The following is a chapter from the book New Farm 50 stories by Gerard Benjamin, a longtime resident in Newstead who has been associated with the New Farm and Districts Historical Society for more than 20 years. He regularly conducts history walks in the area and is the author of three popular books about the history of the locality, the most recent being “New Farm: 50 Stories”. He has assisted many people with the editing and production of their memoirs. Research into his own family history led to the discovery that a great-great-grandfather penned Queensland’s second novel.
‘Dutch period’ at Roseville – chapter 39 of the book
After growing up under enemy occupation, you have emigrated to a foreign land where you hardly have enough money to feed yourself, and your job opportunities are limited because you are still waiting for your work tools to arrive. Worst of all, you do not speak the language.
This was the plight of 19-year-old Dutch carpenter Piet Wagenmakers when he arrived in Brisbane in June 1953. After several weeks of bleak misery at the Enoggera Immigration Centre, his fortunes changed when Father Willem van Baar, a Catholic priest who wore a Panama hat and drove a yellow 1952 Holden sedan, offered Piet a place at St. Willibrord’s Hostel, where he would be accommodated with around 26 of his own countrymen.
The address was a large, once-grand house at 56 Chester Street, Teneriffe, which had been acquired the previous year by the Catholic Society of the Divine Word. Piet found the arrangements straightforward: board would be £4 a week, while ironing (around 4 shillings) had to be arranged with the landlady. Full board included hot and cold showers (they were only cold at Enoggera).
“The priest asked if I was Catholic,” recalls Piet, “and when I said no, he promised I soon would be. I replied that I didn’t think that would be the case.”
The newcomer was introduced to the landlord and landlady, Mr and Mrs Joosten, who had two sons of school age. The room he shared with another boarder, Henk, featured a marble fireplace—the first of many clues that this had once been a substantial residence.
“From when I first arrived and met the guys in the Hostel, I felt at home,” said Piet.
Now 83 years old (in 2017), Mr Wagenmakers is preparing his memoirs, which provide further insight into his time at the hostel.
“There were stables at the back of the property,” he writes, “as the house probably once belonged to people keeping horses. On the lower side of the property was a hall where dances were held on Sunday evenings. Young women belonging to the Country Women’s Association would come over and partner the boarders from the hostel.
There were beautiful meals, packed lunches, plenty of fruit after meals, and no alcohol was to be consumed anywhere on the premises.”
One of Piet’s lasting memories from those days was a culinary one:
“The hostel introduced me to toast with Vegemite and cheese—which I still enjoy every morning for breakfast.”
He also recalled the social life and routines:
“All the guys had their own motorbikes, and Saturdays were taken up with cleaning them. It was a beautiful old house, probably built in the late 1800s. I didn’t have a clue then, but looking back, I now know so much about it.”
The house, of course, is Roseville, built in 1886 for George Myers (1841–1920), a Queen Street china and glassware merchant. Roseville was made famous again in the 1980s by Ann and Harry Garms, who turned it into a stylish restaurant and wedding reception centre. They had purchased the property from the church in 1982 and saved the historic homestead by undertaking extensive renovation.
How many people like Piet would have liked to knock on the door of Roseville to recall their life there all those years ago?
Some of these visits have been documented. For example, Sally Williams, an English tourist, relished seeing the house where, as a young child in the 1930s, her mother had visited their aged Cowell relatives, who owned the property at that time.
In more recent times, Ivan Lazarou, who owned Roseville between 1999 and 2010, was also reminded of the home’s ‘Dutch period’:
“I recall an elderly Dutch man who brought his wife to show her the hostel in which he lived when he arrived in Brisbane in the 1960s,” he said.
Postscript
Post-war migrants — DUTCH-BORN Father W. van Baar had served in New Guinea from 1927 until 1940 and had been in charge of missions. During the war, along with Archbishop Duhig, he would greet missionaries who had been evacuated to Brisbane from New Guinea.
Vale — ANN GARMS passed away in July 2018, and Piet Wagenmakers died in 2020, aged 86. Thanks to the current owners Piet was able to enjoy a sentimental visit back to Roseville in August 2018 accompanied by his daughter who had helped him to write his memoirs.
The book was presented to the DACC at the Symposium Allied Co-operation in Brisbane during WWII: Australia, USA, Netherlands, UK organised by the Camp Columbia Heritage Association, where Gerard presented a paper.
The following foto colages are from the book
