George Frederick van der Hoeven: A Turbulent Career … Ceylon & Australia

Nick van der Hoeven

I wanted to write about a very complex man, one of my grandfathers …. George Frederick van der Hoeven. The main reason for doing so is because history has not been kind to him, especially the unwritten verbal history within our family. Born in 1901 in Colombo Ceylon — then under British rule — Grandpa (as we called him) died here in Melbourne in 1978. I was 6 years old.

My memories of grandpa revolve around those last few years of his life. I remember dad taking my brother and I to visit him in his tiny apartment, housing commission flats, which I thought were in Essendon, but the records show his last fixed address was a commission flat in St Kilda. My dad was ‘wary’ of my grandfather: for he was volatile and a loner. He lived alone in some kind of squalor, newspapers on the windows blocking the sun, notepads on the kitchen table where he spent his entire life (so it was said) writing angry letters to newspapers and various government departments, lamenting his lot in life.

I also remember being scared to eat anything at the apartment, asking dad in the car, what do do if he offered us food. We needn’t have worried, on arrival my grandpa offered us chocolates and dad a cup of tea.

At the time of my parents wedding in Melbourne in 1967, the story goes that my father did not want my grandpa there, just in case he caused a scene and was an embarrasment in other socially not acceptable ways. My father, a Ceylonese immigrant, was marrying a beautiful Hungarian lady from a family of doctors. One can imagine the scene.

Another story of my grandfather, after he married into a eminent English Burgher family (the Bevens), and after helping rear 4 Children, that grandpa (then a school principle at a prestigious English school in Colombo) would inexplicably, with little warning, just take off, and head to the hills of Kandy to spend a month meditating with the Buddhist monks, leaving my grandmother at home to fend for herself and her children. The story was that this happened every year and was evidence of grandpa being a poor husband and father. It also smacks of ‘fight or flight’, being unhinged, mentally unwell and/or self-obsessed.

The final tragic story that was passed around the family was that, after arriving with his children, in Melbourne in 1948, at the height of the White Australia Policy, Grandpa aged 47 took his first job as a teacher at Northcote High School, then an all boys school. The story goes that grandpa only lasted a few months, being badly bullied by a school population not used to someone a ‘bit browner’ than usual. He never returned to his profession, from then on taking government jobs and finally as a courier in the 1960’s to make ends meet.

So, this was the grandfather I knew, someone slightly unhinged, unloveable, destined to die lonely and angry. Someone, despite moving to Australia as a single father, with hopes and dreams, was a shell of the person he once was. This was certainly the tone by which I (a young child) received this information and continued to think this into my adult years. Sure, some relatives would say flippantly, ‘I liked your grandfather’ BUT – the message was clear.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid 30’s, 25 years after his death, that some clues started to appear that grandpa was not quite the one-dimensional person he was portrayed as. As I became an adult, and followed my own spiritual journey, I started to wonder about grandpa. The story of him heading into the hills, spending time with monks, was something that I could relate too. If grandpa was a Buddhist (for a time anyway), as he grew older (and angrier) I wanted to know what kind of issues he was interested in? What was in those letters to the newspapers and the governments? What was his political thoughts? To me there was a chance that he seemed intellectually and socially curious.

So, I started on my family members. When I asked my father what kind of political persuasion was grandpa, what social things did he feel passionate about, he couldn’t tell me. Other family members would just smile at my questions and say things like ‘who knows,’ he was just always annoyed and angry. It was then that I realised one thing. Grandpa may very well be all those those things said about him,’ but it appeared to me, on the surface anyway, that no-one took anytime to listen to him, to really get to know him.

And finally another thing happened which was a game-changer, revealing more of my grandfather for the very first time. Whilst reading an article about Sri Lankan Independence in 1948 and the subsequent struggles facing families like ours to relocate into the Western world, my grandfather George Frederick van der Hoeven was mentioned in the article.

Qte ….. “One such organisation was the Burgher Settlement League. Not to be stifled by the 100% white extraction requirement, the Burgher Settlement League made its play to the Australian authorities in Colombo On June 21, 1947, Mr. G. F. Van Der Hoeven, (a member of the Dutch Burgher Union, Secretary of the Burgher Association of Ceylon and President of the Burgher Settlement League) in a letter to the Chief Secretary, Ceylon stated: “I am now the President of the “Burgher Settlement League” which aspires to encourage Emigration to Australia of all Burghers – men, women and children – who are desirous of doing so, in order that they may find more suitable opportunities than here, to secure a sound economic future, to obtain a good standard of living and to continue to maintain and preserve their identity in terms of Western culture and outlook of life……unquote

Bang! George was more than just a cruel caricature from a Dickens novel. So, then, who was George Frederick van der Hoeven, the one that was slowly revealing itself?

My grandfather was born in Colombo, then within Ceylon, on the 10th of February 1901. He was the son of Charles John van der Hoeven who, despite being of Dutch background held a high ranking clerical position within the prestigious British Civil Service on the Island. Interestingly his great grandfatheher (and namesake) held the same type of role around 1830 as a british civil servant in Trincomalee. His mother was Emma Virginia Beatrice Wambeek, from a prestigious Dutch Burgher family. Her grandfather was Colonial Surgeon Dr John Godfried Wambeek (personal surgeon to the Governor) and Great grandfather Commander John Wambeek who signed the Dutch Capitulation Treaty with the English in 1795.

My grandfather’s side of the family included 10 original Dutch migrants arriving in the mid 16th century working for the Dutch East Indies shipping corporation otherwise known as VOC. Names include Rutgers van Kriekenbeek who arrived in 1659 and whose daughter Henrietta married the then Governor of Ceylon Thomas van Rhee (he has a Wikipedia page). Famous Dutch Burgher names like De Vos, Toussaint, Anthonisz and Dormieux are also direct descendants.

