, Amersfoort. Both these places have played a big part in the memories of my childhood.
Tante Frans en Oom Frits. Frans, was the eldest of three sisters, were born and raised on the Hooidrift in Rotterdam. Oom Frits came from a family on the Old North side of Rotterdam where his Dad was an accountant for Rhine skippers who sailed between the Ruhr and Rotterdam. His mum was a former governess who had taught kindergarten in Bordeaux as her father was a captain/ship owner on the trade route between the Baltic and the Gironde. The two met at a gathering of the Free Lutheran Church and soon became more than just good friends. Tante Frans was working for Johan Kok, an artist gold smith on the Binnenweg in Rotterdam. She loved her job and was very good at it since she had an outstanding sense of design and colours. She loved her job so much that she was reluctant to get married, which, in the 1930s, meant you had to end your career if you were a woman. So she made a list of
be fulfilled before any marriage could take place. Thus, the engagement was bound to last a long time. Frits was happy in his job as a cargadore for the Batavierlijn between Rotterdam and London.. They had a very happy marriage, but then, all hell broke loose in the late 30s. Army Mobilisation was called to protect the Netherlands against the mighty armies of the Hun. Corporal Frits was placed in a garrison on the border with an 1871 Boer rifle against water cooled hi-‐power German machine guns. Lucky it was blown off for a while and Frits returned home.
Ronald Vander Bosch
The Final Solution In 1942 our neighbours Bernard Muller and his wife Sara Muller-‐Haagman were picked up from their apartment and send to Auschwitz in 1942. The official date of their deaths is September 30, 1942. Both were in their fifties and they would have most certainly been taken straight to the gas chambers. They gave some of their furniture and crystal to my family to look after
Only 13% of all Rotterdam Jews were still alive in 1945
1943 was the year my brother Jelle was born and also the year
the German occupying forces stopped pretended to be the
the Gestapo became common place and Dutch collaborators
infiltrated resistance groups and reported the whereabouts of
Jewish people in hiding.
17 September 1944 was the date the British Airborne Divisions
landed with gliders at Wolfheze near Arnhem. Their mission was
to secure the Rijn Bridge in Arnhem. The campaign failed and
the result was that the highly populated western Netherlands
were isolated for another nine months. The Germans looted
everything they could. -‐
1945 was the result, 20.000 people died of hunger.
Adolf Hitler had been promising the German nation that he would have these new, mysterious weapons available. In 1944 this became a reality when a flying bomb exploded in London. That was the first V-‐1, an unmanned plane with a jet motor and 1000 KG of explosives in the front. Unfortunately not all these reached their target, quite a few landed in our neighbourhood...
5 May 1945 Liberation
Day
The Canadians were our
liberators and as a little boy
this was an exciting but
surreal time. Waiting at the
railway line for soldiers to
throw chocolate and candy
out of the trains
by. There were these
liberation parties and the
one for had
large images of the Allied
leaders on the roofs. The
downside was a rat plague,
due to a complete lack of
maintenance for 5 years
Revenge Everywhere in Europe where there had
been Nazi terror, the
was send to those who had
committed these acts or
others who had helped in
this process. In the
Netherlands alone there
were 130.000 collaborators
incarcerated in special
camps. There was a lot of
cruelty by the guards in the
first few months. For little
five year olds, like me, there
were holiday camps at the
sea side and in the forests.
The health authorities were
worried about the health of
the war children.
Ronald Vander Bosch
Tante Lien, opa's sister, raised him because they were both orphans (global flu?) I used to go see her about once a week on Saturday mornings with errands from Oma Tak. (When I was living in the Lombokstraat for about 6 years) She was one very cool lady and I didn't mind at all hanging out with her. I am not sure she was catholic but she used to tell me about the time she was working for the nuns in a mental institution or hospital. Someone had turned on the gas in a save and when she went to light it a huge flame came out and burned all her hair. She had white hair from that day on. I believe she had a big axe to grind with the nuns who treated non catholic babies like shit and did hurtful things to non RC women in the hospital. She used to cook
for the Van Vollenhoven family in Amersfoort (wealthy consuls and diplomats) and she sometimes brought home some nice ragout she had made. She was not allowed to use detergent to wash dishes because of cancer, she had to use soap. She also had some family in Amsterdam, the guy was a pharmacist and ran the pharmacies on the Royal Dutch Navy. She did do a lot of sewing for all kinds of people that how she survived. She lived in this one room in some bitch's house on the Stephensonlaan. She was pretty poor but had a heck of a spirit.
The Fifties was a time of contradiction: on the one hand there was this belief in progress. That meant being very serious about your future, education was held up like a religion. On the other there was all this paranoia about the Cold War with the ever looming threat of Nuclear War. The worst flood for hundreds of years and my sister Anita was born during that time.
Blijdorp went through this
when it became a temporary shopping centre, due to the devastated city centre. So we had a Galleries Modernes, Hema,
a nightclub called Eden all around the corner where I was living. It all fitted in with the whole Paris thing as the cultural centre of the world. Singer Juliet Greco (girlfriend of Miles Davis and friend of Jean-‐Paul Sartre) was the pin-‐up girl before Americana completely took over. Artist like Cobra painter Karel Appel still went to Paris, but then when the shift to New York took place he also lived and worked there part of the year. As a fifteen year old I also started to hang out at Café De Fles, which was frequented by members of Rotterdam's cultural scene: like poet Cor Vaandrager and artist Woody van Amen, who was also a barman there. I lived in Blijdorp until I was seventeen and we then moved to Arnhem and a new school and having to deal with people speaking in a very different dialect. Every time I opened my mouth there were gales of laughter about my Rotterdam accent. As far as I was concerned there was nothing to laugh about the way they sounded.....
