Finding our place in the sun

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." .........T. S. Eliot

This is a true story...

It is mid-December in 1946 and Strikeforce 8 is nearing the end of its first year of what would prove to be a two-and-half-year deployment to stabilise and secure what was then the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

Lying on his sweat-soaked bed in Charitas Field Hospital, Sumatra, slowly recovering from a near fatal attack of malaria and paratyphoid, Dutch Commando Corporal Pierre de Haas gradually forms an idea. Being lonely, and half a world away from Holland, and a failed romance, he decides to place an advertisement in a popular magazine for music lovers, Tuney Tunes, seeking a young and attractive girl 20+ to correspond with as a pen friend.

A few weeks later, in the small rural village of Oudenbosch, The Netherlands, eighteen-year-old Corry Siemons sees his advertisement and, despite her mother telling her that she is too young, and, laughingly, that she might be thrown back in the water like an undersized fish, Corry replies to "Mister de Haas". She is very clear that she wants to keep it to correspondence only and no nonsense!

Clearly, this was not to be ... Not too many years later, by then with a young family of five children, Corry and Pierre find themselves in the Wacol Migrant Centre near Brisbane, in a Nissan hut with no running water, or bathroom, and with no car and no phone. They are to spend the next eighteen months in transition, living in these primitive conditions while striving to secure a better future for their young family.

Many years later, Corry and Pierre each write about these most challenging and formative periods of their lives. Woven together, and barely believable at times, their odyssey reveals how tenuous life can be, how fate shapes decisions, and how these decisions then shape destiny.

Their story is one of love and enduring hope, of bravery and resilience. It will inspire others who are yearning to find their own 'place in the sun' ... and who might just have the courage to risk it all.

Corry de Haas (deceased) was born in The Netherlands on 24 June 1928. After marrying Pierre, who she first met as a pen friend while he was on active service in the Dutch East Indies, Corry was confronted with the biggest and most challenging decision of her life. Pierre wanted to emigrate to Australia with his family, which by then also included five young children. A most reluctant immigrant, Corry fell in love with Australia within a few months after their arrival in Queensland. Much later, Corry became a prolific author and poet, recognised and awarded for some of her works, including by Australian bush poets. Relying on her letters to her family, newspaper articles she wrote and her own journals, she wrote a detailed account of her migration odyssey which has been summarised and edited to produce this book.

Pierre de Haas (deceased) was born in The Netherlands on 11 November, 1923. Together with all young men born that year, Pierre was selected for forced labour in Germany in March 1943. Rather than boarding the train with the rest of his peers, Pierre decided to ride his bicycle into Germany, and from this point on, his life for the next five and a half years would be extraordinary: from occupied Holland to a frozen Commando training camp at Achnacarry, Scotland, and then into the steaming tropical jungles of what was then the Dutch East Indies. Much later in life, after his retirement, and drawing on his meticulously kept war diaries, he wrote a four-part book: 'Dreams and Tears for Souvenirs' . It was never published. This book in turn, draws on his work to tell his extraordinary story, including the steadily unfolding romance, via letters, with his wife to be, Corry.

Peter de Haas is the eldest child of Corry and Pierre de Haas. He lives with his family near Ravenshoe, on the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland.