6145
No Snakes in New Zealand - Austrian Migrant Story
Main BodyNo snakes?… Let's go there …
Austria 1959. When I met my husband he had just returned from a contract working in New Zealand. I was very impressed by the beautiful colour slides he showed me from his time there and when I heard about the absence of snakes, I promptly said “let's go there”…Of course we came for betterment and the lifestyle as well as the milder climate and arrived in Wellington in May 1960 feeling very safe knowing my husband was promised his job back as well as having accommodation waiting for us. So we planned to work hard for five years and get rich …
Well, the arrival of two daughters within 13 months soon put a stop to such grand ideas. I became a fulltime Mum and Homemaker instead, knitting, sewing and washing napkins using an old copper to boil them in. The promised accommodation turned out to be one large room, a kitchenette so tiny only one person could be in it at a time, so definitely I had no help with the dishes … the bathroom we had to share with another family who had lots of visitors … the good aspect of all this was I was so busy I certainly had no time to get homesick!
We only knew one New Zealand couple who had a car and occasionally they very kindly took me and the babies out on Sundays-my husband was working as a gardener at the weekends to enable us to save more. Those were the days when New Zealand was” closed on Saturday and Sunday”, no cafes to be seen. The trendy thing to do was to“drive around the Bays”, buy an icecream at the dairy and sit in the car, too windy to be outside, to watch the Ferry coming across the Cook Straight.
Eventually I befriended a Greek lady who was then still without grandchildren, she became our adopted Nana, sometimes baby sitter and life was starting to get a lot better.At a dinner party I was offered a drink, after tasting it I enquired what it was, to be told it was “Plonk”… when I asked “what is that Plonk?”, and, being a vintners daughter,I was most surprised to hear it was wine … well we certainly have come a long way since then. Within four years we had our own house, never got rich, and have been in New Zealand ever since.We joined the Austrian club then very popular for its balls with cultural performances from our homeland. The girls did the Maypole dances; the men did Tyrolean dances, all of us in national costumes. I played my grandmother's Zither (not to be confused with the Indian Sitar although there is a common ancestor going back two thousand years!) Austrian folk music is very lively and happy music and we were soon asked to perform our dances and music at international festivities and Beer fests which were getting very popular all over New Zealand in the 70s.
These migrant stories were collected by Tauranga Regional Multicultural Council
Austria 1959. When I met my husband he had just returned from a contract working in New Zealand. I was very impressed by the beautiful colour slides he showed me from his time there and when I heard about the absence of snakes, I promptly said “let's go there”…Of course we came for betterment and the lifestyle as well as the milder climate and arrived in Wellington in May 1960 feeling very safe knowing my husband was promised his job back as well as having accommodation waiting for us. So we planned to work hard for five years and get rich …
Well, the arrival of two daughters within 13 months soon put a stop to such grand ideas. I became a fulltime Mum and Homemaker instead, knitting, sewing and washing napkins using an old copper to boil them in. The promised accommodation turned out to be one large room, a kitchenette so tiny only one person could be in it at a time, so definitely I had no help with the dishes … the bathroom we had to share with another family who had lots of visitors … the good aspect of all this was I was so busy I certainly had no time to get homesick!
We only knew one New Zealand couple who had a car and occasionally they very kindly took me and the babies out on Sundays-my husband was working as a gardener at the weekends to enable us to save more. Those were the days when New Zealand was” closed on Saturday and Sunday”, no cafes to be seen. The trendy thing to do was to“drive around the Bays”, buy an icecream at the dairy and sit in the car, too windy to be outside, to watch the Ferry coming across the Cook Straight.
Eventually I befriended a Greek lady who was then still without grandchildren, she became our adopted Nana, sometimes baby sitter and life was starting to get a lot better.At a dinner party I was offered a drink, after tasting it I enquired what it was, to be told it was “Plonk”… when I asked “what is that Plonk?”, and, being a vintners daughter,I was most surprised to hear it was wine … well we certainly have come a long way since then. Within four years we had our own house, never got rich, and have been in New Zealand ever since.We joined the Austrian club then very popular for its balls with cultural performances from our homeland. The girls did the Maypole dances; the men did Tyrolean dances, all of us in national costumes. I played my grandmother's Zither (not to be confused with the Indian Sitar although there is a common ancestor going back two thousand years!) Austrian folk music is very lively and happy music and we were soon asked to perform our dances and music at international festivities and Beer fests which were getting very popular all over New Zealand in the 70s.
These migrant stories were collected by Tauranga Regional Multicultural Council
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AcknowledgementTe Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries
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AuthorTauranga Regional Multicultural CouncilType of ContributionCommunity storyTaxonomyStories | People
Tauranga Regional Multicultural Council, No Snakes in New Zealand - Austrian Migrant Story. Pae Korokī, accessed 07/11/2024, https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/6145