In my
teens Jazz music and literature were my main interest. The
turning point came when I started going to Jazz concerts at the
Kurhaus in Scheveningen and at local clubs. When I came across
a
European way, what my life
was about then. My father
had taken a new position in
Arnhem and my mother
was pregnant with my
brother Matthijs. I did not
go to school very often in
my last year in Rotterdam.
Instead I went around with
friends and started
seriously going to the
cinema, when the first
Truffaut, Goddard etc.
started to appear. There
was this quaint pricing
structure something like
20c for the first three rows.
Took me years to get used
sitting in the back.
As I said in the fifties Jazz was my main passion, an escape from the very restricted way of life in the Netherlands during that time. We had the Wevers as neighbours and their son Piet, who was a few years older then me, was a jazz buff. Walking into his bedroom with all the amazing pictures of these black musicians on his walls completely blew me away. My generation was really d.i.y. in creating a life style. Our parents had very little money and if I wanted something like clothes or go to a concert, you just had to get a job in the holidays. I worked as a telegram messenger for quite a few years. I got the job thanks to a neighbour who had been a manager there. I saw an amzing amount of great music, paying the minimum and then moving to the usually empty (expensive) front seats.
The most memorable concert I saw in 1956 was at the Rivierahal
in Blijdorp Zoo. It featured Miles Davis, Lester Young, Bud
Powell and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Nothing could have
prepared me for this: Bud Powell played solo piano, grimacing at
himself in the lid of the Steinway and humming very loudly
along with his playing. Apparently he was committed to a
mental institution soon after that. Trumpeter Miles Davis who
did not like applause kept disappearing off the stage in between
numbers and tenor saxophonist Lester Young with his famous
pork pie hat and his saxophone on a 45 degree angle were the
acts before the intermission. All these musicians were residing
in Paris at the time. The main act was the Modern Jazz Quartet,
these very serious looking musicians in baroque dinner suits,
who played a form of neo classical jazz: piano, vibraphone,
often bowed double bass
and drums with lots of little
bells and tambourines.
This family photo was taken in August 1958, soon after the birth
of my youngest brother Matthijs. We had been living in Arnhem
for a few months. My father had taken a new position with the
PGEM (provincial electricity provider for the province of
Gelderland). We moved into a brand new semi-‐ detached house,
on a hill, a rarity in the flat Netherlands. This was really hard on
my mother with a new baby and all her family and friends a long
way away. The street was like a large sandpit. The house was
great though, wonderful furniture, and lighting. I had to share a
bedroom with my brother Jelle, which was a worry for my
parents, because in Rotterdam we did not get on that well. We
became close in the next few years with similar interests,
especially in music and we shared our record collections. Also
we became seamen about the same time and sailed for the
same company, the Rotterdam Lloyd. Jelle was a pastry cook
initially and I worked as a
steward. The underlying
reason for this was that
both of us were looking for
a way to get to the USA and
check out all these exciting
things that were happening
there. This is before air
travel became common
place. People from small
countries often have an
affinity to a larger country,
for us that was anything
American. My cousins
Ronald and Joyce went to
live there permanently and
my cousin Tom lived and
worked there as a musician
during the
Mattijn Seip and I had been friends since 1944. We were about 4 years old and it was at the end of the war and the liberation period. This was a wildly exciting time for little boys; there were discarded weapons, ammunition and vehicles dumped in our park. When we became older we stayed friends and had similar interest in music, film and places to go to. His house was much more interesting than mine. They had a French lodger; older sister was a dancer. I
always felt welcome there. After high school Mattijn moved to Amsterdam and became a film maker: Schermerhoorn, Ijdijk, Rubbish, Pos.Neg. Light Vibrations, Salad were some of the major projects he made during the sixties and seventies. We lost contact for a long time, but with the Internet all that changed. Mattijn works as a 3D artists these day and lives in Amsterdam.
My cousin Ronald Bosch and I were also really close in our youth
and teenage years. Ronald was a year older than me. Ron also
lived in different towns from me after both us left Rotterdam.
Ron lived with my grandparents in Amersfoort and we moved to
Arnhem. We saw a lot of each other in our late teenage years
and early twenties. I was in the army and Ronald was a
psychology student in Utrecht and I used to come and hang out,
talking a lot and getting drunk, the perfect antidote to army life.
After I went to sea, so did he and we only saw each other a few
times, we went our different ways and have not seen each
physically in 40 years.
High School was not exactly the most exciting time for me, in fact I did rather badly, failed a couple of years. In the end I got good marks at the state exam. Having rather authoritarian and uninteresting teachers did not help very much. In my last year, there was Mr. Reugenbrink, our art teacher, a relatively young man compared to most of his colleagues. He had a great way of getting you to relate to all sorts of things and was an example to me when I became a tutor at D & A, Christchurch, in later years. Hitchhiking all over Western Europe in the holidays, often with Mattijn Seip, was the great escape for me during that time.
