General News
21 July, 2026
Renus reflects on war, work and Minyip life
Marinus ‘Renus’ Boone was born in 1929, some 19 km outside of Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was the youngest of four boys and left school at 13 to work for a blacksmith.
Marinus ‘Renus’ Boone was born in 1929, some 19 km outside of Rotterdam, Netherlands.
He was the youngest of four boys and left school at 13 to work for a blacksmith.
Mr Boone reflected on his early life growing up in Holland in a strict religious household under the Orthodox Reformed Congregation.
He was subject to rules such as not being allowed to go on school trips, and on Sundays, not being allowed to leave the house and having to stay inside and read religious books.
His mother was a seamstress and came from a higher social class than his father, who worked in a flour mill.
All of 10 years old at the outbreak of the Second World War, he described the hive of activity as exciting to a boy his age.
He was delighted that school became banned in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, and he and his friends would collect boxes full of shells after shootouts.
He recalled the German soldiers confiscating everyone’s bikes and that they would ride in a line, tied together behind their trucks, as a means of getting around.
Mr Boone said that often, if one bike rider in the line fell over, they all would.
He also recalled seeing the English bombers flying over the Netherlands bound for Germany, and the terrifying whistle the bombs would make when they were dropped after the plane was shot down in a fight as it fell through the sky, and described how all the windows would shatter when it landed.
His mother baked bread to feed the starving people who ventured out from the cities in search of food.
Due to the Nazi restrictions imposed, it was prohibited to be outside after 8pm, but Mr Boone said he and his friends would hide behind a load of rubbish on the roadside in a chook yard, where they would all come home smelling like manure.
When Nazi Germany fell in 1945, its occupied countries were liberated by Allied troops, who were greeted with open arms.
Mr Boone observed the American trucks passing through his town.
However, he wasn’t allowed outside to join the celebrations, as it was a Sunday.
Due to his religious restrictions, he had to stay inside and look out the window.
Mr Boone served in the Royal Netherlands Army from 1949 to 1951, as conscription was reinstated after the war.
Renus’s eldest brother, Bram, had a medical condition that exempted him from mandatory service, and he emigrated to Australia in 1949, settling in Ararat.
Mr Boone, facing the reality of limited opportunities for a young man like himself in post-war Europe, joined his older brother in Australia in 1951.
During their time in Ararat, they stayed with a Dutch family, and Bram worked in McCubbin’s Bakery in Barkly Street, and Mr Boone worked at Prestige Fabric Mills as a welder and fitter for eight years.
Mr Boone reflected during this time on the difficulty he had in learning proper English, as all he picked up from those working with him were swear words.
Mr Boone married Helen de Lang in 1956, and they had two daughters together.
Bram, along with his wife Betty, bought the Watchem Bakery in 1956 before coming to Minyip in 1959 when the bakery came on the market.
When Renus’s wife, Helen, was diagnosed with cancer, the doctor recommended that they move north, so the pair moved to Minyip in 1960, where they lived on Main Street.
The brothers ran the bakery, and during their time, the oven was converted to oil in 1962, and a new brick shop was built in 1967.
Mr Boone stated he enjoyed being a baker, except for the early starts.
In the later years, the consistency of baking and selling bread diminished, and there was often a lot of bread left over at the end of the day.
The inconsistency of sales and supermarkets creating cheap competition led to Bram’s retirement from the bakery in 1990, followed by Renus two years later.
Renus’ daughter and son-in-law, Belinda and Chris Birch, took over the bakery after them, but, for the same reasons, the Minyip Bakery was officially closed in 1998.
Some time after Mr Boone’s first wife, Helen, passed away in 1981, a friend of his placed a notice in The Weekly Times about Renus, who had recently lost his wife and was looking for a pen friend.
Nurse Phyllis Webb was one of 27 women who responded to the notice, and they started corresponding back and forth.
Phyllis travelled up every fortnight for the weekend on the train from her home in Melbourne to see Renus.
Just before Christmas Day in 1986, Phyllis suggested to Renus over the phone to get married on Christmas Day at her daughter’s house in St Albans, Melbourne.
They managed to find a celebrant for Christmas Day, and the pair got married.
They lived in the house on Main Street for a while before moving onto a property just out of town.
The property, named Oakfield, was vacant for six years before they moved in, and they transformed it into their beloved retirement farmstead, renovating the house and planting a garden.
The enchanting garden at Oakfield is embellished with details from their lives, with a garden path made from the bricks from John and Ann Waller’s cellar in Minyip, and a mosaic Renus handcrafted, as well as plaques dedicated to Phyllis’ parents.
Oakfield has held many open gardens over the years as fundraisers for local institutions, attracting masses.
Renus, 97, and Phyll, 89, who are happily living at Oakfield, attribute their quality of life to still living in their own home and being cared for, with no plans to leave.
Their advice was simple: “Direction always comes; it may not come tomorrow or the next day, but it will come."