Kilbreda, my reconnection after 50 years.

My reconnection after 50 years

On Christmas Day 1956 the MS Sibajak sailed from Rotterdam to Australia with my parents, Geer and Leny Kortooms, my sister Kitty and me on board to start our new life. I was 3 years old and my name is Netty Kortooms.

We arrived at Station Pier on 5 February 1957 on my fourth birthday. As almost all the immigrants, we got on a train and ended up in the migrant camp called Bonegilla.

We moved around a fair bit in the first three years but finally ended up in a lovely house my parents bought in Higham Street in Cheltenham. I went to OLA primary school and in 1965 I started at Kilbreda.

I can still remember finally being able to put on my uniform, blazer and hat and walking to the station in Cheltenham with my mother to catch the train to Mentone. My train ticket attached to a little chain that was attached to a button on my blazer.

My books all neatly covered and stored in my green Kilbreda school bag. 

For me it was easy because my mother had just started working as a cook for the nuns at Kilbreda.

The nuns loved my Mum because of her cooking skills. Several nuns “complained” that their habits were becoming a bit tight. Mum and another Dutch lady called Toos van Riel, ruled the waves in the kitchen and I know that many boarders found their way to the kitchen to taste Mum’s food. I am so glad I inherited her love for cooking.

Alas, towards the end of 1966 my parents decided that they wanted to return to the Netherlands. The house was sold and we left, again from Station Pier on the Australis on 1 January 1967.

I returned to Australia twice and on both visits, the last one in 1989, I visited Kilbreda. The uniforms had then turned red.

It was only in 2015 that I found the Kilbreda past pupils site and left a message on it to see if I could reconnect with any of my old classmates. No reactions until a lady called Helen Wilson posted a message wishing my luck in my quest. She was several years ahead of me at Kilbreda and we had not spent the same time there. Helen and I however “connected” and we have become dear friends.

Helen helped me to bring back memories I thought had gone forever:

Mother Margret Mary (Kilbreda girls do not run), the Chapel, the Colonnade, the length of the hems of our uniforms, sports days, prefects, the boarders quarters, the big kitchen where my mother prepared the meals for the nuns, the little tuck wagon where I bought my first bag of potato sticks, the boys from St. Bede's and the Tower etc.

This year in July, Helen came over to Holland and we celebrated her 70th birthday in my home town Venlo and the next day my husband and I took Helen to see the Andre Rieu concert in Maastricht. It was an unbelievable adventure, Helen hopping on a plane to come to Holland to meet up with a person she had never met and our only connection being that we had both been students at Kilbreda and had loved our time there.

Now, almost 50 years after I left Australia, I still look back with pride to say “I was a Kilbreda girl”. Thanks for reading my story.

Netty van Zanten-Kortooms