Mr. Reugenbrink and Andre Smeenk
In 1959 I was drafted into the army for my compulsory military training, first in the southern town of Roermond and later at Maastricht. To become a soldier was regarded as making a
me. Having to share a space with twenty other young men did
choice to become more organised and tidy. I became more aware of other people and how to keep my head down if required. After the initial basic training I was transferred to an army barracks five minutes from our house in Arnhem. This did not last for very long, as the Netherlands was about to start a conflict with its former colony Indonesia over the right to remain in Western New Guinea, now Papua New Guinea. We were harangued by our officers on a daily basis to volunteer. I had been to South America just before and had a fair idea what
it would entail to be in a locality like that and I was absolutely not interested going there. Quite a few people did and a number of them got killed in action, all for nothing in the end, when the US forced the Netherlands to withdraw. I was transferred to the cavalry. I spend eighteen months in the army, part of that time in Germany and France. I was part of a mortar crew and was also a radio operator in a half truck. After about 9 months I got out of the running
became a night porter in the officers hotel, heaven under the circumstances. I read lots mainly classical Russians like Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Turgenev. s. On the day I turned 21 I walked out and hitchhiked to Sitges, Spain to detox .
I first went to sea in 1959; before I was due to go into the army. I made a trip on a freighter to the Netherlands Antilles and Venezuela with the KNSM. Arriving there was like going to Mars for me: the heat, the jungle, soldiers everywhere. I went to the Gulf of Maracaibo, La Guaira (Port Of Caracas) and Ciudad Bolivar, 500km up the Orinoco River. Mosquitoes like small helicopters, naked Indians in dugout canoes with huge outboard motors. After the army I went to work for the Rotterdam Lloyd, first on a freighter to Singapore and then transferred to another ship that was on the Far East North America run. Taking tin and rubber for the car factories in Detroit, 30 days non-‐ stop from Malaysia to Montreal, Canada. Dutch seamen were paid quite badly so arriving in Canada and the US was difficult because you had no money to spend ashore. I started to sell Dutch beer to the dock workers to subsidise shore adventures.
In Montreal there was the Twist, totally amazing, two bands alternating, they never stopped playing for about 4 hours. In the US: Detroit and Chicago a rude shock regarding the whole race thing, in my innocence I had thought that there were these cool ghettoes, instead there was the South Side with millions of black people. Saw some great music though: Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon and Benny Green.
My cousin Joyce was 6 years younger than I, so I only got to know her just before I went to New Zealand. She was an incredible vivacious girl and looked amazingly like her mum. Joyce met Charles and moved to the US in the sixties. Above is a photo of Oma Tak and of my aunts Frans and Bep and my mum. When I was small they used to laugh so loud in the next room that I shook in my bed.
When I got back home after about five months, I transferred to the Rotterdam
made five trips around the world as a cabin and dining room steward, very hard work for very little pay, you were supposed to be earning good money from tips (except the passengers were not informed of that fact). The company used to employ Malay personnel in the days of the colonial Dutch East Indies and many of the attitudes from then were continued by the company with a
Dutch crew, sometimes with a sort of mini mutiny as the results. Stewards threw all the silver overboard and the ship had to be re equipped on one trip. I visited some great places like Port Said, Colombo, Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, Lima, Panama, Bermuda, and Miami, New York. Without really being aware of it I was looking for a place to run away to and New Zealand became that place for me. The biggest shock for me was when I came back ashore was my little brother Onno, who had turned into this Michelin Man like figure, really big and strong. I also visited Opa and Oma Boelee for the first time in years. In the photo they would have been about 75, quite soon after that I decided to immigrate to New Zealand. I had met this girl on the last day before we arrived in Southampton and I was getting tired of life at sea. My mother and father took me to Schiphol Airport and after a plane trip of nearly four days, saw me arrive in Christchurch, New Zealand for a new life in strange country...
I met Ann Blair, while working on the on the last day before arriving in Southampton. My friend Jaap van Hinte, who also worked on the same ship, had met an Australian girl Pat and when she came over to Arnhem from London, she brought along a friend, who turned about to be Ann. The two of us went on a hitch-‐hiking trip to Venice and after returning to the Netherlands, I went back with her to London, it turned out to be one of the most amazing and unexpected experiences. I had never been very interested in anything English; the people I met before always seemed so odd and old-‐timey. Getting off the train and how it felt there was fantastic! A weekend turned into several months with the odd trip back to get some more money. This seemed have been the only time that the English class system went temporarily into recess. The pubs had this
amounts of commonwealth -‐
existing happily together. The beat music scene in 1962 was already started to emerge. I immigrated to New Zealand at the beginning of 1963. I met
parents, Scots immigrants from Motherwell and Peebles. They were interesting people; Jock was a RAF bomber engineer, throughout the war, a devout socialist, Nance an eccentric but a very fashionable woman. Six months after my arrival Ann returned to New Zealand and we got married soon after. In the best spirit of
Rab (both of them champion sports people) came back from Australia to marry Lynette Norman on the same day.
