Con Wassink

History of the First Dutch Settlers at Kybeyan
as written by Con Wassink, February, 2003.

Con Wassink was born in Holland in 1927 where his family owned and heavy haulage transport business. With 6 brothers and his father, they all drove trucks of various types and weights and drove night and day to keep up with the demand in Holland and surrounding countries. He was sick of driving so when he had the opportunity to come to Australia with another driver.

Ron and Nancy Mould 1953

Con came to Australia in 1950. He was an immigrant who was picked up from Sydney Harbour by Ron Mould, even before he was to go to the Immigrant Camp in Bathurst. Ron Mould wanted tractor drivers and Con thought the best way to get out of going to Bathurst, was to take the job Ron offered..

Both Dutch men went to Kybeyan with Ron and started a new life. After a few months, Con's friend moved on the Maitland and Con wanted to go too but Ron offered him more money. He was getting 5 pound 10 shillings. Con then went to Middlingbank to operate a bulldozer for Ron's father. Two months later, he came back to Kybeyan to clear land there.

By this time, there were 5 more Dutch families with children living at Kybeyan. Ted Owers drove the school bus from Kybeyan to Nimmitabel each day and stayed overnight at Kybeyan, milked the cow in the morning for Ron, then took the children to school and stayed in Nimmitabel till the afternoon, then drove them home

For three months, to make more money, Con and two other Dutch men cut firewood at Middlingbank and sold it to the Snowy Hydro people who needed it to keep the kitchen fires burning, for the workers.

In 1951, Con bought the neighbouring property to Kybeyan from the Smith brothers of Nimmitabel which he then named "Ederveen". Ron went guarantor for the loan on the land.

Con's brother Nick came out from Holland to work on Kybeyan for Ron. He worked with the dozer clearing land and fencing.

Con did clearing for Jim Maslin of Bombala. He was given the opportunity to buy the dozer but had no money, so Jim said to pay him when he had the money. Con then went clearing and doing dozer work around Nimmitabel and took one year to pay for the dozer.


Con with Pattrick Mould	Nick, Yoop and Con Wassink branding at Kybeyan	Nick, Yoop and Con Wassink constructing the wall around the homestead at Kybeyan

One year later, after Nick came out, Con and Nick's other brother, Joop came to Kybeyan to work. All three brothers were immigrants, not refugees.

Con then worked his own property and when he ran out of money, he went land clearing and ploughing for the neighbours..

Con, Joop and Nick went to Countegany on a contract for land clearing for the Rose Brothers. Nick married a Dutch girl and they had their first baby while living out there. After a time, Nick went to Wyndham to work for three sisters who owned a property. Later he went to Cobargo working with a bulldozer for Kevin Southerland. Nick has 5 children now and still living in the Cobargo area.

Wim Wassink and Ron Mould

Con's parents, Wim and Maria Wassink came
to visit in the early 1950's

Con worked for Ron Mould for 3 years, then helped him out at times with calf branding, lamb tailing and odd jobs when he was asked to.

Both Con and Joop married Dutch girls and had 4 children each. These children all attended Nimmitabel Primary School and then had to go to High School in Cooma, so Con moved his family to Cooma. He still owned his property "Ederveen" and after 14 years of working in Cooma, he came back to run his farm again until he sold it in 2001, to settle once again in Cooma.

Joop bought a property neighbouring Kybeyan known as "Big Hill". Joop also moved to Cooma for the higher education on his children. He later sold "Big Hill" to Kybeyan and then bought "Myola" on the Kybeyan Road. He has since sold this property and moved to Bega.

This is a story of strength and courage
A story of hard work and hard times
A story of integrity and character
A story of a loving husband
The story of a father, described by his family as
austere, amazing, incredible and compassionate
and a much loved Opar

This is the story of Con Wassink
June 21, 1917 – January 03, 2007
Proudly prepared by Geoff Peters

Born on June 21 1927 in Amsfoort Holland, Con was the fourth son in a family of eleven, six of which were boys.

Con worked in the family heavy haulage transport business until his early twenties.

