Sophia Kruyswijk-van Thiel was both a member of the Vrouwenkorps Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger (VK-KNIL) and one of its most important historians. Her wartime generation had been among the first Dutch women formally admitted to military service, but its contribution was largely forgotten after the dissolution of the KNIL in 1950. Read more
In December 1946, the Curaçao newspaper Amigoe di Curaçao published the recollections of a young woman who had volunteered for the Dutch Women’s Corps, the Vrouwenkorps KNIL (VK-KNIL). Her article, “Ik ging naar Java als Vrijwilligster” (“I Went to Java as a Volunteer”), described an extraordinary journey from Curaçao through Read more
Joan Butler grew up in a Dutch migrant family on a farm in Western Australia. During the Second World War, she worked as a Land Girl before joining the Women’s Corps of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. At Camp Columbia in Brisbane, she trained as a soldier and worked Read more
The Second World War transformed Ineke Thysse’s life. She arrived in Australia from the Netherlands East Indies intending to study architecture, but the Japanese occupation separated her from her family and prevented her return. She subsequently became one of the earliest members of the VK-KNIL and served as a medic Read more
Johanna Maria van Bommel was born in January 1927 in Sabang, a small island NW of Sumatra, Indonesia. She is now 95 years old, widowed and living in a low-care unit of the Prins Willem Alexander retirement village in Birkdale, Qld. She moved here in 2018. I talked with Jo Read more
Antonius (Tony) Sanders met and married his wife Elizabeth (Liz) van Steijn in Indonesia after the end of World War II. Their migration journey took them from the Netherlands to Indonesia, Dutch New Guinea, back to the Netherlands, and finally to Australia. Their story is documented below. The Sanders Family Read more
On 27 March 1948, Adolf Petrus Gerardus Mulder and his wife, Cornelia Wilhelmina Maria Mulder–van Riek, departed Rotterdam aboard the motor ship Talisse. Known as Dolf and Corrie, the young couple had been married for less than a year. They were part of one of the earliest organised groups of Read more
Wil Hamers, Party Apple and the Dutch Catalina intelligence missions On 13 January 1945, a Dutch Catalina flying boat approached an isolated stretch of the east coast of Japanese-occupied Borneo. On board were eight NEFIS intelligence agents — four Dutch and four Indonesian servicemen — together with two rubber boats, Read more
During the Second World War, a large house on a hill overlooking Cairns became one of Australia’s most secret military establishments. Fairview House at Mooroobool, known to wartime personnel simply as the “House on the Hill”, became the headquarters of the Z Experimental Station, or ZES. Established in 1942, it Read more
Ferdinand “Ferdi” Boers arrived in Australia from the Netherlands as an 18-year-old toolmaking apprentice in 1954. Although he brought translated apprenticeship papers with him, Ferdi initially had to accept work as a labourer at the Emmco whitegoods factory in Orange, New South Wales. The intervention of an Estonian supervisor eventually Read more