Meanwhile In 1964 was the year that my brother Onno decided to move out to New Zealand. He was only 18 years old and spoke virtually no English. We were living in Auckland at the time, so Onno came to live with us in a tiny one bedroom flat. Onno slept on our couch that was something to behold. He moved out and boarded in the same neighbourhood Mt Eden. He has lived in Auckland ever since. He was an apprentice ships carpenter by trade and started working for a
building firm as soon as he arrived. Onno was a very large young man, incredibly strong and fast. He started playing rugby and played his first competitive game, after just a few months, in the A Grade as a prop for Auckland club Grafton, and propped against the then All Black Captain Wilson Whineray. After a year he decided that rugby and teams sports was not really for him and became a judoka. He told me at the time, what he lacked in technique he made up in brute strength. Competitively he advanced rapidly and won a number of New Zealand titles and in international competitions he became Oceania Champion (super heavyweight) by beating the then Olympic bronze medal winner from Australia. After 10 years at the top of the sport Onno was to go to the Olympics, but in their wisdom the judo people decided to send an official instead It was the time for Onno to reasses his options .He became a highly succesful professional wrestler both in New Zealand and Asia.
I met my cousin Tom Stuip at my grandparents house, when I was leaving to go to New Zealand. Tom is 4 years younger than I and we lived in different towns. I found him a really interesting guy, I heard that he was a banjo player. When I went back to the Netherlands in 1977, Tom offered me a place to stay at his apartment in Rotterdam. This turned out to be a really inspiring and exciting time. I found out about lots of different music, with which I was not in the least familiar: bluegrass, roots and early jazz. Tom lived in California in the sixties, during the whole psychedelic era. He is one the major banjo players in Europe. Arlette and Tom, as well as being family, are our best friends.
These images are of the
sister Alie married oom Henk and their children: Rob, Tom and Rene are my cousins. This is the interesting part of families; you do form friendships with some of your relations and lose touch with the others. I have not seen my cousin Rob, since our childhoods for no particular reason, it just happened that way. Something similar happened with some
side. These pictures are interesting to me because it shows my grandfather Jan and my cousins as adults
whole reason for making this book really is to try and bring as many things like this .
My children Scotia and Blair
were born in Christchurch
in 1966 and 1968. I was
working as a bar manager
at the time, working rather
long and odd and not very
convenient hours for a
young family. We moved to
Whakatane, in the Eastern
Bay of Plenty, where I
ended up working in the
Whakatane Board Mills. I
became a mill hand, a job
that paid really well. The
downside was that I had to
do shift work, but it did give
me a lot more spare time and I began to think of some new
direction in my life. The first 4 years in Whakatane were really
good, it has a nice climate, great beaches and it was really good
to spend a lot more time with my kids. Getting used to living in a
small town was initially really beneficial. We got a dog, Pete,
lived in some nice places. At age 29 I started to play rugby and
started to paint seriously at the same time. I had been trying to
be jazz double bass player in Christchurch, but after a few years
I had to admit to myself that I was never going to be as good as
my heroes, so I started to paint (like a musician). The progress
was rather rapid and I painted 40/50 paintings a year and in
1972 I was ready to have my first solo exhibition with the
Society of Arts at the Rotorua Museum. I met Ted Bullmore, a
really great artist, who had worked and exhibited in the UK and
Italy, who helped me hang the show. I sold 5 paintings enough
for a deposit for a house!
1970 -‐2000 Painting
Life in New Zealand
Losing Touch
The Wandering Years
Family
Death
New Generation
The Internet
Kith & Kin
The seventies saw the deaths of my father and artist friend Ted Bullmore. Above right: Blair and a young Pete at Ohope Beach.
At the end of the sixties, after I had been away for about 6 or 7 years, my father got sick and was diagnosed with water on the lungs. What that exactly meant, I have never been that sure about that. It sounded more like lung cancer to me. Ironic really for a man who did not smoke or drink, but there was all the passive smoking that went on and the horrible jobs during the depression cleaning oil tanks etc. He was only 61 years old when he died. My sister Anita was 19, my brother Matthijs 13. It was one of those unfortunate things, that a man who always worked very hard
for his family never saw the rewards for his life in retirement. He was a really great chess player, but really I never knew him that well. Interesting to talk to my brother Matthijs now, who has quite a different perspective on the family dynamics, how I perceived this. My sister Anita cared for my mother later in life when she had become invalided after a stroke; it was an incredible strong bond.
My brother Jelle also came to New Zealand after his Dutch military Service (he changed his name to Jay because Jelle sounded too much like yellow and you did not have to give ignorant kiwis any ammunition). He worked first in hotels, after his arrival and then in the record business for Phonogram/Polygram/Columbia Records (New Zealand) in Wellington starting out as a sales manager and then became the Marketing and National Sales manager. In early 1972, he became the Artist & Repertoire Director, and he also worked in that position in Baarn (The Netherlands), London and Sydney.
was that he was able to able to connect all the various permutations of any potential hit record, before it arrived in New Zealand. The opposition EMI had the Beatles and Phonogram had the rest of the top ten. In 1975 arrived the bomb shell for Onno and me that he had left New Zealand and
had joined the Foreign Legion. We lost touch for a number of years, due to Jay having to change his name, age and nationality and even when I was on a working holiday in the South of France I did not manage to see him where he was garrisoned, although I did find out his alias. From 1986 1988, he was manager of the regimental PX (NAAFI) and central sales office Polynesia, the infamous Mururoa Atoll where the French were testing nuclear devices. A rather moot point with most New Zealanders, culminating in French commandoes blowing up the Greenpeace
in Auckland harbour in 1985. We met up for the first time in 2005 when we visited him after he retired from the Legion.
