From the Netherlands to Australia
Having lived and worked in a country house, Bert and Ethne had a lot of things to pack. There was one extremely big item that needed a special 40-foot seatainer: the water barometer. It had been carefully dismantled before the removalist came to pick it up. The four glass pipes were packed in long wooden crates, and also the cistern was carefully packed in a special crate.
In December 1999 Bert and Ethne left the Netherlands. They stayed with one of Bert’s cousins in Bunbury, and rented a house. From there the first trip to Denmark was made in January 2000. Ethne had been in Denmark before. She had seen the beautiful town in 1997, and never had stopped talking about it. Bert and Ethne found their spot already the first day of their arrival in Denmark, and two months later the removalist stood at their doorstep.
Unfortunately there was no room to store the long barometer plank; so all barometer parts were kept on hold in Fremantle. Meanwhile Bert went to Denmark’s CEO to talk about the idea of making the barometer useful to the community. Pascoe Durtanovich saw the photos of the Barometer Museum and was enthusiastic about the monumental instrument from the first moment. The only problem was that Denmark didn’t have a public building high enough to house the 12 metres high barometer. Bert and Ethne didn't mind to wait until an opportunity would turn up. By the end of 2000 some alterations had been made on their house, and from that moment on the long plank, the pipes etc. could be stored. In 2001 the removalist came down with the extraordinary load. The trailer was so big, that it could not reach the house. A truck was needed to let the plank travel its last 850 metres.
The ceiling of the garage was left open to give the plank and the long crates access to the attic above the house. When the ceiling was placed, a huge manhole was made to get the enormous plank down at a later stage. Later on, Bert discovered that one pipe had been damaged during transport. A blemish of the Dutch removalist who had ignored Bert’s exact instructions for how to pack the vulnerable gear. Even worse, the vacuum pump and a box full of vacuum hoses had become legs and were missing. Unfortunately it had become too late to claim the damage. Moreover, the Denmark Shire was not interested at that stage, so Bert took the situation reluctantly for granted, and concentrated on other things.