Sibling rivalry and the temptation to accompany a work colleague on an adventure to a far off land saw Con Wassink arrive in Sydney in October 1950.

At age 23, a Dutch speaking immigrant with neither contacts nor prospects was to meet by a Mr. Ron Mould on the wharf that day.

Both men would later recall that particular day as “one of the best days of their lives.”

Ron Mould had travelled to Sydney and made contact with the Dutch Consulate seeking migrant workers for his sheep property at Kybean near Nimmitabel.

Con had great misgivings about his new location and the isolation of living deep in the Australian bush but he soon adapted and proved to be a valuable worker, he formed a bond with the Mould family that would last their lifetimes.

Con was a skilled plant operator and spent a lot of his time on a bulldozer clearing land, rabbiting, splitting timber or erecting frames on the large Kybean property. Working mainly alone in the solitude of the bush he learned little of the language of his adopted country.

He was quoted yeas later in an interview with a journalist from The Land Newspaper as saying “I could not even swear in English, but a Bull Dozer understands Dutch as well as English when it comes to swearing, so it did not matter much!”

Mrs. Mould taught him English and he made friends easily, he felt that he belonged in his new home and that he had been accepted as a “New Aussie.”

Ron Mould encouraged Con to buy a few of his own sheep and cattle and allowed him to run them with the Kybean stock.

In 1952, just two years after arriving on the Monaro, 2,000 acres of an adjoining property came on the market and with the assistance and backing of his employer, Con became a land owner.

To further quote the article in the Land Newspaper of February 1958 “Con Wassink took a piece of wilderness and turned it into a Paradise!”

He proudly named the property “Ederveen” after the village in which his family lived in Holland.

A dwelling from the township of Old Adaminaby was purchased from the Snowy Mountains Authority for £250.00 prior to the flooding of the valley for the Eucumbene Dam project. Although it would take more than a year to remove and re-erect, Con he established what would become home for the Wassink family It was a very big house and due to a deal with Mr. Mould and the local community, half of the building would be donated to the community and erected on a separate site as the Kybean Community Hall and it still stands to this day.

In 1958 Con returned to Holland for a holiday and it was at that time that he met Mieke, the couple returned to Australia four months later and were married in Cooma on the 6^th of October that same year.

During subsequent years the couple had four children, Wimm, Anne, Tom and Con all of whom grew up on “Ederveen” at Kybean.

The family told me a great story of how Con was to buy his first Bull Dozer from a Mr. Jim Maslin in Bombala.

Such was the trust Jim Maslin felt for Con, he sold him the machine on credit. Con set about Contract Land Clearing so that he could honour his obligation. Without suitable means of transporting the huge dozer, he just drove it from job to job.

He worked tirelessly for a year after which time he went to meet Mr. Maslin. Con didn’t have a Cheque Account so he presented his Financier with a pile of cheques that had been paid to him by the farmers to whom he had contracted.

“This should pay for the Dozer” he announced proudly, unaware that Mr. Maslin could not bank the money because all the cheques were made out in favour of Con Wassink.

Stories around the table during the past few days recounted tales of how important New Year was to Con and how the family would celebrate, spending time with Jan and Gerry and their family, alternating between the farm at Kybean and Cann River.

The rare but very special camping trips with the family to the beach at Tathra or Pambula.

How the whole family learned values from their strict yet caring father, he taught them all to drive, often in a vehicle without the luxuries of a clutch, brakes and at times with limited steering. He taught them manners, respect, the importance of telling the truth and the value of hard work.

The boys recall that he was a skilled plant operator but never assigned maintenance as a high propriety.

Stories of how he would confuse the Contract Shearers working on the property by speaking to the family in Dutch and having them respond to him in English.

He and his brother Joop were the volunteer “Bonfire” builders come Cracker Night. How they would build massive big fires from materials such as sump oil and tyres and whilst they would have driven an Environmentalist to distraction, the Kybean Bonfires would burn long into the night.