The Rainbow Warrior was the flagship of the
international environmental organisation,
Greenpeace. It had been in port at Auckland
for three days and was scheduled to lead a
fleet of vessels to Mururoa Atoll in protest
against the French nuclear testing in the
South Pacific. Just before midnight on 10 July,
1985, two explosions rocked the harbour,
sinking the forty metre Rainbow Warrior.
Underwater charges had been placed by
French frogmen blowing two holes in the
he ship sank almost
immediately. The Rainbow Warrior bombing
was the first time an act of international
state-‐sponsored terrorism had been
committed in New Zealand. Twenty one years
later, Monday the 10th of July, 2006, my
opened at PaperGraphica, Christchurch. The
work in the installation presented a series of
portraits of the French agents involved
painted from police photographs. Ironic with
my brother Jay at Mururoa at the time!. The
whole thing was staged as a 21st with
obligatory mirror key and a yard glass, one of
those gross customs for attaining adulthood in
New Zealand. For such a down subject the
exhibition was a success in attendance figures
and I even made some sales!
The picture is my cousin Ronald from a Vermont newspaper which did an article on him in 1970 in a music club/recording studio called "Fat City" where he was the boss for about ten chaotic years, keeping it all running, excellent music, mostly rock 'n roll but also blues, folk, jazz and Dixieland: Buddy Rich, Bo Diddley, Simon and Garfunkel, etc. It was in a barn in a ski area, could seat about 400 people and it had three bars, one of which was about 100 feet long., very rustic and funky.
me were the
5 years. My marriage had ended and I lived in Australia, France, The Netherlands, looking for some direction and feeling bad about leaving my kids.
After my return from Europe in 1977, I
worked for a few months on a dairy farm near
Edgecumbe (Eastern Bay of Plenty). This was a
really healing experience for me after all the
moving around of the previous years. I loved
working with the cows, rather surprising for a
Top: No.44 and Bottom:
No. 38 my favourites, beautiful Jerseys.
Some of the people I was friends with during
Left: Rose & Bart Hjelmstrom with daughter Monique, Bob Bain, Nicky Hales, Barry Hall.
I arrived in Christchurch in 1978, got a PEP job at the Law Courts and found a really good flat in Montreal Street in central Christchurch. The next couple of years were the best times for me; I started painting quite seriously again and met all these relatable people, artists and musicians. Punk rock, new wave and the new Christchurch and Dunedin bands were playing just around the corner at the Gladstone Hotel and lots of parties after closing time. Great! My friend Alan Drain in the photo below
In 1981 I had my first Christchurch exhibition
CSA. The
paintings were really inspired by the jazz
bands (Lester Bowie, Frank Wright, Dewey
Redman) I had seen the previous year in
Rotterdam and what was happening around
me in Christchurch . My portrait of Piet
Mondrian was the beginning of all these
works. I met artists Brian McMillin, Robin
Neate and Martin Whitworth during that
time, they were my neighbours and used to
watch me paint the Mondrian work at night,
before we were introduced. For a few years
we were quite closely connected and had a
show together, a few years later
. The Robert McDougall Art Gallery
anent collection.
Some images of earlier work: bottom left
(1976), completed in a small workers room at a hostel in Tokoroa
Above: Gerrit
Campbell Grant Galleries, Christchurch.
I went back to Europe in 1982 for 18 months and on my return to Christchurch in 1984 became involved with the Free Theatre, a collaborative and group-‐based organisation with as much emphasis on process as final product.
first production I was involved in as a performer and my first set design Peter Handke
really influential on my painting. Stuart McKenzie, Charles Heywood, Roy Montgomery, Nansi Thompson are the actors in these images
I had met Robyne Voyce a
few times during the early
we did not really connect
until we both had returned
had been away for quite a
few years in India, UK,
Israel, Egypt, Turkey and
Australia. We met
accidentally in (bookshop)
Whitcoulls and I suppose
felt similar about being
back in Christchurch, in
1988 we became a very
happy couple.
Bill our wonderful bright ginger tom, came to us as a very grubby alley cat in Victoria Street, he appeared out of a pig bin from the veggie shop next door. Bill was a great talker. He did not really live with us but came to visit. One day he disappeared and after a week he came back and started to clean up. Buying our house was necessary for him to have a garden, Bill lived for 16 years.
Dudley our beautiful black Labrador boy came a few years later. He was a pedigree, old fashioned, bred for his head and colour. He was a really smart, good house dog and great swimmer. He had the Labrador appetite that unfortunately meant eating anything at all. Dudley lived till nearly 16, a great age for a big dog like he was.
Bertie We have had
Bertie since he was 6 weeks old; he is a Bearded Collie Labrador X. When he was a puppy he just looked like a Labrador, with the appetite to boot. When he started to grow, he became a really lean and elegant dog. He can run like the wind. He is a total house dog, very close to his pack , really bright and adaptable. He comes to the shop with us and is now aged 5.
The children were all growing up. My niece,
Airlie married Des Fermah and in the photos:
her mum Lynette and sister Leaska.
In these photos: daughter Scotia, partner
Shauna, Robyne, granddaughter Nico , in laws
Jock Blair, Nance Blair, husband Greg
Malcolm, grandson Brahm.
The following year 1989 was a horrible year!
