80 Dutch Immigrants Arrive At Airport

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29366, 19 November 1960, Page 2

80 Dutch Immigrants Arrive At Airport

After travelling for three days and three nights, with several delays en route, a party of 80 Dutch immigrants arrived at Christchurch Airport yesterday morning, from Amsterdam. They were met by a wildly-excited crowd of friends and relatives who had been waiting for that moment since 3 p.m. on Thursday. As the sleek blue and silver Super Constellation aircraft taxied up the runway, children and adults were jammed against the airport lounge windows trying to glimpse the passengers. The youngest member of the reception committee was four-weeks-old Janice Lubbers who was to meet her grandparents for

the first time. Janipe belonged to a family of two sisters, and two brothers and their wives, who met Mr and Mrs Lubbers senior and four other brothers and sisters from Holland. There are 10 children in the Lubbers family but two girls remained behind in Holland with their fiances. The wife of the second son met her husband en route to New Zealand and married here. She. was meeting her parents-in-law for the first time. So it was with mixed feelings of shyness and pleasure that the crowd waited at the windows. There was a young man whose fiancee was on board; there was Father J. Kortooms who is “looking after Dutch immigrants in Christchurch’’; a Dutch Protestant Minister Mr W. Van Wyngen; friends to meet young families who have decided to make their homes in a new country, and Dutch people waiting to welcome older persons for the same reason. Pale and Tired The passengers were all rather pale and tired after their long journey—only some of the children recovered sufficient energy to race round the suitcases and to play hide-and-seek among the luggage trolleys. A pilot with a puzzled expression on his face, was searching for the small owner of a brandnew golden teddy bear, stepping carefully over the little boys playing with toy cars on the floor. Customs formalities and moneychanging were carried out in an informal atmosphere—vastly difr ferent from the usually quiet queues of overseas travellers seen at the airport. Beyond the glass doors there was, for some, a further wait before they boarded planes for Auckland and other centres. But for others there was nothing left but the relief of knowing that the tiring trip and impatient waiting were behind them once and for all.