Peter Reef recently self-published his memoir The Road from Wagga Wagga: Recollections of a Migrant Son (2026). Peter’s parents migrated from the Netherlands to Australia an astonishing three times between 1951 and 1975, and the book recounts his experience of growing up between the two countries and cultures, and how the constant uprooting affected him and the trajectory of his life.
Peter Reef’s parents Hendrika (Riek) Bode and Adriaan Reef were born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, in 1921 and 1924 respectively. They were both Roman Catholic. Although the pair were born in the same town, they first met around 1948 or 1949 and married a few years later, in January 1951, in Hilversum’s Vituskerk.
Emigration to Australia
Barely a month after getting married, Adriaan and Riek Reef emigrated to Australia. Unlike many other Dutch migrants to Australia who made the journey by sea, the Reefs flew on a KLM Constellation plane. Flying made their journey much shorter than travelling by sea: instead of a weeks-long voyage it took Riek and Adriaan only five days to arrive in Australia.
Once in Australia, the couple spent a few weeks in the Bathurst Migrant Camp in New South Wales before moving to Wagga Wagga, several hours’ travel to the south-west. The couple lived in Wagga Wagga for a few years and their first child, Peter, was born there.
Adriaan and Riek had originally chosen to emigrate in a bid to escape the dire economic situation and housing shortages facing the Netherlands after World War II. In The Road from Wagga Wagga Peter reveals that his parents’ decision was also partly motivated by a personality clash and business tensions between Adriaan and his father (Peter’s grandfather). Writing to the DACC, Peter explained that his grandfather paid Adriaan “a weekly stipend for working for him which frustrated Dad. Long story short, he decided he could not get very far the conventional way and he wanted his own place. Migration seemed like the ideal solution for his ambitions.” Eventually, after much persuasion, Riek agreed to the idea.
Between the Netherlands and Australia
The couple lived in Australia for about five years. They made a home for themselves in Wagga Wagga and later lived in the Sydney suburb of Fairfield for about eight months. In February 1956, however, Adriaan and Riek returned to the Netherlands accompanied by their three Australian-born children. This time they travelled by sea, making the journey on the Fairsea. The couple returned to Hilversum and introduced Peter and his siblings to the town they (Adriaan and Riek) had left five years before. The young family lived in the Netherlands for about a year and a half, in which time a fourth child was born.
Interestingly, the Reefs then left the Netherlands for Australia a second time. This time they made the journey onboard the Waterman. After arriving in Australia the family lived in the Villawood Migrant Hostel in Sydney for over a year; Riek gave birth to her fifth child in this period. They then relocated to Urana, a small country town near Wagga Wagga, where they had previously lived. The family’s sixth child was born in December 1961.
However, this period of Australian life did not last long and in December 1962 the Reef family returned to the Netherlands onboard the Flavia. Upon their return to Europe they settled in Culemborg, a town some way outside Utrecht, and lived there for over two years. Incredibly, in March 1965 the family migrated to Australia for a third time! They spent a short period in the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre before moving to Ivanhoe, a small township in far-west New South Wales. The family lived here for five years. At the age of fifteen Peter, who was sick of Ivanhoe, left home to become an apprentice printer. He trained in this profession for two years before finding work on a sheep station; shortly afterwards he joined the Australian Army.
Peter spent six years in the Army. By the time he left, his parents and siblings were living in the Netherlands again – after five years in Ivanhoe they had packed up shop and moved to Adelaide, where Adriaan and Riek ran a deli for another five years before deciding to return to the Netherlands again in 1975. Back in the Netherlands, the Reef family (minus Peter, who was pursuing his own life in Australia) lived in Hilversum, where they operated a bakery and baked the bread and pastries themselves (Dutch: warme bakker). A year later, Peter completed his time in the army. Commenting on this to the DACC he said that at this point in his life he “decid[ed] there was more to life than packing parachutes and [I was] overcome by curiosity, [so I] joined my family in Hilversum in 1976.”
Reunited with their eldest son, the Reef family made Hilversum home. Riek and Adriaan ran the bakery for a decade before their retirement. Peter shared with DACC that his parents became unwell in their later years: Riek died in 1987 after being diagnosed with cancer, and Adriaan passed away of diabetes and respiratory illnesses in 1995. Peter wrote, “They never saw Australia again”.
Writing the family story
In The Road from Wagga Wagga Peter Reef reflects on his family’s multiple migrations and how shuttling between Australia and the Netherlands as a child has impacted his own life. The idea of documenting his family’s story has been with Peter for a long time – he shared with DACC that “I had always found the whole saga of why, how and the underlying story fascinating.” While his father was still alive, Peter recorded conversations with Adriaan about his and Riek’s life, and drew on some of these conversations for his memoir.
Writing to the DACC, Peter recounted his motivations for recording his story on paper: “My wife Betty eventually persuaded me to write my own story because she saw the uniqueness of it. I obviously knew it was unusual but I resisted at first, thinking it would not be of much interest to readers who hadn’t lived the migrant experience. About ten years ago I decided to do it anyway, partly because I was about to retire and needed a project to fill my time. Also of great influence was the much loved A.B. Facey book A Fortunate Life (and many others) which helped convince me that everyone, no matter what they have experienced in life, has an interesting story to tell.”
Get the book
The Road from Wagga Wagga is part of the DACC Library collection. The book is a testament not only to post-war Dutch migration to Australia but also of return migration to the Netherlands and back to Australia. It provides insight into what it was like for Peter Reef to grow up between two countries and cultures, and is sure to be of interest to readers interested in the personal stories that underpin the ties between Australia and the Netherlands. The Road from Wagga Wagga can be purchased through Amazon.
This article was written with information kindly supplied by Peter Reef.