My son Blair, who was 19 at the time, had
met this nice young woman Maria and they
had a six month old baby Bonnie. They lived in
a house truck in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, but
had decided to move south. Blair went to a
party on his own and during the drive back
went into a drain and drowned. Now in 2010
Bonnie is 21, a wonderful girl, and a female
version of her father. She lives with her mum
and stepfather Derek in Perth, Western
Australia.
Richardson, husband Steve Cross and
daughter Memphis. They live in Melbourne
and we have stayed with them a number of
times.
New Zealand life is quite different from what I
was used to in Europe. A small population
means that people here usually have a very
large circle of friends. I met Robin MacDuff in
job for the CAD (Commercial Affairs Division
of the Justice Department). When we bought
our house in 1988 both Robyne and I needed
to get permanent jobs and Robyne became
Robin MacDu
been family friends ever since with Rob, Al
MacDuff and their daughters Keiller and
Meredith.
For a few years I had virtually stopped painting but by 1994 I finished a new body of screen printed,
politically inspired, work and had an ,
Christchurch. The show also toured to: Greymouth, Timaru, Gore, Invercargill and Palmerston North.
imagery as a commentary on the New Zealand condition, in a sort of constructivist pop style.
Cup, Ernest Shufflebottom Crown Lynn modernist vase, Crown Lynn swan, works that became
Annex, Christchurch and Bishop Suter Gallery, Nelson.
A set of 4 NZR Cups were acquired for the Robert McDougall (now Christchurch Art Gallery)
permanent collection
In 1996 the project "Crown Lynn New Zealand' -‐ A Salvage Operation" a Rudolf Boelee collaboration with graphic designers Brian Shields and Craig Stapley was exhibited at the High Street Project Gallery, Christchurch and City Gallery, Wellington. "Crown Lynn New Zealand" was a breakdown of distinction of pop culture and serious culture, different genres and different art forms and also investigated some of the ideas of "De Stijl", a group of Dutch artists, architects and designers, active in the early part of the 20th century. Some of their ideas may be summarized as: "An insistence of the social role of art, design and architecture and a conviction that art and design have the power to change the future."
2000 Marriage
Digital Cameras
The Facebook Era
Pets
New Adults
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Crown Lynn New Zealand
Art
Pug Design Store
Robyne and I decided to get married in 2000. We were turning 40 & 60 and decided to have a party and get married at the same time. It
had any idea what was about to happen. The whole was done at our house and the ceremony was in our backyard. . It was the perfect thing for us to do. Our fiend Inez Grim took these photos the next day.
Opshop In 1999 Robyne and I set up Opshop Art & Design Gallery at our home (414 Gloucester Street, Christchurch). The gallery specialised in Robyne Voyce clothing, accessories and fabric art work and I showed paintings, digital works and art furniture. This project was featured in the November 2002
Opshop was a domestic continuation of the public work we had been doing in the previous years, with a constructivist use of the various spaces. We showed our extensive collection of post war modernist furniture, fabrics, ceramics, glass and lighting, in combination with our own and other artist s works.
Ultimately we found that the division be too hard to negotiate, so a few years (2008) later we opened Pug Design Store.
work developed
more and more into a form
of fabric reliefs, recycling
vintage fabrics into
unexpected sculptural
shapes. 1999 saw the
establishment of
http://www.opshop.co.nz
In 2003 on a winter trip to
Thailand, we met members
of the Fine Arts Faculty of
Silpakorn University,
Bangkok. From that
meeting I co-‐curated the
members of my institution
D & A and Silpakorn; the
works were shown at CoCA,
Christchurch and various
university galleries in
Thailand.
In 2003
In 2007 we went for a trip to Europe and met up with my aunt Frans, who celebrated her 96th birthday, as well as my cousin Joyce who had moved to the US about the same time as when I went to NZ, My sister Anita and Brother Jay and boyhood friend Mattijn Seip.
My niece Airlie had three children, she is seen
here with her daughter Preta (top right), her
husband Des (top left), mother Lynette and
my granddaughter Nico
My cousins Tom and Arlette, while were staying with them at their house in Den Haag. Arlette is a truly unique person, a fantastic teacher and totally committed person in anything she does. Be that environmental work or the politics of living in Europe as an Americain. We totally love her!
More images from our 2007 trip in The Netherlands: Robyne in Volendam with my brother Matthijs, his partner Andreas Verheijen, Robyne in a tram and at
Haag. Andreas is a flower engineer and showed us the amazing flower auctions at Aalsmeer. We had a really great time with them in Amsterdam.
These are some of my works in the permanent collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna O Waiwhetu
Order , The Tynans, Composition with P , there is a set of 4 NZR Cups there as well.
After we bought our house in 1988, Robyne and I went regularly on opshop and fair expeditions, primarily to acquire interesting furniture and ceramics from the immediate post war era to furnish the house. During that time I was working at the (NZ) Companies Office, my job was removing defunct companies from the Register of Companies. In 1993 I saw that Crown Lynn Potteries Limited was gazetted to be removed and under New Zealand Company Law I was entitled to apply for that name, which I did, as well as the
company was the largest ceramic manufacturer in NZ and I turned many of its former wares into painted images: NZR Cup, modernist vases and swan.
Images of the grandchildren: Bonnie, Brahm and Nico Boelee in 2008.
During 2001 Robyne and I organised the GE Free photo exhibition, 'TOMORROW', the show was held for only one night in contemporary art project space the Physics Room.
