Grandparents grand wedding
November 1, 2013
The photo above is of my paternal grandparents’ wedding, back in the 1890′s or so. The tall rather forbidding looking man on the right at the back is my Grandfather, sitting next him, his lovely bride with the gown, my grandmother. A rather sombre looking bridal party. In those days taking interior photos must have been difficult. Perhaps the party was fed up with posing and wanted to get stuck in the vino and food. One of the males seated at the table is Huib Luns. He was the father of Joseph Luns, a future Government minister and Secretary General.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huib_Luns
I so would like to know who the other family members are. I suppose brothers and sisters of the couple. The whole wedding photo does indicate that from my father’s side there is a solid bourgeois background with perhaps a bit of money lurking about. However, they did produce six children and with two world wars, and grandpa doing work on mural assignments, perhaps mainly from religious organisations, he would have had times of stress as well.
I do remember my parents having to give financial support towards the end of their lives. It must have been during that period in the fifties and sixties when pensions and other social services were slow coming of the ground. In any case, after my parents’ migration to Australia, the subject of financial support to his parents was a frequent bone of discontent. My parents quarrelled over that subject. No wonder, we were hardly in the clover ourselves!
This photo was our first abode in Australia. We lived in that temporary dwelling for over two years before we build our house. It was made of asbestos sheeting. The space was 32 square metres and the 8 of us took turns in turning around during the night when all the mattresses were put into place. It was not the Utopia of a ‘promised land’.
But what could we do?
I do wonder how my grandparents expectations turned out. The wedding photo is the beginning of a life. One of my previous articles showed them at the end. How did it all go? There were problems with some of the children afterwards. They never saw us again, nor their grandchildren. To be torn away from a culture could not have been easy for my parents.
The differences. Priests at Christmas time smelling of beer, Bogong moths swirling around, the heat, the lack of empathy or understanding. We were not convicts nor reffos. No sewer. The weekly dunny man collecting drums of our effluence.
So many differences, such a battle. The memory still able to make tears.
dunnyman
PS. I just assumed it was a wedding at the Amsterdam ‘Krasnapolski Hotel’ and it was. Look at this photo.
Posted in Gerard Oosterman |
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Thanks for sharing this Gerard. The dunny man was familiar to many – even those living in North Balwyn! We also had a potty for wee wee if needed during the night. My neighbours had 8 children and lived in a 10 square house. As an only child I had a room to myself – luxury.
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The boy at the front of the garage (temporary dwelling) is brother Herman checking dad’s cabbages. He is the one together with my other brother who used to get hit on the knuckles by a ‘Brother’ with a cane. My mum could not believe it and went to see the head ‘brother’, he told her this was ‘normal’.
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As a high school student, I couldn’t believe the ill treatment that Catholic kids endured, and claimed that they received a ‘superior education’, in spite of the lack of any science subjects in most of their schools.
Lovely wedding pic, remarkably sharp, except for those recalcitrant movers.
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My mum honestly thought that attacking her children by the teacher with a stick was a police matter and unlawful. No one had informed her about that part of the new country. Even so, she made the best of it all and persevered.
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From Krasnapolsky to Dunnyman, a title for a book or a movie….
Your father’s family was a rather sophisticated, worldly and artistic lot, your grandfather whom I never met, actually made a living by designing glass and lead windows for churches. Uncle Jan a well known ceramic artist in Europe.
GO, you ought take photos of his work and put it up here, beautiful!
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Yes they were told not to smile or move back in those days due to the exposure time of films back then. It’s a fabulous setting for a wedding. Lovely old photos Gerard 🙂
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Thank you for your kind words. Political Vagina, I do like dipping back in history. I am amazed that the photo is so clear, especially considering I took this photo of the old photo with a hand held digital camera hovering a few centimetres above it.
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History is cool and has lessons for us. I was also amazed at the clearness of that picture.
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Such an interesting story, Gez. Particularly interested as I am in photography at the moment, I am entranced by the photo. At a guess each person is sitting very still because that was the requirement to capture each image with such a camera? I wonder if the hotel even had its own photographer. Any clue about the photographer?
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Yes, you are right. If you look carefully, one lady on the right still moved when the photo was taken. I am sure my great-great grandmother is there and is the sixth person on the right. The same sharp features as her daughter (my grandmother)
Don’t know the photographer.
But the artist Huib Luns turned out to be well known at the time and in Wiki there is a fair bit about him.
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Wonderful and I will read up, Gez. Many thanks.
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