Impi Freeland (nee Sonkkila, nee Rapp)
28/7/1913 to 10/12/2004
I was born on July 28 1913 in America and was the first child to Finnish migrant parents Johanne and Anna Rapp.
When I was about two my parents migrated to Australia where they bought five acres of land in the East Hills area of Sydney.
My home was always very Finnish and Finnish was my first language. When I started school my world was governed by English and I became an interpreter for my mother.
I don't remember having any traditions of the old country. My father insisted we become Australians as quickly as possible. My sister Edith was born when I was about six so I was treated as an only child during my early years.
My father had learnt to be an electrician in America but had difficulty initially getting work because he was believed to be German. This was about the time of World War One. But eventually he was offered a job to put in electricity in the Anthony Hordens Building in Sydney. I remember us going to buy all sorts of appropriate clothes for his work, but the day he was to start he died, in 1921.
My mother married the partner in the five acres Butsy, but he was already sick and died three years later. But before he died they had a daughter, Ivy. And so my mother was a widow with three daughters. But at least we had land and 36 fruit trees to feed us.
At 14 I had to go maiding to earn some money. I didn't like the work, but I learnt a lot about how to keep a house. I became confident enough to enrol in a secretarial course at a business college, and from then on I did secretarial work.
Everyone around me was getting married and I was a little bored with the fact, so I thought I'd do something exciting and went to a far off place called Mt Isa. It was here that I met my greatest friend Lillian who died many years ago, and my husband -to-be.
People from all over the world worked at Mt Isa, and it was an exciting time for a young girl like myself, with all these young men. Girls were scarce, particularly thin girls.
So at 28 I married Aimo Sonkkila and became pregnant with Gail. We made very good money in Mt Isa and bought a small home, but we were very ambitious and wanted more.
The Finns had told us about New Guinea and so we decided that we would get a plantation there.
Aimo went ahead to get a place for us to live but the war intervened. The Japanese invaded New Guinea and everybody had to leave. Aimo said if just one person would have stayed with him he would not have left. But you needed someone to watch while you slept. He trekked in a group across New Guinea to Port Moresby and caught a boat to Australia.
As he landed he was arrested as an enemy alien and sent to a camp. But Mt Isa mines went guarantor for Finns and he was allowed to return to work in Mt Isa. As I was Australian I could be guarantor and we moved on and lived in Rockhampton where Paul was born. Then we returned to Sydney where Leonie was born.
After the war, Aimo went back to New Guinea, but the marriage had broken down. The years passed, struggling to survive with three children.
My sister Edith helped by looking after my youngest daughter Leonie for many years. It was a difficult time.
In 1956 Aimo died in New Guinea.
With the children grown up and about to leave I felt I would need company and I met Harold Freeland. He was a bright and breezy man and good company. He had been married but had no children.
We were together for a few years but he died. And his family home had already been entrusted to his sister. I did not contest the will and so I had to find a place for myself. I had some friends, Viv and Bob Smith, who had got the opal bug, and together with them and Gail we went to White Cliffs where we had an exciting time. It was Vivian who found out about the land being available in Lightning Ridge, and so we both got a block. It was full of people, of dreams, and so different from your normal country town.
I thought that I would be a lot happier in the land of dreams and I have not been disappointed. At the beginning I used to spend a couple of months a year in Sydney, working for Dial an Angel doing temporary housekeeping which supplemented my income and paid the rates.
I have always loved this town, particularly the weather, for as my family knows, I hate rain.
As my father used to say, this is God's own country.
Reflections from Impi's memoirs
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