Fitzsimmons opened the exhibition and spoke about genetic engineering and its implications. After the show we helped stage another much larger exhibition at Shed 11 in Wellington. One of the more unpleasant aspects of the Labour Government was their inability to gauge the opposition to any form GE being introduced in NZ
Kirsten Rennie wrote about
2004 exhibition at
Textile and fabric
artist Robyne Voyce
presents her latest body of
work 'Bryndwr 17'. The
show takes its name from
the artist's old bus route
operating in the 1960's out
of suburbia and into
Christchurch central and it
marks a psychological
journey back in time and a
re-‐structuring of early
childhood in order to make
sense out of the present
More images from our 2007 trip to Europe with my sister Anita and husband Jacques with Arlette, my brother Jay in France and Cousin Joyce at the time of the funeral of my Aunt Frans. Photo of Robyne and me in Australia
Above are i at CoCA, Christchurch. This show was intended
to be staged as a type of Marae and tour the country, instead it turned into a dispute over alleged
course.
Images of Tom and Arlette at the birth of their
granddaughter. Guitarist Greg Malcolm,
father of my grandchildren Nico and Brahm,
wife Jenny Ward,
Lauren Parsons, Brahm and Nico. Below:
Mishka and husband.
We have also been very close to the Blandford -‐Walbaekken families. Robyne met Sue-‐ann while they worked together at this law firm, her mother Alice and Norwegian father Olle also became friends. Matene and Sue-‐ann now have five amazing children and although we see each other rarely, when we do it is always great.
My 2003 exhibition 'her dissatisfaction' at the Physics Room was an installation show that combined wall painting, with digital work, video and live Jazz (tenor player Stu Buchanan, Dougal Canard on bass). It was the end of my time as a tutor and a return to painting as the main activity of my practice.
I did not really get to know my youngest brother Matthijs, until I went back for a trip to the Netherlands in 1977. My brothers and I were these unreal figures in another faraway country for him. Matthijs was a brilliant student at the Arnhem Fashion Academy and later became a highly respected academic in his field. Presently he is Course Director Fashion Design ArtEZ Institute of the Arts Arnhem , the premier fashion school in the Netherlands. Matthijs lives in Amsterdam with his partner Andreas in this really great apartment in the old dock area. Matthijs also has had a lifelong interest in breeding and showing pedigree dogs: West Highland terriers and later Scottish terriers. Some of these won championships at the various prestigious dog shows in Europe and the UK.
Friends: Susan Greenwood, Daniel McCabe
from England, Steve and Annie Millner with
their children Bart and Candice at their bach
in Akaroa.
Kerry and Richard Voljay on holidayfrom
Melbourne, Maria and Derek Watts from
Perth, WA.
In 2007 Robyne and I had a
show togethe
at NG
Gallery. The space is multi -‐
purpose, with a high
fashion retail outlet, a cafe
and art gallery. For us it was
a great opportunity to
assimilate our works into a
space like that. Robyne had
these multi panel fabric
constructions and I showed
these white based grid/
figure paintings. The images
I used were taken from
French New Wave films and
the majority were hung on
a rough green, wooden
wall. We were pretty happy
with the results,
unfortunately no sales!
My sister Anita is the only one of us to have stayed in the Arnhem area. She looked after my mother for a number of years when she needed permanent care in the nineties. Anita now lives with her husband Jacques Henzen in the beautiful village of Wolfheze, near Arnhem, surrounded by heath, forest and the river Rhine; it is one of the most picturesque places in the Netherlands. Anita worked mainly in the hospitality industry and finished her working life as a chef. She and her cousin Joyce have a very close relationship because of similar experiences in the care for their (sister) mothers. Anita was my only ( little) sister and my favourite.
More images with family members in the Netherlands during our Europe trip: Andreas Verheijen, Robyne, Tante Alie Stuip, Matthijs Boelee, Jacques Henzen and Anita Henzen -‐ Boelee.
At the opening of my exhibition
in 2009 at the Flagstaff Gallery in Devonport , with my brother Onno Boelee, friends Lennie and Julie Worthington, Lara and Finn Fair.
Friends from top left: Darral Campbell and her children Ayrton and Neave, Meredith MacDuff, Alex Hunter-‐Higgins, Sharon Hunter, Tracie Taylor and Michael Daly on their wedding day, Chris Beardsley.
We have known and been friends with the Doyle sisters: Sara, Robyn, Terry since the early eighties. These are some photos from a really wonderful holiday at John post office at Kaitangata in 2003. The photo on the right is of Otis Doyle from 2010
Friends from top left: Christian Carruthers,
Rebecca Lovell-‐Smith and their son Jimmy,
Gary Ireland, Inez Grim and her mother
Gonnie.
Linda Richardson, Trudy, and Dean
Richardson, David and Linda Gower, Marian
Richardson Christmas 2009. Below: Eric
Beardsley
Gower.
Below: friends Nigel Buxton and Marian
Maguire, artists and gallery director and
owner of PaperGraphica, Christchurch.