There was a wonderful story about Con who was a volunteer fire-fighter and how he answered, without hesitation, the distress call of a neighbour to help fight a fire. Once the work was complete and Con was invited to join the weary volunteers for a beer, he announced that he could not stay because he had to return to “Ederveen” to continue to battle the fire that he had been fighting when he received the call for help from his neighbour!

Con was always willing to lend assistance to anyone in need and he gained the respect of all that new him.

In his retirement years he immersed himself with his wood-work and demonstrated considerable skills in wood turning and carpentry, he produced items that the family will cherish in the years ahead.

To: Mieke, his ever gracious and devoted wife of 48 years who endured his pain as she bravely nursed him through the past few months.

To: Wimm, Sally-Anne and their children Julianna and Andrew
To: Anne, Amanda, Ben and Jasmine
To: Tom and Sandra, Nick and Kurt
To: Con, Cathy, Dean, Jake and Kristy
To Con’s Brother Nick and his late wife Maker whom we also remember this day
To his brother Joop and his wife Tony
And all the members of their families
To Con’s cousin and best friend Jan and Gerry and their family
To Con’s friends and colleagues, the Doctors and medical staff that treated him, to his neighbours and to the friends of the family I extend my sincere sympathy
If there is anyone that I may have inadvertently omitted from this list please accept my apology.

Con and Mieke sold “Everdeen” in 2001 and retired to live in Nioka Place and from that time I have had the privilege of being able to observe Con doing things he enjoyed.

Spending time with his wife and daughter. Working at Polo Flat in his garden or tending his beloved chickens, he worked with his sons, took time to educate and assist his grandsons or just ‘hang out’ with the grand-daughters that he loved so much.

I watched this gentle, once giant of a man as he battled the ailments of his age but there were always two things that were evident to me.

We as a community should always be grateful indeed that it was upon the Monaro that Con Wassink decided to settle, his Legacy will long remain.

Migrant Turned A Wilderness Into Paradise
BY OUR SPECIAL. REPRESENTATIVE

A DUTCH migrant who landed in Sydney a little more than seven years ago now owns, his own 2000-acre property, and this is his success story.

The migrant, Con WASSINK, then 23, set foot in Sydney in October, 1950, without a friend in this new country, and no idea of what he wanted to do.

Back home in Amersfoort, Holland, where his father had a transport business, Con had been a transport driver. But there were six sons in the Wassink family, and that's a lot of sons to get started in life in a small over-populated country, still struggling back after years of German occupation during the war.

With their luggage already assigned to the Bathurst Migrant Centre they stood, on wharf and wondered bout their future.

There was a man standing on the wharf who had just come from the Dutch Consulate seeking workers to take back to his sheep property at Kybeyan, out, from Nimmitabel.

Through the consulate interpreter, he talked to the Wassink brothers, offering them jobs as tractor drivers, fencers, bulldozer work etc., in a clearing job he was undertaking on his property.

The brothers had not figured on working in the Country, but a job to go to right away was, after all, a job.

The upshot of it all was that, within hours of their arrival, the man they met on the wharf had the two Wassink brothers in his car, and they were halfway to Cooma, after having retrieved their baggage from the train at Central.

Today, if you ask him, young Con Wassink will tell you that the day he met Ron Mould on the wharf in Sydney was the luckiest day of his life.

It was a lucky day for. Mr. Ron Mould too, because the Wassink brothers turned out to be among the best workers he has ever employed.

The older brother was placed on the father's property at Middlingbank, near Cooma; Con went out to Kybeyan where Mr. Mould was in the throes of fencing and converting 8000 acres of rough-timbered country into highly improved pasture land.

Recalling his arrival at Kybeyan after the long drive from Sydney, the young Dutchman admits now that his misgivings grew with every mile covered after they left Nimmitabel and plunged into the real bush country.

To eyes accustomed to the closely settled rural areas of Holland, this was lonely – terrifying – vast - a hopeless un-peopled jungle. How could a man live here! It was the end of the earth!

The only reassurance he gathered from this journey into the unknown was that someone must have been there before him because he could see an occasional fence thrown into relief by the headlight as the narrow dirt goad, wound between trees.

