Excerpt's of Marijke Greenway's Australia Day address
to Pearl Beach residents and visitor's...

So this day of celebrating being an Australian, I have been invited to share with you my family's experiences of emigrating to this wonderful country of ours so many years ago. I must confess that I am a serial emigrant, having emigrated twice in my life, the first time from Holland to South Africa with my parents and the second time from

South Africa to Australia with my husband John and our children. As many of you have experienced, moving house to another suburb can be difficult emigrating is quite traumatic. During the years 1952 – 1953 there was a huge wave of emigrants that left Holland for either South Africa or Australia and if the coin that my father flipped on that fateful day had landed on its other side, I might have been here a lot sooner. As I was then only nine-years-old and one of six children, I was not prepared very well for this move, more like one week before the day being told to say goodbye to my friends at school, as we were moving to the other side of the world. I remember very well standing on a canal bridge in Amsterdam, hugging my friend Willie and promising to write when I got to South Africa. Which I did, and she and I started a correspondence that has lasted over 50 years. She kept all my letters, and so I have a written history of my feelings as a newly arrived nine-year-old emigrant. Most of these letters are about the experience of learning to speak English, the beautiful sunshine and

how homesick I was for all my classmates back in Amsterdam. And so homesick for my mother, as we had moved to a farm with no schools nearby and most of us were sent off to boarding school within a month of arrival and only went home four times a year. South Africa is a bilingual country so learning to speak two new languages in one term was a real challenge. In the first week the teacher gave me The Lord's Prayer to learn off by heart and sent me out of the classroom 'come back when you know it'. Right. The first words I really understood were - 'Marijke, pay attention'. Because of the language difficulties, I had to work much harder than my peers. I think many emigrant children do well at school because they are faced with this challenge to fit in. Art was an important part of my life even then and the nuns at school used to enter my work in art competitions, however, lack of money prevented me from going to art school and I went to work instead as a shorthand typist. I took up the new sport of trampolining, as I was mesmerised by the feeling of flying gracefully through the air. I became South African Women's Trampoline champion and then got my Springbok colours when I went to the World Trampoline Championships in London two years running.

Now, being a Springbok trampolinist is not as important as being a Springbok rugby player, but I was proud to represent my country and was lovingly termed 'The flying Springbok' by the press. No, I won't be giving demonstrations of double somersaults and double twists on any trampoline - don't even ask.

Then time went by and I fell in love with John, we married and had our three children. Because of the political situation, we were forced to ask ourselves the question of what the future held in store for our children in South Africa, where there was a bomb blast daily and the South African government was unrelenting with its dreadful apartheid policy.

My husband had immigrated to South Africa from Rhodesia in 1963 and anticipated the need to leave South Africa whilst we were still young enough to start a new life, so during 1986 we applied to emigrate to Australia. This is no easy process; the paperwork took two years, with no guarantee of success, even though John's occupation as pastry cook was on the top of the desired list. You had to wait months for a reply to a letter and if you dared phone, your application went back to the bottom of the pile. So we lived in limbo. If you went to the Australian Consulate itself: you had to speak to someone through a locked door and then told to go away, they were busy. This was because they were snowed under with applications due to the worsening political crisis at the time. Finally we were invited for an interview to the Australian Consulate - approval was given and we started the long road of dismantling our South African lives.

It is a strange feeling doing this - you are happy and unhappy all at the same time. Selling the family home was the hardest, as our children had had all of their life experiences there. Our eldest being 19 at the time, on the brink of her adult life, suffered the most. I remember when all our goods had been packed up, the last night in

our house, and John bought me some flowers, the card read – You may not have a home, but you have me. The truth was I did not want to leave my life as I knew it - all my family and friends - would I ever have such deep friendships again?

We arrived at Sydney Airport with 15 suitcases, the most important one was the briefcase with all the paperwork, or so I thought, as it had ruled my life for the past two years. Not so, our passports were stamped on our visas, - 'Welcome to Australia' said the immigration officer with a smile and we entered a new world, where everyone bent over backwards to make us feel welcome and the contents of the dreaded briefcase were never looked at again.

We arrived on the Wednesday - John started work on the Friday and I joined the Castle Hill Art Society on Saturday - by then I had stopped crying and I thanked my husband for bringing me to a country where there was no need for fences around the houses, let alone razor wire fences. We had arrived at freedom from fear. We integrated very well, mainly because we spoke a common language and we chose to become Australian as soon as we could - in fact I only took two years before we swore allegiance to Australia and had new passports and we went back to see our family in South Africa for the first time. As gifts we brought them some John Williamson music tapes and Comedy Company videos with Aussie accents and the weird sense of humour that we had grown to love. and as we played them for our family, we felt homesick for Australia and its people - the metamorphosis was complete, we had become Australian in our hearts, not only on our passports. We had very busy lives, what with the cake shop. three children and the various societies we belonged to. John had joined the Castle Hill Lions Club and was very active and I was Treasurer, then President of the Castle Hill Art Society, as well as teaching watercolour for 11 years. Our holidays in Australia were very important journeys of discovery - the way to love a country is through all your senses, especially the sounds and the smell of the bush, and we have seen most of the iconic landmarks, but also the untamed places like the Kimberley’s.

And so it was that on one of our little short breaks we discovered a beauty rich and rare – the delights of Pearl Beach- simply because we had heard about the Arboretum. We bought our place three days later and it has been a life-changing event for us. Change yes, but not another emigration - this was more like finding a paradise that we had never even dreamed of. Heaven on earth. A village that has inspired countless artists, poets and writers. A village where my lifelong ambitions of painting full time have been realised. Pearl Beach, a treasure that is cherished by all who live here as residents and all who visit on holidays.

We have been fortunate as emigrants, to start it was really hard, but the rewards have been great. How much harder it must be for those fleeing persecution and without the necessary briefcase of paperwork? How would you feel if you were forced to emigrate? Will it be a hostile world you arrive in, or will Passport Control say 'Welcome to Australia'? As the Aboriginal elders might say when they open official ceremonies - 'Welcome to country'. Happy Australia Day to you all.

(Excerpt from Australia Day Speech- 26January, 2006)