A LEAP OF FAITH

I will start working in the library of the North Lake Senior Campus at the end of January. I am so looking forward to work at this beautiful campus with nice colleagues and eager to meet the Australian and international students.

It is 1950. On a scorching hot day, a ten-year old Dutch boy arrived with his migrant parents at Fremantle. ‘Fremantle was not the lively and attractive village it is now. It was an empty and desolate place, a harbour with sheds and warehouses, unpaved roads, horse and wagons, flies and dust. My mother hated the place immediately; the first sight of what should be our promised land filled her with despair’, says the boy over 60 years later, sitting on the outdoor café of The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. Nowadays he calls himself Willem van Ravenstein, which is his writer’s pseudonym. ‘For me, as a boy, Australia was an alien, almost incomprehensible land’, he continues.

In Australia, people consider the Perth region the ultimate in provincialism. Sydney and Melbourne is where it is happening, the rest is bush land.

A couple of weeks ago, Tine and I received an email from Jan and Dean from The Netherlands. They had read our blog and were very enthusiast about it. ‘A wonderful website’, Jan wrote, ‘especially when, like us, you are about to migrate to Perth soon too’. Since the day we received this very pleasant email, we exchanged some lines and now it is time to welcome Jan and Dean in Perth.

Yes indeed time flies. It has been a year since we moved to Western Australia.

WoW, unbelievable 12 months has gone by in a wink of the eye.

Well it surely means that we have to live life to the fullest. And certainly the three of us has enjoyed our new live in wonderful WA.

And the winner of a Learner’s Permit is: Tine! Yes!!!

Today on Saturday the 12^th of November it has been 12 months ago we arrived in Australia.