MEURS Chris Meurs Remembers

Chris Meurs arrived in Rowville with his wife Anna and three daughters Maria aged 17, Agnes 13, and Matilda 11 in 1961. Chris had been share-farming a dairy property at Launching Place but when Maria commenced nursing training at St Vincent's Hospital the family decided that it was time to move closer to the city.

Chris leased a 124 acre property in Wellington Road through a Dandenong agent, Fred Redding. The man leasing the property at the time, a Dutchman named Fred Boer, sold Chris his herd of mixed breed dairy cows. Although Chris was then 55, an age at which many people nowadays commence retirement, he energetically set about improving the property and establishing a Friesian stud. Chris tried for years to purchase the property but the owner, the Country Roads Board, would not release it, stating that it would be used for future road development. (In fact, the land has now been incorporated in the proposed route of the Scoresby Freeway). 80 acres of the property is situated on the south side of Wellington Road with a long frontage to Dandenong Creek. The homestead (named "Billabong") is located on the hilltop beside Wellington Road. On the other side of the road there was a 44 acre block adjoining Harold Gibbs property.

On arrival in Rowville Chris soon became involved in local affairs. He joined the Rowville Progress Association, the Committee of Management of the Rowville Recreation Reserve and was elected a foundation committee member of the Rowville Football Club together with his neighbour, Tom Greatorex, who had built a white weatherboard home on the hill on the northern side of Wellington Road opposite Billabong. (This weatherboard house was removed in 1995 to make way for the duplication of Wellington Road).

With the frustration of not being able to buy the land, Chris no longer continued to develop the stud and in 1979 he moved out of dairying into the less intensive farming activity of raising fat cattle. However, during the 1980s even this form of farming became very difficult, as Chris's property was regularly inundated in wet weather following the establishment of a flood retaining basin across the valley by the Dandenong Valley Authority

Early Life in Holland

Chris was born in 1905 in the small village of Ubberbergen in Holland and grew up with his three brothers and two sisters on his parent's mixed farm of eleven hectares.

He was successful at school and after graduating worked in an office for a while before joining his brothers in an orchard business.

One day when he was helping to spray an orchard he saw an attractive girl, Anna Noy, watching him from the window of her home. Chris made it his business to meet Anna, a romance blossomed and they were married in the town of Herwen en Aerdt in 1935. Chris had commenced work for the Bureau of Statistics, collecting data about the cargo of ships trading along the Rhine.

In 1938 Chris and Anna moved to the capital, The Hague, as war clouds gathered over Europe. Chris was enraged by the German invasion of Holland in 1940 and resolved to join the Dutch Underground. His contact in the resistance was a man who owned a clothing and textile shop where Chris was forced to hide for three days at one stage when the Nazis were rounding up men to be taken to work in Germany in the munitions and armaments factories.

Chris had been made a factory inspector and was given a government pass which allowed him to go anywhere in the country. He bluffed his way into restricted areas and reported what he had seen to his contact who transmitted the information in code to England. Chris had to be extremely careful as one of his neighbours was a member of the NBS (National Socialist Beweging), an organisation that collaborated with the Nazis. Once, another Dutch Nazi had offered to give Chris a revolver but he refused knowing it was a bait to entice him to join the NSB. Chris survived the war with only one bad experience. He was held for questioning when found in an unauthorised area but after half a day's hard talking (he can speak German) he was allowed to go.

However, his contact in the Underground was not so lucky. He was arrested in 1945 and executed by a firing squad. No doubt he would have been strenuously interrogated by the Germans to reveal names of other members of the Underground but he obviously would not talk as none of his contacts were arrested.

When the war finally came to an end Chris and Anna decided that they wanted to make a new start and applied to immigrate to Australia. They had had enough of a Europe racked by inflation, unemployment and shortages. For Chris there was an additional reason. He had applied for promotion in the Dutch Public Service but was shocked when the position was given to a former NSB man. For Chris, that was the final straw. He felt that he could no longer work for a government that gave preference to people that he considered to be traitors to their country.

The Journey to Australia in 1950

Anna and Chris fondly remember the five week trip to Australia. They sailed on a Dutch passenger ship, the "Sibajak", which formerly had run between Holland and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). After suffering severe food shortages for ten years, they were delighted with the first class meals on the ship and they and their daughters thoroughly enjoyed the voyage.

After disembarking at Port Melbourne, the family lined up on the wharf with all the other passengers and then walked to Port Melbourne Railway Station to board a train to the migrant camp at Bonegilla near Wodonga in Northern Victoria.

Chris's strongest recollection of the trip was seeing the herd of Jersey cows on the farms along the way. He thought they were such "miserable little buggers" compared with the Friesians he had known in Holland.

Life in May at Bonegilla was cold and unpleasant but after they had been there for three weeks the Catholic Chaplain for Dutch migrants, Father Marsh, found Chris a job as a farm hand at Strath Creek. After seven months of very isolated living there they heard of a similar job at Launching Place and moved to a large dairy farm owned by the Henry family. Their third daughter Matilda was born there in 1951. After a year, Chris upgraded his position to that of share farmer and continued in that role until 1960 when they made the move to Rowville. Chris and Anna have never regretted their decision to come to Australia and like their three daughters and eight grandchildren, consider themselves to be "true Aussies".

Interviewed by Bryan Power

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