My exhibitions dealt quite a lot with the idea of a Dutch artist practising in New Zealand. Nieuw Zeeland at PaperGraphica, Christchurch in 2005, was described as a modernist exploration of the history of my chosen land in these works I covered a number of themes from portraiture and human endeavour to conservation
The exhibition Colour is Light, Light is Love, Love is God' at CoCA, Christchurch in 2000. This was a collaborative show on 19th century Dutch painter Petrus van der Velden. The exhibition's multi-‐disciplinary perspective on van der Velden included paintings by Dennis de Visser and I, a Dutch documentary programme by the writer and presenter Boudewijn Buch on van der Velden and bi-‐lingual poems by Koenraad Kuiper. .
From the top left: Chris John, Matt Butler and
Tracy Walsh, Denise Isaacs and friends,
Margaret Graham, Rebecca and Leith Macvey.
Images from the wonderful
White Light 40th birthday
party of friend Claudia and
husband Mike Weersing at
their awe inspiring Pyramid
Valley Vineyard and friends.
During 2005 we entered the Facebook era, for
me a really nice opportunity to reconnect with
old friends and keep informed about the
images: daughter Scotia Boelee, husband Iain
Scott, niece Leaska Blair and her daughter
Deena. Scotia and Iain work in the petro
chemical industry, in the UK, Australia and
New Zealand and are now moving to Qatar.
These are the new families of my cousins Joyce Frieders -‐Bosch, husband Chuck Frieders and Ronald Vander Bosch. I find the family resemblance amazingly similar with the grandparents Frits and Frans Bosch. In these photos Abel Vander Bosch and daughter LUX Izabella, his father Ronald, his sister Joyce, daughter in law Kelli Kerr-‐Frieders, children Lexi and Brendan, son Pieter Frieders , Opa Frits and Oma Frans. The painting of the flowers really inspired me as a young man.
These are installation shots at the Millenium Art Gallery, Blenheim from my national
(2007 -‐2010), featuring portraits of Charles Brasch, Robin Hyde, Dan Davin, Rewi Alley, James Bertram, Geoffrey Cox,and John Mulgan .The works were seen at PaperGraphica, Christchurch, The Forrester Gallery, Oamaru, Southland Museum & Art Gallery, Invercargill Eastern Southland Gallery, Gore, Millenium Public Art Gallery, Blenheim, Rotorua Art & History Museum, Rotorua, Flagstaff Gallery, Devonport,Whangarei Art Museum, Whangarei.
Friends: Warwick Isaacs and Marita
Vandenberg, children Rosa Isaacs, Bruno
Isaacs, William and George, children of Simon
Bassett-‐Smith and Kenna Worthington.
Design with a Sense of Humour Robyne Voyce and Rudolf Boelee present an eclectic range of goods: from framed vintage
travel and film posters to paintings, screenprinted t-‐shirts & t-‐
towels, brooches, model cars, screenprinted & vintage fabric
cushions, original cards and everything in between. All prices
quoted are in NZ Dollars Pug Design Store is located in a
beautiful old two-‐storied building at the intersection of Kilmore
and Barbadoes Streets, Christchurch, it is easily recognised by
the bright teal blue park bench out front. Adrienne Rewi
Christchurch friends in other places, Top: Jayne Joyce and Steve Kerr on their wedding day in Wellington 2008. Robyne and I worked with Jayne on the video "Opshop". They now live in London. Bottom: Christine Rockley and Herman Olguin on their wedding day in Sunshine, northern New South Wales. We met Chris and Herman while they were living in Christchurch. Chris taught me Photoshop and saved our boy Bill's life with Reiki. On the right: Tony Peake, first hour punk and music personality from the seventies and eighties Christchurch scene, now living in Australia
Postscript: Being a first time e -‐author and rather inexperienced at this type of publishing, there were bound to be things I either forgot or omitted, and because this is a picture book, there were many areas of my early life I had no images to speak off. It was no sooner that "Blijdorp" was 'finished', that I came across a site about Rotterdam, with an article by a youth friend of mine, Cornelis (Kees) van Vliet. Kees lived at the same address as I did, Navanderstraat 10. We also went to the same primary school for a time, but in 1952 his father got a job in New Jersey, USA and the whole family emigrated over there soon after. The photo on the right is a few years later of Kees with one of our other youth friends, Jaap Breedveld. Kees was in the US Navy, 1959-‐63, and became a US citizen, got into sailing and opened a yacht brokers firm in Cannes, France during the 1970's. He is now semi-‐retired and is president of the U.S. Navy League, Monaco. Our email reminiscences about our childhood have been fantastic and Kees has given me some
wonderful images of us as 12 year olds. The amazing thing for me is how happy we all looked in comparison to the children of the same age today. Other than our bikes,
we had no toys, no parental guidance to speak off, in comparison to the over protective climate of today. This did not mean that our parents were neglecting us, but with our fathers at work and our mothers with several younger children to care for at home, we just looked after ourselves and went on endless adventures to Rotterdam harbour, Blijdorp Zoo, the waste lands etc. etc.
The photograph of the kids
on the left was taken in
1952 and shows my friends
from left to right: Kees van
Vliet, Boudewijn Breedveld,
Mattijn Seip, Jaap
Breedveld , me . Kees's
sisters, Joke and Rieny are
in the front right. The two
little kids I can't remember.
The photo bottom left was
taken at a bird colony "De
Beer" (now a petroleum
harbour). Rudolf Boelee,
Mattijn Seip, Kees van Vliet
in the centre of the image.
The bridge on the left was
known as the 'hen's bridge',
one of those magic places
from our childhood.
Above: Cornelis van Vliet,
2010
Linwood Christchurch