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Board Members
- Chairman Roland Spuij
- Treasurer Paulus Breedveld
- Secretary Klaas Woldring
- Archivist Lia van Haren
- Online Hub Manager Paul Budde
- Member Jacoba Black
- Member Thea Bourne
Facebook Editor: Roland Spuij
Who are the Board Members?
Roland Spuij was born in Vlissingen, Zeeland in 1957. After secondary school he left Vlissingen for Leiden University where he got a kandidaats degree in Geology, followed by a doctoral degree at Utrecht University. Immediately after that he started working for Shell International as an expat Exploration Geologist. For Shell he worked and lived in several countries (England, Tanzania, Egypt, Gabon, Netherlands, Ukraine, Malaysia, New Zealand).
Later he worked for Mubadala Petroleum in Thailand and most recent for Staatsolie in Suriname. He kept close links with Dutch culture, including as chairman of the Dutch Club on Borneo, Malaysia and organiser of many Dutch nights and Sinterklaas parties.
In 2007 Roland married Carina, who has the Australian nationality and since then they call Sydney home. End 2019 Roland retired from full time employment and intends to use a chunk of his spare time to help the DACC. Roland has three children and two grandchildren.
Klaas Woldring was born in Groningen. After high school and compulsory military service he worked in hotels and later completed the Hotel School in The Hague. Then migrated to South Africa with wife Aafke (1959). Woldrings rejected the Apartheid ideology and moved to Zambia, later re-migrated to Australia.
He worked four years in the Chevron Hilton Hotel, Sydney, but also continued to study part time until he completed a PhD. at UNSW on the Politics of Southern Africa. Klaas worked as a full-time tutor in Political Science at the UNSW and later was appointed at the NRCAE in Lismore, later Southern Cross University, where he was 22 years, until retirement as Associate Professor.
Back in Sydney in 1999 he joined the DACC, first in Chester Hill and later in Smithfield, was President for some years and later Secretary. He has written 8 books: about Politics in Zambia, Business Ethics in Australia, and six about the need for governance changes in Australia.
Klaas is familiar with the many contributions of the Dutch to map the Australian continent in the 17th century and the outstanding contributions by Dutch migrants in the 19th and 20th century. He is married to Aafke (officially since 1959). Aafke has a long and fruitful experience as a Karitane and Early Infant Sister, in Sydney and Lismore. The couple have four children and nine grandchildren.
Paul Budde was born in 1950 in Vught but lived in Oss before moving with his family in 1983 to Australia. Paul started his own business in 1978. Paul Budde Consulting focuses on the telecommunications market and its role within the digital economy. Some of the highlights of his career include being the strategic adviser to the Australian Government for the original NBN based on a full fibre optic network; the co-founder of the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development and an adviser to President’s Obama Broadband Team at the White House. Together with the Dutch and Australian Governments, he co-organised trade missions between the Netherlands and Australia on broadband and smart cities.
Paul became first involved in the DACC in 1984, but when he moved to the Hunter Valley in 1990 this came to an end. He rejoined in 2017. Paul’s hobby is history. He was the local historian in Oss, where he wrote numerous articles in the local press and published several books. In Australia he was the founder and for 25 years the chairman of the Convict Trail Project. For this he received the NSW Government Heritage Volunteers Award. He also publishes an extensive website on on a range of Dutch and Australian histories. He moved to Brisbane in 2019 where he is involved with research on Camp Columbia, the HQ of the Dutch East Indies Government in Exile during WWII. In Brisbane he became one of the founding members of Dutchlink Brisbane.