From Surabaya to serenity

Cicilia Wardhana, her husband Wishnu and their children Anastasia, Dominic and Dimitry, have made a home for themselves in Nelson. It is a very different world from their home country, Indonesia. Adrienne Matthews learns about the journey to this distant land in the South Pacific.

Wishnu and I grew up in Surabaya in East Java. It is the second largest city in Indonesia with a population of over three million. It is the culture there to stay at home until you marry, so I lived with my parents until I married Wishnu when I was 24. After finishing my diploma in secretarial study, I completed my bachelor degree in English. All children have to learn English in Indonesia so I had a head start.

We both had full-time jobs and we had our children Anastasia and Dominic. Although we had our own house, there was no room for a garden or outside play area for the children. We had a good life but everyone lives very close together in a big city like that and we had the feeling that we wanted to find somewhere else to bring up our family that would be better for them.

Wishnu was offered a job at the Indonesian Consulate in Darwin so we took the opportunity. It was a big change. The city was so quiet and felt very empty after Surabaya. I was a stay-at-home mum to start with, which was a different experience. In Indonesia children are generally looked after by family members or a nanny so both parents can still work. Childcare is not popular there. We were very lucky to have had our families nearby and really missed that when we moved, especially when our third child, Dimitry, was born in Darwin.

In Darwin the food was very similar to what we were used to with lots of fresh tropical fruit and vegetables, so we felt at home in that respect. The temperature was similar too. We couldn’t however, take our children to the parks because it never felt safe. There were so many drunk people around. That is a big problem there. It also felt like Darwin was a very long way from anywhere.

I wanted to do more study so we looked at options for staying in Australia, but the pathway to residency was too difficult. While searching for an alternative, I saw that NMIT here in Nelson was offering a post-graduate degree in Applied Management and it was very reasonably priced. We had heard that Nelson was a beautiful place to live, and we moved here in the middle of a Covid winter in 2021. Miraculously, we were able to fly here during the two days that Australia and New Zealand temporarily opened their borders.

The biggest shock when we arrived was the cold. It was very hard to find somewhere to rent and we lived at a holiday park until a lady said she had two rooms in her home we could stay in. We lived there for the next two years. Once I had finished my course and we had permanent jobs, we managed to find somewhere else to live. By then we had successfully applied for the skilled migrant visa which was very exciting.

This is such a beautiful country and life is much slower than in Indonesia. There are a lot of older people living here and they have the time to talk to you. People are friendly, and the children absolutely love their school, St Paul’s. They feel right at home.

Life is very different for children here compared to Indonesia. There is so much pressure from a young age there to learn and keep up with schoolwork. Schooling is very strict. The school day starts at 7am and finishes at 2pm. Children have homework every night and there isn’t much time for play. Here they have the chance to just be children and everyone has the opportunity to get involved in the things they are interested in, like Kapa Haka, art, craft and music, if they wish. At home you had to have a lot of money to do things like that. Also, we didn’t realise before we came here that Kiwis are so involved in sport. All our children play badminton.

Probably the biggest difference between the two countriesis the cost of food. In Indonesia we could feed our family on $10 a day. Everywhere on the streets were food vendors selling fresh food so you could buy what you needed every day. I had never seen preserved or frozen food until I came here. Due to our country’s tropical nature, there was always a wonderful variety of options. There were many different types of bananas for example, and we had watermelons all year round. Here the fruit and vegetables are much more seasonal but you can at least grow your own vegetables and fruit if you have some garden area, which is great.

I really miss the spices. Indonesian food is rich with flavours and spices, most of which aren’t available here. Fortunately, our children are very adaptable so they are easy to feed and although we still have rice every day, the food is not nearly as spicy.

Healthcare is easier to get here. Although we paid into a scheme in Indonesia so that healthcare was free, the public system is far more overloaded than here so you would have to wait a very long time to see a doctor. If you wanted a better service you had to have extra insurance.

It is very unusual for Indonesians to emigrate. It is a society where extended families are very integrated. Most people live in the same area they were born in throughout their lives so it was a very big thing for us to do. We are so lucky that everything has fallen into place for us here. It is the fulfilment of a dream to be here. I cannot think of anything that would make us happier.