For, at the, time very little improved pasture work had been done out on that road, and there were only occasional open spaces of grazing land showing.

For a year, Con Wassink, labored in the bush, rabbiting first, then splitting bush timbers putting up frames until his hands bled - then they hardened and toughened.

As an experienced truck-driver, the bulldozer to which he graduated was easy to handle.

He went into the clearing work with a zest and energy that surprised even himself.

He was billeted with another Dutch family on the property, and working mostly alone in the solitude of the bush, he learned no English.

“I could not even swear In English he said; describing his early reaction to the land. “But a bulldozer understands Dutch as well as English when it comes to swear so that did not matter much”

But, inarticulate as he was, he was learning fast that right out of the wilderness a man can find friends as easily, if not more easily- than in a highly populated city.

He was Accepted

Mrs. Mould took his English in hand; he found that the neighbors were friendly - when he was sick they were genuinely concerned; when he needed help, he received more offer than he could accept.

He worked hard - his bank balance grew; the bush country he cleared and sowed down to pasture in the autumn, came good the following spring.

He saw the result of his labors in lush green pasture and, gradually, the feeling for the land that had been growing up in him, found expression.

He knew that he was among friends, that he belonged in this place, that he was accepted as a New Aussie.

His employer encouraged him to buy a few head of cattle and a few breeding ewes, a ram or two to run with them - and he saw them multiplying and flourishing on the land he had retrieved from the virgin bush and converted into lush rye and clover pasture.

Con Wassink knew that he had fulfilled his destiny by coming to the country that his, future in Australia was on the land - that out here in the free open country a man could live a man's life.

Some 2000 acres of an adjoining property came on the market, after Con had been three years at Kybeyan.

His employer said to him; “You could buy that place. It's a good block. You could work it up in your spare time - fence it and stock it up as you go.”

Thus fortified with confidence, young Con Wassink, who was now a naturalized Australian took the plunge.

Last year, when the Snowy Mountains Authority began moving in on the old town of Adaminaby, demolishing the houses to make way for the big new Adaminaby Dam; Con learned that a house was available.

It was a big house but it was going cheap. Again he had to look some help from his employer layer- and he didn't look in vain.

It has taken more than a year to remove and re-erect his home on its new site, and it isn't finished yet. There is a terrace to build, painting to be done inside and out, fitments and cupboards to be build, a set of steps to put in, a fence to protect his garden from stock. He has named it “Ederveen", after his home in Holland.

But there is a zest to everything that young Con Wassink does, and a great joy in the knowledge that he has justified the help he received. He is a fine Australian, a man who has worked hard and battled for success.

"It will be nice," he told me, as he stood on his verandah and looked out over his land with a warm pride in his young face.

When he, took over his property two years ago, it was in his own words, "stinking with rabbits;" In his spare time he has fenced and fumigated, dug out the burrows, and rid his land of that pest.

Working for wages during the week, he has put all his spare time into clearing and putting down pasture.

Through the shame good offices of his benefactor, he bought a secondhand bulldozer.

Now at the end seven and a half years, Con Wassink has his 2000 acres fully fenced and subdivided into six paddocks, plus 800 acres of leasehold land. He owns his own bulldozer, tractor and utility. He has a home of which any man could be proud.

He has cleared and sown down some 300 acres of improved pasture, using the accepted formula for that country of molybdenum and super dressing.

Following the same plan as he learned at Kybeyan, he is leaving long avenues of trees between his cultivated pastures; firstly, to provide shelter from wind and snow in winter for his stock, and secondly as an insurance against erosion.

He has potential carrying capacity of between 2000 and 3000 sheep and 100 head of cattle in a few years time.

Con Wassink will tell you that he owes everything he has to Mr. and Mrs. Ron Mould.

"People who are in a position to give help never help those who are not worthy," he said. "Those who are worthy, help themselves. It is so with Con Wassink, and his brother." The brother is a successful dairy farmer on the South Coast today.) "These men have themselves to thank for their success because they have worked hard for it. We Australians are the ones who should thank them for what they are doing for this country.”

END

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