Immigration to New Zealand in the 1960s

Go back were you came from, taking our bloody jobs!

I’ve been following the story of a Ukraine woman leaving the war-torn country with her son. She left with the equivalent of US$400. By the time she got to Poland, the Ukraine currency had devalued and all she could get for it was $60. She left Poland because there were too many refugees and the chances of finding work and new home were limited. So she caught a train to Germany, which was a free trip for refugees.

My parents weren’t refugees, but the Netherlands was overpopulated, jobs were limited and my father considered South Africa, Canada and New Zealand. He was offered a great job and home in South Africa, with servants even. But he couldn’t stand the concept of racism of any sort after the Holocaust. I think it was a toss-up between Canada and New Zealand. He had a friend who had recently moved to New Zealand and found life good, telling him it would be easy to find work and home. He said he would help. That tipped the scales.

The trip was subsidised by the New Zealand government and I think we arrived with the equivalent of around $200 and a couple of suitcases.

On the hit parade of the day, Elvis was singing with the Jordanaires.

So things progressed very quickly and suddenly it was now.

We boarded the Zuiderkruis, or Southern Cross and apparently other than pooping my nappies as we boarded, I enjoyed the trip on an immigrant ship. Men were on one deck, women and children on another, but most of the time was spent on one of the decks.

Me holding on to my mother. Look at the camera.

I am fortunate to live in New Zealand which I used to think of as being very tolerant and supportive of immigrants, but there has always been an undercurrent of intolerance that has been around for most of the country’s history. It wasn’t just about race or skin colour either.

When we arrived in New Zealand, my father got a job with New Zealand Rail. They had a problem converting the weight of cargo from imperial to metric and being Dutch, and very intelligent, he got the job on the basis of being able to make those calculations quickly and easily.

I don’t know whether it was because he told neighbours about his good fortune, or just because we were foreign and didn’t speak English very well, but we copped some of that intolerance. Our house in Union Street was small and had a steep sloping corrugated iron roof. You can’t really see it on this photo taken at the time and recently colourised.

I remember a series of winter evenings when my father hadn’t returned from work. There was the metallic clatter as stones thrown by neighbours would roll down the slanting roofing iron to land in the gutters or on the ground. These would be interspersed with cries of “Go back where you came from, bloody foreigners, taking our jobs!” They would stop when my father got home from work in the dark, perhaps for fear of consequences. I remember, my mother would turn the lights off and we would stand together facing the kitchen bench, pretending we weren’t home until my father returned from work.

They would be able to hear him, as he came down the street in his 1923 Dodge pick-up, spitting and farting down the road. The car that is. He got it as a swap for a token carton of cigarettes from someone who wanted to help us out.

The little truck had wooden spokes and wheels and a cool claxon that went aooogah to herald his arrival. I still have that horn. For some years I would put it under the bonnet of various cars, like my Holden Kingswood station wagon and have fun using it when someone had missed that the lights had changed, or to announce my arrival. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit under the bonnet of a modern car.

Music was always part of our lives. It ranged from French and Dutch songs to jazz and blues. I couldn’t get enough of it. We didn’t have a TV so it was all about the record player. This was one of the songs I used to sing all the time.

As things go, we settled in and soon made good friends with our neighbours, my parents and me.

That’s me on the left sporting overalls

I had a wonderful 6th birthday party, which I was delighted to discover some people remember to this day when sharing an image on the awesome Remembering Christchurch Facebook group.

Tossing giveaways to my friends

We soon moved around the corner to Tovey Street, a few houses from a beach, not dissimilar to the North Sea we left behind in Holland. It was a short distance to the sand dunes, where I spent much of my time, having adventures. We found great neighbours there and life was good.

In 1963, the Beach Boys topped the Billboard Charts with Surfin’ USA. I wasn’t surfing and most of the music blowing in the wind around our household at the time was jazz, blues and Peter Paul and Mary.

As in my post In My Room, I would continue to enjoy the Beach Boys and at some stage, I will write about how I got to go to a Beach Party in San Diego and was one of only a couple of hundred people watching and dancing to a performance by Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Brian Wilson and Al Jardine. What a night that was!

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