Other direct descendants of note are Gaulterius Schneider, Ceylon Surveyor-General (he has a Wikipedia page) and Baron Charles Frederick VonConradi a real life Prussian Baron who as a Lieutenant helped the British take over from the Dutch.

So: my grandfather was born into middle class, eminent, influential Burgher families. He attended prestigious schools and eventually graduated from university around 1918 and entered the workforce as a high school maths and English teacher. Within 10 years he had moved up the rung and in his 30’s held the headmaster position at a number of different Christian schools. He himself married into a very influential English family ‘the Bevens’ and proceeded to have four children, one being my father Ralph van der Hoeven.

The early 1900’s was an interesting time in Ceylon. The British were still in charge, the Dutch Burghers were dominating the medical, law and educational fields, but quite understandably there was an increasing distrust of the colonial rulers. The ‘Europeans’ were only 5 percent of the population yet controlled everything. The rise in nationalism, visits from Gandhi and the Theosophical Society poured fuel on this discontent. The majority Buddhist population rallied against Christian laws and values.

It was in this climate that my grandfather was maturing from a boy to man. The Buddhist revivalist movement was also taking hold amongst ‘western’ intellectuals on the island. Many fair-minded English and Dutch people could sense the inequality and started to embrace the idea that colonialism was on the way out.

Adding to the intrigue of the time, my grandfather having married my nana ‘Bonnie’ Beven, was now assumably involved in Beven family affairs. Bonnie’s older sister Blanch Beven, around that same time married a soon to be famous English Civil servant by the name of Walter Terence Stace. Walter became Major of Colombo and even today has a road named after him in the Sri Lankan capital. What makes Walter Stace important in this story (apart from name dropping) is that he controversially (for a Christian British statesman) also embraced the Buddhist revival movement. He embraced it so much he would eventually become a world-renowned Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University having authored many important books around mysticism and eastern religious thought. Professor Stace and his wife Blanche spent many years at Princeton hosting dinner parties with guests such as Einstein and Oppenheimer. This is documented in the biography of Walter by his daughter Jennifer Stace.

So, this is the environment in which my grandfather would ‘take off into the hills’ to spend time with the Monks. This was in fact common amongst the intelligence of the time. Yes, he would leave his wife and children behind for a month or so, but they were ably supported by the trappings of a middle-class Colombo lifestyle, including half a dozen domestic help who did everything around the house allowing my grandmother to continue the social like afforded to her class at the time.

My grandfather seemed to be so taken by the Buddhist Nationalistic movement, and the plight of the locals, that he decided to resign from his headmaster role at a well-known Catholic school and took up a similar role at one of the hundreds of new Buddhist Schools set up around the country. Gandhi and the Theosophical Society were driving this renewed sense of self amongst the locals.

This act from my grandfather could not have gone down well with his wife Bonnie and the Beven Clan. Most likely staunch Christian colonialist, this no doubt was a dagger in the heart of their marriage. Thus the marriage disintegrated somewhere around 1940. As was custom at the time, marriages that ended in divorce, the children stayed with the father. My lovely grandmother lost her marriage and children, and my earnest, deep thinking grandfather was now a single parent raising 4 Westernized kids, with the colony crumbling around them.

This however would appear not to have stopped my grandfather. With the British colonies in India and Ceylon likely to disintegrate, the Burghers were left with an impossible situation. Should Ceylon be granted independence, the Burghers as rulers of the middle class, and the English overlords would no doubt lose all privileges afforded to them and be asked to leave.

George, seeing the writing on the wall then, became one of the pre-eminent voices lobbying colonial governments to accept ‘The Burghers’. The Dutch refused stating that too much time had passed and the Brits were only interested in repatriating civil servants. This left Australia, which was problematic because although the Burghers only spoke English and lived as English families, it was obvious that from looking at us that weren’t (as a group) 100 pct European. In fact, the Dutch English Burghers could vary widely in colour even within the same family. We Burghers had been in the country for 400 years and we were actually a mixed race. This was a problem for emigrating to Australia which had ‘the White Australia Policy’. It would end up being a lottery. The Australians agreed in theory to take as many Burghers as possible as long as we could prove we were ‘predominately’ European.

My grandfather was at the forefront of this push to bring Burghers to Australia. He established the Burgher Settlement League and ‘wrote letters’ (sound familiar) and had meeting with Australian officials, and eventually helped many people make the trip and gain acceptance to become Australians.

Although many Burghers had visited Australia (as tourists) and trickled in as immigrants over the years, there is a chance that my family (with others) were the first to leave Ceylon, as post independence displaced, on the migrant ship MV Radnik arriving here in January 1948. For the first 7 years arrivals from Ceylon were quite small, maybe 1 or 2 thousand people. These days Australia is home to a larger Burgher community than anywhere in the world — numbering the tens of thousands.

Can you imagine my grandfather arriving as a single parent with 4 children in tow (ranging from 7 to 18 years of age)! Can you imagine him, full of hope and dreams, to take a job in teaching only to be hounded out for the colour of his skin! He most probably had a breakdown. I would have.

Testament to him, he survived for another 29 years in Melbourne and all 4 of his children have lived exceptional lives. His ex-wife, my nana Bonnie arrived 10 years later in 1959. She also lived a nice life.

I wish that I had been 10 years older so that as an adult I could have ‘seen’ my grandfather for the complex person he was. This essay is for him….

Nick van der Hoeven (grandson)