Ben's People: 'On a Wim'

The Human Factor 

It’s often said there are no real winners in war. Wim’s time spent in the military made a deep impression on his views, but a sobering experience one afternoon affected him in a way that would last forever.  
‘One free Saturday when I was just 20 years of age, I started my day with a few beers in a bar. Everyone was feeling good, so we went out for a walk to visit the old concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen. But man, that high didn’t last when we saw what happened there.’  
He describes seeing mass graves with 2,000, 5,000, and another with 12,000 bodies. Already dumbstruck, young Wim and his friends next found a loaded car park with families inside each vehicle, weeping. ‘Most of them were German people, because 70% of them didn’t want that war either. The human factor is the same as what’s happening now in Ukraine and in Russia.’ 

Wim adds that, despite constantly hearing “The Germans are bad” during childhood, his attitude changed once he saw how hurt those people in the carpark were. ‘We were hit mentally when we left there.’ He is glad to be living down here.  

Another takeaway of these encounters was their profound impact on Wim's perspective over the wider world, opening his eyes to new global issues becoming apparent as the dust settled on post-war Europe. 

‘It’s unbelievable what so many tanks cost, one tank was a million dollars even then. A Centurion tank with a dozer blade would use forty litres of petrol for a kilometre. Environmentally, it was shocking, and all along that East-West border there were camps of 20,000 people all moving about. If tensions in Berlin had escalated then, they could have destroyed each other 350 times over.’ He shudders.  

‘When you’re there, you live your life and you do what you have to do, but that had crossed my mind several times. So, after I’d done my duty, I went back to work at Philips. Then we bought a house just behind a supermarket, and it was all concrete.’ 

Now living in quietly rural Sefton, Wim and his wife Dinie’s house is a beautiful A-frame Lockwood decorated with hardy wood furniture he's made over the years, along with bespoke art painted by their friends and family. It has a very warm, inviting feel, like being in an Alpine ski lodge or Appalachian log cabin. Dinie presents me with more strong coffee, and windmill cookies. I dunk a cookie in the coffee.

The Circle of Life  

‘So there we were, living in that concrete house, when I started to see the circle.’ 
‘The circle?’ I ask. 
‘Of life,’ Wim says. ‘Born there, school there, work there, go to that hospital, die and get buried there. I saw the circle appearing. Dinie didn’t like it either.’  

Then one day in the 1980s, everything changed.

‘Our son said “I wanna go to Australia, mum. I wanna live there,” because we had a book at home about it. We got more interested and read a lot more, then we made the plunge. In those days, there was an understanding between the Dutch and New Zealand government. You went through the paperwork, and they supported your travel, but you had to stay for five years otherwise you had to pay it back.  

‘See, you must give reasons on those forms, on why you want to move. And I still had a core belief in the back of my mind that if the East-West border ever got into real conflict, half of Europe gets blown off the map. Of course, we had to leave behind the secure social health system in Holland, but here’s still pretty good.’ I ask if they had any regrets about moving.  

‘Never. Ah, you miss certain things, like when your parents pass away, you can’t always make it. Or sometimes you want to have a cup of coffee with your sister, but we've been back several times. And they’ve been here.’  

A Green Backbone   

‘We were not active greenies, but we had a very strong green backbone, we understood a lot of stuff that was happening and could see it was not going to last. There was an oil crisis in Holland too, when we couldn’t drive on a Sunday, so we became members of a horse-drawn vehicle club. We thought it was marvellous.’   
‘A bit like the Pennsylvania Dutch?’ The Amish came to mind. 
‘Yeah,’ he replies with a deadpan expression, ‘but without the blessing from upstairs.’ We both laugh. 

Wim is a writer like I am, although his style is more poetic and his output much more prolific than mine. He hurries off to print out a poem that he’s keen for me to hear, so I turn to Dinie and ask her reflections on their life here.  

‘I’d been involved in speech and drama since a young age in the Netherlands, but I prefer the way it’s done here. In 2006, both Wim and I took part in a docudrama called The Waimate Conspiracy, based on a book called The Waikikamukau Conspiracy by Stefen Lewis about a disagreement between Māori and Pakeha over stolen land. It starred Jim Moriarty, Jon Gadsby and David McPhail to name a few. And lots of locals from Waimate, where we were living at the time. It was a great experience.’ 

Wim re-joins the chat just as Dinie mentions how Holland and other Scandinavian countries trailblazed the green movement. He tells me how here, at the age of 55 he set up and ran the first recycling centre in Waimate for five years, after being impressed at how efficient the one already operating in Amberley was. ‘They were very good at it, so we came up to have a look.’ It wasn’t all smooth sailing though, and Wim says he was shocked at how authorities dealt with it at first. ‘They didn’t seem to have any knowledge. I didn’t have much at first either, but you learned quick.’ From his own account, many of the earliest recycling setups in the South Island were set up by volunteers. ‘And councils took over once things got underway.’  

Coastal Concerns 

‘When you look at low-lying areas, Canterbury is not so different from the Netherlands, but the way we manage our water is very different. Sure, the consequences are a lot more dramatic there where people might live five metres below sea level, but then our beaches here seem to be disappearing at an alarming speed.’ 

We drive down to Amberley Beach where I see how far back the soil has eroded since I last saw it a year ago, and a bench seat facing the sea now sits at the edge of a sharp 0.5 metre drop over rocks below. It looks the same along the coastline, and the only bridge in and out of the Amberley Golf Club crumbles at the edge where waves strike it. Wim looks on cautiously as the wind picks up. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to deal with it here. Us locals are worried.’  

Authorities are aware of the issue too, and Leigh Griffiths of ECan informs me that the Hurunui District Council is currently scoping its next maintenance work on Amberley Beach for this coming summer. ‘Generally, coastal erosion is expected to occur more due to climate change, which may increase the frequency and severity of storms. In addition, sea level rise is expected to continue at an accelerated rate.’ She adds that both organisations are doing their best with the resources available, and they work together to monitor things closely.  

Now in his seventies, Wim has been a lively and outspoken presence in community, council and other town hall meetings for decades. Between volunteering, fundraising, and speaking up for what he believes in, he isn’t showing signs of slowing down yet.  

Wherever there is work to be done, there will be Wim.