My father was Wilhelmus Johannes Titulaer, from Venlo, in the South of Holland. Like a lot of other "migrants", he came out to Australia after the war, and settled in Melbourne. I believe he actually initially travelled from Holland to Indonesia with the Dutch Army, but was "demobbed" ("demobilised") in Australia, and he had met a man who worked at "The Argus" newspaper, and who said to dad that if he came back from Holland, that he would help him find a job.
Dad returned to Australia in 1950?, (as regrettably there was "not much left" in Venlo for him), and true to form, his contact got him a job at "The Argus". So the Yallourn connection" works like this. Dad had always been involved in athletics, and immediately upon settling in Melbourne, started running with the "East Melbourne Harriers". At the time he was boarding with a couple in the Melbourne suburb of Hampton. One summer he was on Brighton Beach enjoying the weather, and "spied"/ clapped his eyes upon my mother Joan, and her sister Mary. One thing led to another, and they started going out as a couple, with emphasis on Church activities through St Mary's Catholic Church in Hampton, and through dad's involvement in athletics.
Where Yallourn fits in is this. Like many young couples, my parents wanted to marry, secure a home, and have some children and a stable and loving life environment. As my dad had little in the way of money or resources, my grandfather accepted his offer of marriage to my mother, but asked the obvious question of "how were they going to afford a house", because even in those days Melbourne housing was not that easy a thing to get "an entry level in to". My dad replied to my grandfather that he had heard/ that he knew, that if you could find a full time job in Yallourn, that you could get an "SEC" house.
So the marriage agreed upon, my understanding is that my father went down to Yallourn "solo" for around three months?, to establish employment and a "beachhead", and, having secured an "SEC" house (but in Newborough), and a job in the Yallourn SEC office, my mother then moved down from the (McCarter) family home in Hampton, to a "brave new world" of new homes, new faces, new relationships, in the Newborough and Yallourn communities of the 50's, that so many others will have so accurately chronicled; and e.g. I am pretty sure that most essential services went on in Yallourn (rather than Newborough), e.g. doctor/s, hospital, major shopping, school/s, etc., (e.g. I am not sure if there were subsequently schools in Newborough?).
So my two older sisters were born in Yallourn Hospital ('52, '53), and lived in Yallourn until end '56/ very early '57, when my family, (including me, born Yallourn Hospital on November 21st 1956), moved "lock, stock, and barrel", to Bairnsdale.
However just going back a step, even though I wasn't involved in it, because I hadn't been born yet, I understand that my dad (Bill) was always very involved with the community and athletics in Yallourn, and I believe ran marathons, and was a very fit man. After the 1956 Olympics had been on in Melbourne, some of the athletes wanted to stay back for a bit of a holiday, whatever. So some enterprising types from the Yallourn Amateur Athletic Club, invited a number of Olympic athletes to attend a "mini-Olympics" in Yallourn organised by the YAAC, so they all came down on the/ a train, and I
believe it was a great success, both for the athletes who had a great experience and were welcomed in to a "multicultural" community, but also for the organisers, who no doubt would have been told "it's not possible/ you'll never pull it off", etc etc. I am not sure what role my father played, if any, but certainly my dad had always been a "possibilitarian!".
The other "yarn" that is a bit of fun/ history, is that my dad, "on the face of it", would have seemed the most unlikely bloke to give a job in the SEC showroom/ office. But dad spoke four? languages, Dutch, German, bit of Polish?, plus his English, and so rapidly turned his hand to looking after the "needs and wants" of visitors to the showroom (now this account comes from my mother, because I wasn't even BORN), looking after bill payments, "hire purchase" payments which I understand were "all the rage", and additionally "shop sales", i.e. sales of the increasing range of electrical goods that the SEC had on sale in the showroom...... And which leads me to........... "exiting Yallourn.......
Sales reps from the electrical appliance companies used to call in to see dad and perhaps whoever else "the 'decision maker'" was. One day a lovely bloke, (now deceased), called Arthur Parker called in. He knew my dad was "good at what he did", and knew he was "good with people". He stated that up in East Gippsland, that the reach of the "SEC power" was being expanded, and e.g. going up in to the "Alpine Valleys", and that J.C. Dahlsen, a very solid and well-credentialled retail department store in Bairnsdale, was looking for a person to head up/ take charge of a new electrical department, under the direction of one of the Dahlsen family owner/ directors. So dad (having no car at at that stage, we really do have it very easy these days), hitch-hiked up to Bairnsdale (perhaps December 1956) for a job interview, got the job, and we moved to Bairnsdale in about January of 1957, but however that was basically the end of our "Yallourn connection", because we had moved another 125km's? east, and in those days it was not so easy to keep in touch with everyone, as it is today.
Anyway, that is my "Yallourn story", and the only disclaimer that I would put on it is that this "account/ 'reckoning'" has virtually in its entirety come from my mother, Joan Margaret Titulaer, (as my father passed away suddenly in 1987), my mother now being 87 years old, but this information was passed on and down to me many years ago, when her "sharpness of recollection" was, much sharper it (regrettably) is now. Thank you for your time.
Anthony ("Tony") Titulaer
10/ 10A Byng Avenue,
HEATHERTON VICTORIA 3202.
0402 001 956, AH (03) 95582299
EMAIL: tt.media@bigpond.com
"COUNTRY ROADS, TAKE ME HOME..."