Sibajak

Because I had never been, and because someone told me I should, we hired a car and went to Foxton for the day. Well, it's a Dutch museum. With a working windmill.

It turns out to be more than a nostalgia trip. There it was on the wall: a picture of the Sibajak.

My father came out to New Zealand as an “assisted migrant” aboard the Sibajak. I suppose that the Rotterdam Lloyd Line’s chosen name for its flag-ship in 1927 reflects a colonial-era Dutch tribute to the Dutch East Indies,  and in particular that mountain on Sumatra whose name apparently evokes wealth and enterprise.  (According to some, it’s an easy-climb volcano.  I don’t think it’s a metaphor...)

Dad ended up on the volcano’s oceanic namesake as a guest of the government of the Netherlands at the invitation of the government of New Zealand.  There was a post-war man-power shortage in New Zealand, a housing shortage and high unemployment in the Netherlands.  Migration seemed an obvious solution at the time – a welcome that has made "They are us" so very appropriate in hindsight!

That boat trip had outsized significance.  Just getting aboard took paper-work – emigration permits, boarding passes, immigration documentation for the other end (my father was never good at paperwork) - and emotional fortitude.  The crowded docks and teary farewells among the throngs of departing passengers must have made for a noisy but unforgettable scene as the mooring ropes of the motherland were finally released. 

Sibajak was a passenger liner but without the gaming machines, cinemas and swimming pools of the cruise ships of today; a genteel and aging workhorse carrying post-independence expatriates from Jakarta to Rotterdam, and migrants from Rotterdam to new futures in Australia and New Zealand.  Voyages took up to seven weeks – plenty of time to reflect on the transition between war-torn Europe and the new world at the bottom of the Pacific; hours to wallow in the misery of seasickness or homesickness.  To write postcards from the Suez Canal to your fiancee still back home. All to go where apparently people had no idea about cheese, walked barefoot and lived in grass huts.

Frans and his mate Theo Jacobs were among the 955 other migrants who disembarked in Wellington in July 1952; he was drafted to the dairy factory in the tiny settlement of Waharoa, just out of Matamata in the Waikato. He mentioned the Sibajak - and its picture is among my souvenirs of the excursion to Foxton. I went straight to the National Library to get permission to use the picture in my book:

Sibajak (Ship) in Wellington Harbour. Raine, William Hall, 1892-1955 :Negatives of New Zealand towns and scenery, and Fiji. Ref: 1/4-020776-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. 

By the way, the trip to Foxton was really worthwhile - not to mention also the lovely Indie bookshop with the Narnia theme just getting established on the main street. Recommended!

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