Family tree Van der Werf » Ronald McDonald Koetsveld (1922-1998)

Personal data Ronald McDonald Koetsveld 

• He was born on October 24, 1922 in Dandenong, Australië.
• He died on September 12, 1998 in Mansfield, Australië, he was 75 years old.
• A child of Wilfred Ernest Koetsveld and Amelia Ethel Cicelia McDonald

Household of Ronald McDonald Koetsveld

He is married to (Not public).

They got married on October 12, 1946 at Bass, Australië, he was 23 years old.

Child(ren):

1. (Not public)
2. (Not public)
3. (Not public)
4. (Not public)

Notes about Ronald McDonald Koetsveld

RONALD McDONALD KOETSVELD
From 1930 until 1938 the Koetsveld family operated a Fuel Merchants and produce business at 84 Carlisle Crescent,
Oakleigh very close to the railway level crossing on Warrigal Road. Contained in those years was the Great
Depression where children often went to school with no lunch. Wilfred-John and Ronald would often hand in their cut
lunch at school for children who had none to eat. They would then go home to see what they could get there. Ronald
reckoned that his family’s privileged position was realised to him when he saw a woman he knew, whose husband had
become a swaggie, picking rotten potatoes out of the gutter (discarded from his father’s produce store) to take home
to attempt to feed her children.
Wilfred-John & Ronald once caught the Roman Catholic neighbour’s boy and threatened to beat him up if he didn’t
tell them what he said at Confession. The boy told them that his confession was that he said rude words and had bad thoughts.
Wilfred-John and Ronald sang in the choir at Holy Trinity Anglican church Oakleigh.
Beryl (and I think Lorna) taught Sunday School there.
Ron’s mother died when he had not long turned 14. She was bed ridden in the last year or so of her life and the
children and their aunt Violet cared for her. In summer Ron’s father had him spray water on the brick wall to cool the
house hoping to make it more comfortable for his mother. Ron had to, at times, collect his mother’s medication from
the Pharmacy. Ron decided that instead of visiting the family’s regular chemist, he would visit the closer dispensary.
The chemist there refused to fill the doctor’s prescription stating that the dosage of morphine was too large!
Ronald was ingenious. There’s a Koetsveld family photo of a reunion taken indoors at Oakleigh where Ronald hung a
white sheet on an adjacent wall to maximise the light. He probably used an additional light, the white sheet was to
maximise reflection onto the subjects.
At Bass he rigged up a labour saving arrangement for filling the bath. Bath and washing water was heated in the
copper, which in normal circumstances would be dipper-ed out of the copper into a bucket. Then the bucket of water
would be carried to the bathroom. Ronald rigged up a funnel with a spout through the wall so that the water could be
lifted from the copper with the dipper and poured into the funnel and thus into the bath in the next room. Both labour
saving and much safer. One of Shirley's school friend's said that the Koetsvelds had a posh house, her assessment
based solely on this unique funnel system.
Ronald’s step mother, Violet inherited from her father (James Dawson McDonald) the house he lived in at Dromana.
He died in 1927 leaving his second wife Annie widowed. The Koetsveld’s used the house as a holiday home. One
summer evening with his cousin Jean Whittet, Ronald climbed Arthur’s Seat. Because it was dark they came back
down by the road a got into trouble for being away so long.
At Oakleigh Ronald suggested that they should go for a drive. He got his father’s car out drove a short distance up
and down the street with Jean. Beryl and perhaps even Lorna aboard. Naturally they got themselves into trouble for
that too.
When Ronald finished school he went to work for a garage / car dealership in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne called A E
Machins in Spare Parts. He possessed a great knowledge of the parts and impressed his co workers with his memory
for part numbers
Having successfully traded through the depression (the family were always proud of the fact that Wilfred E never gave
sort weight during these times) and fearing the affect that rationing would have on the business when war was
declared, Ronald’s father and step mother swapped the Oakleigh business for a dairy farm on Soldiers Road, Bass, in
1938 with a fellow called Syd Matthews. Ronald was required to quit his job at Machins and accompany Violet &
Wilfred E to Bass to work on the farm. His siblings stayed behind in a rent house at 21 Warrigal Road with Lorna as
mother. At Bass he met his wife to be Betty Aplin.
Ronald met and fell in love with Betty Alpin who also lived on Soldiers Road. Their married at St Paul’s Church of
England on the 12th of October the day before the generation commenced with the birth of Heather Llewellyn
-Ronald’s niece.
When Ronald and Betty were first married, they lived with Violet and Wilfred Ernest at Bass. There were a couple of
rooms that were timbered half way up the wall and had flywire above that to the ceiling. This was called the sleep out
and was in fact the enclosed verandah. Ronald and Betty slept in one of these and Violet & Wilfred slept in other.
Behind the house Ronald and his father, his brother Wilfred John and brother in law Rees Llewellyn, built a brick
bungalow. They used a one brick mould and cast the bricks from a fairly dry concrete mix. The Bricks were sun dried
and the trick was to have the mixture wet enough to hold together yet dry enough to keep drying time to an absolute
minimum. The ceiling in this structure was kainite (pin board)lining sheets. Betty was using a petrol iron to press the
laundry. Somehow the iron exploded and shot up putting a hole in the ceiling. Ronald covered the hole with a
ventilator. Despite its obvious dangerous nature, the petrol iron was a modern convenience. The alternative was to
have several flat irons heating on the wood stove used in rotation returning each to the stove as they cooled. Most
every duty on a farm was physically demanding. During milking, Betty fell with a bucket of milk landing on her tummy
on the bucket. She resulting mis-carried her first child.

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Timeline Ronald McDonald Koetsveld

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