Biography

Ruby Welch is a retired anthropologist. She was born in the Netherlands East Indies and was five years old when the colony was invaded by the Japanese. “After the war, the Indonesians started shooting at us, and my mother and we three young children fled to Singapore. We were repatriated to the Netherlands, where I attended school and high school, served in the Royal Dutch Navy for four years during the Cold War, after which I emigrated to Australia.”