Well known and loved

Jan joined the Dutch Navy at 16 years old.

Jan Pieter Van Steensel
Born: 02.08.1926
Died: 24.06.2017

Jan Pieter Van Steensel was born on 2 August 1926 in the town called Hoogvliet in Holland.
He was born to Pieter and Johanna Willemina Van Steensel and was one of eight children, three brothers and four sisters.
As a young boy Jan went to school, and at the age of 12 he started working as a milkman, delivering milk in Hoogvliet and Poortugaal.
In his spare time, he liked to go ice-skating in the canals.
In 1942, at the age of 16, Jan joined the Royal Netherlands Navy and after the war he worked for Lloyds shipping company.
He travelled all over the world including to Australia, where he decided to settle in 1950.
The following year he became an Australian citizen.
Jan met Freda for the first time while staying at Tudor House in East Melbourne.
They went on their first date to the pictures at the Capital Theatre and thereafter Jan accompanied Freda to a social evening at the Church of Christ.
For two years they would meet at the Collingwood Church of Christ and go for walks to the MCG.
They married on 8 November 1952 at the Collingwood Church of Christ.
Jan and Freda bought their first home in Clayton the following year and lived there for 17 years. In this time, they had their four sons; Peter, David, Bruce and Stephen.
In 1965, a close-friend, Peter Bos suggested to Jan that he should open up a yard selling second-hand building supplies.
During the first couple of years, Jan would leave home early to collect a truckload of second-hand materials and drive them out to Officer to sell that day.
He would manually unload the truck (there were no forklifts those days) and spend the day removing nails from the timber.
Once the business started to get busier, Jan employed another one of his Dutch friends called Big Peter who was a flower grower from Springvale. This allowed Jan to make two trips to collect the second-hand materials each morning.
In 1970, Jan and Freda decided to move closer to the yard and so they bought their home on Lyall Road in Berwick.
In 1973, Jan’s eldest son Peter finished high school and started working at the timber yard.
This gave Jan more time to be on the road and he started attending the timber auctions.
He would visit Moorrabin auctions on Tuesdays and Fowles Auctions in Port Melbourne on Wednesdays. Around this time, he updated his truck to a Bedford which had a 30ft tray on it. He would always come home from the auctions with a full truckload, sometimes even two.
In 1980, Jan and Freda moved to their farm on Bessie Creek Road, Nar Nar Goon North. Jan had always wanted to live on a farm.
He enjoyed being outside tending to his cattle, chooks, slashing paddocks and maintaining his large vegie patch.
It was during this time that David, Bruce and Stephen had also started working at the timber yard.
The business started to phase out the second hand timber as new building regulations came in and Van Steensel Timbers started selling new building materials and hardware.
In 1990, an opportunity arose to start another timber yard in Grantville.
Bruce decided to go down to Grantville and with the help of Jan and Jan’s eldest brother Arie who was visiting from Holland, they opened shop. It was at this time that Jan decided he would step down and hand the business over to the boys.
By the 2000s, Jan was still going into Officer every day, doing a few deliveries, and then heading back to Nar Nar Goon by lunchtime to do some work around the farm.
In 2014, Jan and Freda moved into a granny flat in Berwick.
Jan would continue to drive his ute to Officer each morning to see if there were any deliveries to do. He loved doing deliveries. He would grab the yard board, flicking through to see if there were any deliveries he could do.
Jindivick and Neerim South were his favourite places to go – they were ‘his’ area.
He also enjoyed having a chat with the customers when he arrived.
Jan continued to visit the yard every day up until he was 90 years old and was very well known in his local community.