Twenty-two
years from 1957 working for Holland’s maritime interests in Australia taught me
a thing or two about its admirable people - tough, blunt, fair!
One way or another, the Dutch have made numerous contributions to our history. I hope readers will enjoy sharing some of my memories from an “Australian perspective”.
If employed by
a foreign company, one should try from the outset to understand its national
“culture” - which is how I saw it.
The
Dutch, Australia’s European discoverers in 1606, having long been traders,
thought little of what they initially saw and sailed on. But after the English
viewed matters differently and colonised us, the Hollanders came back more
open-minded. Not far to our north, from
the late 16th century, Holland actively planned and ultimately
colonised the Indonesian archipelago. It’s enormously rich supply of spices and
other commodities, greatly sought in Europe, influenced the Dutch to appoint a
Governor-General in 1609. Only a little earlier the famous Dutch East India
trading concern VOC, started operations, which lasted for some 200 years and
have been given much prominence in recent times by the Australian National
Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour.
For various
reasons, several centuries passed before one of the most remarkable shipping
companies the world has ever seen commenced operating in Batavia (now Jakarta).
This was 1891 when the Amsterdam based Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij
(KPM) started services within the archipelago, the
world’s largest with thousands of islands. Eventually, these services were
expanded to almost every part of the world, except North and South America and
Europe. In short, here was a prosperous
and dynamic organisation, beyond question. From 1918, one of the major roles of
KPM was as a feeder operation to and from the “mainline” service to Europe
provided by two other large Dutch shipping lines - Rotterdam Lloyd and
Nederland Line. Previously, many non-Dutch companies were on-carriers or
pre-carriers. Collectively, KPM and these two companies ultimately, in war and
peace, left their mark on Australia.
From 1908, KPM
established a service between Indonesia and adjacent lands, with Australia.
This proved very profitable and increasingly promising, so much so that the
Directors’ confidence was reflected in the building of two of the finest
passenger ships ever employed on the Australian run. These were the ‘Great
White Yachts’, the 11,000 t. s.s. “Nieuw Zeeland” and “Nieuw Holland” of 1928.
Each also carried large cargo loads and proved highly successful. “Nieuw
Zeeland” was sunk during WW2 as a troop transport, but “Nieuw Holland”
survived. I recall many pleasant memories of visiting her before she was
scrapped in 1959.
Against this
impressive background, I considered myself fortunate to be accepted in 1957 as
a Junior Clerk for the then well known Dutch Royal Interocean Lines (RIL). This
was a very well respected hybrid ‘multi-ship-owner’ operated from Hong Kong and
headquartered in Amsterdam. Much of RIL’s genesis arose from the independence
of Indonesia after WW2, when KPM was “kicked out” by the new Soekarno
Government. As a result, KPM’s prime assets, mainly a huge fleet of passenger
and cargo ships, 11 of which were combined with those of another successful
Hong Kong based Dutch shipping company, the Koninklijke Java China Packet Line
(KJCPL), resulting in the formation of RIL, one of the world’s largest maritime
organisations. The mixture of each
company’s various ship names, in some cases required effort by we Australians
to pronounce. In the main we had TJI Indonesian for “river”) ships such as
“Tjitarum”, STRAAT ‘this or that’ (such as “Straat Magelhaen”), VAN ‘something’
e.g. “Van Linschoten”, to name a few.
One of the
most famous was the 6,400t cargo/passenger “Straat Malakka” of 1938.
Having trodden its decks many times prior to her sale in1967, I was always
conscious that this was the ship impersonated by the German raider “Kormoran “
which sank our cruiser HMAS Sydney off Western Australia in November
1941, with the tragic loss of all hands.
During WW2,
the Dutch contributed widely to the allied cause. Holland-America Line’s
magnificent peacetime trans-Atlantic “Nieuw Amsterdam”, plus KPM, JCJL,
Rotterdam Lloyd and Nederland Line passenger ships all made many dangerous
troop carrying voyages from Australia. Many Australians who were comforted on
board will long remember Nederland Line’s famous hospital ship “Oranje”.
As a new “rookie” in RIL, a diet of ships,
ships and more ships never ceased, very much “24/7” - ask my “better half”
Yvonne! My initial clerical duties soon gave way to more varied and specific
responsibilities - Water Clerk, attending to many of the constant number of
ship calls; booking cargo to numerous global destinations; increasing
involvement with industrial relationships with maritime unions; all were great
learning curves! And increasingly fascinating and challenging was the
opportunity for wide experience in the field of negotiation.
Negotiating with Australian exporters and importers, with Commonwealth departments and before long, meeting our business relations and exploring new business opportunities, was most stimulating. My world opened-up with visits to Africa, Central and South America, the West Indies and much of Asia particularly, learning from their cultural and business differences.
Looking back,
those of us working for RIL were extremely fortunate to be exposed to managing
in this region virtually all major Dutch ship-owners’ interests and the wide
spectrum of the maritime world.
Warwick Abadee