DUTCH VISITOR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 309, 30 December 1944, Page 3

DUTCH VISITOR

HAZARDOUS TRIP

STRANGE LIFE IN IRAN

"I am going crazy, sitting here all day, looking at these four walls!" cried Mrs. G. V. Driessen, her Dutch accent making her tone more despairing. She turned to her three-year-old son, a fair-haired, blue-eyed little boy in a beautifully tailored khaki crash suit. "The old cargo boat was better than staying here, waiting, not being able to go out, knowing no one, wasn't it, Shonny?" In an interview at the private hotel where she is staying Mrs. Driessen told how, with Johnny (she pronounces the name with a soft "j"), and her four-month-old baby son, she arrived in Auckland by ship recently, and was now waiting for a plane to take her to her husband in Australia. She did not have a pram, she said, mournfully, so she could not take the children out. The Dutch Consul had been very kind to her, and a Dutch woman resident in Auckland was calling on her that afternoon. No one had been able to help her, apparently, in the matter of obtaining a pram, but later in the afternoon She was advised where she could hire one. In spite of her present anxiety over looking after two young children in an hotel, Mrs. Driessen's dark eyes were humorous as she recalled the difficulties, both of the two months' journey to New Zealand in the cargo boat, and of her strange life in Iran. For over five years, she said, she and her husband had been living in the desert in Iran. Both Dutch, they had left Holland in 1938, when Mr. Driessen, a civil engineer, had been sent to Iran under contract to the Dutch Harbour Works Company, which was building a harbour by the Caspian Sea. Later, he undertook a contract, building railways in Iran. Last January, when Mr. Driessen was posted to Australia by the Dutch Government, they went to Cairo, but as Mrs. Driessen was then awaiting the birth of her baby she was not permitted to travel, and her husband left for Australia ahead of her. "Even after my baby, Robert, came, I found it difficult to get a passage, as no one would take a mother and two young children in wartime," she said. However, she obtained passage on a cargo boat, on which she and her children were the only passengers. "I learnt English on the boat," chipped in Johnny shyly, his accent having something of Dutch in it, and something of the clipped English of the radio officer who taught him on the ship! His mother added that before that Johnny could speak French and Persian, as well as his own native Dutch. The captain and officers were very kind to her during the journey, Mrs. Driessen said, and she spent her leisure time playing deck tennis and bridge. Fortunately neither of the children was ill. Raitls by "Robbers" As Mrs. Driessen spoke of her life in Iran, her words gave the impression of another world, a primitive world, where "robbers," riding camels and using guns, raided villages and cars. They never touched the Dutch settlement, however, as it was under the Government. "Where we lived there was only our house and the contractor's house," said Mrs. Driessen. "Further on there Were about 20 houses for the other workers. "The biggest excitement every week was the arrival of the camion, or lorry, which brought us our food," she said. "Food was very difficult. We could not grow anything. Water had to be brought to us in the summer, and there was no milk from cows. Roads were usually impassable in winter." Mrs. Driessen was unable to go back to Holland when war broke out, and she has not heard from her family for more than three years. She does not know how long she and her husband will be in Australia, but later they will be sent to the Dutch East Indies.