Memories-krystynasoutrageoushats.net

Renowned hat artisan Krystyna Schweizer creates her designs in a workshop nestled in an unlikely place. Surrounded by hectares of organically grown fruit, Krystyna researches, designs and sews her 'Hotchpotch Eco Wear'. Krystyna laughs when she tells me she is known in Sunraysia as the Mad Hatter. This woman's history is more colourful than Debono's hats. She is a natural storyteller and has often considered writing her stories down, but each time she starts to write she finds herself designing another hat instead.

Krystyna's mother is of German – French background, whilst her father was Swiss–Jewish. Yet Krystyna says, "to this day I do not have one hundred percent proof of my Jewish ancestry. It was a big family secret. I got curious about it was because people were mistaking me for Jewish. If I am on a tourist boat, some young Israeli people, they come and greet me, they say, 'you are one of us.'

When I say "no", they say, ' yes you are, we can tell by your face'. That roused my curiosity over the years. I often wonder why I have this feeling in me and this real rebellion and why I identify with things I hear Jewish people say."

Krystyna talks passionately about the oppressed, saying that these feelings of being Jewish also seem to support her empathy for indigenous Australians and Women's rights. It falls under the umbrella of civil rights, which is often in the forefront of her thinking, overflowing into her hat designs.

This personal melting pot which is her background, has given Krystyna a craving for racial tolerance, a knowledge of atrocities you don't get from books, and a desire to always be an advocate for human rights. Krystyna bashfully provides me with a folio of newspaper articles. There have been stories printed about her in newspapers across the country, but it is variation of content that is amazing.

There are the anticipated hat stories, but there are also many stories about Krystyna's interest in helping the oppressed in Australian society.

She has worked to raise the living standard of battered women or the unemployed, or the homeless, in whatever town she has found herself in. She has been a founding member on various committees established to launch specific services for people in need. Wherever she has lived, Krystyna has needed to make a difference.

Krystyna designs her hats, not just as fashion pieces, but also as sculptures, artistic symbols, and inevitably as reflections of society. She enjoys the observation process and she creates what she sees.

Her semi-nomadic lifestyle has seen Krystyna evolve into a philosopher of sorts and she balances it with her hat making. The two pursuits feed each other.

Krystyna says hats are much more than attire.

"People change their attitude when they put on a hat.” Krystyna says, it sets them on to a different track. They become more daring. The courage to put a hat on gives people the courage to disregard what others think of them".

Krystyna says the change in people just seems to happen. "Having grown up on a mission, I don't want to change people. I grew up in Belgian Congo. My father's aim was to convert people to Christianity. Here Krystyna feels the need to explain her own position, "I am an agnostic - to my family's shame." Krystyna pours two cups of thick black coffee and then offers some more information about her family.

"Father married my mother after the war. Mother was not Jewish but she witnessed the holocaust. Mother went to Switzerland as a seventeen year old and that is where she met my father.

They fell in love and married immediately. In those days marrying a Swiss man was very important for neutrality.

Not long after that, they decided to go to Africa. We arrived there when I was a baby. We lived in a hut. There was no electricity or water. Later on my Mother had an accident. She had to go back to Europe for an operation and Mother and Father split up."

"I feel I want to write about my Mother." Krystyna says, "My mother wrote a couple of novels and a television play. After the accident, she had free access to morphine because of the pain. Mother had an operation performed on her brain to relieve pain It was not successful, so she tried to commit suicide, jumped into the ocean and was thrown against the rocks. She was being thrashed around by these waves when a waiter from a beach side restaurant saw her. He dived into the waves to save her, finding this hairless woman, who had been bruised and battered by the rocks.

He brought her back to shore. He took her to her motel room to recover. Before long they began a love affair. They are still together today. "

When I ask Krystyna if her mother was political she says, "She wasn't a rebel – she knew, I think in a way, that things were wrong.”

Krystyna say she has always been politically aware herself, finding causes to support but in other ways she felt quite naive. "Getting married and having children was a search for steadiness in my life; attachment, boundaries. And I submitted to that for many years - while I was always an avid reader. The reading of current news, philosophies awaken other views."

Krystyna talks about the S.S. Tampa and the current debate about refugees.

"I am really shocked about what has been happening. It smells of Nazi-ism. I haven't lived through that era but I have heard a lot of stories from my mother's generation."

Krystyna does not believe that queue jumpers are as prevalent as people believe. And I think – sure - there might be a few queue jumpers but why punish the whole lot? Krystyna reflects on a time, when she as a social work student, completed a work placement for Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.

During this role, Krystyna was assigned the task of welcoming Vietnamese refugees to Darwin. "You could see the fear in their faces but with women, even if we did not understand each other's language we could communicate some how."

Krystyna, smiles at me, when I say she really should write. Well if I was to write, the big question is, whom would I want to get my message across to? I think that explains my interest with the hats. I can't write it, I have to express it visually. That reaches everyone.

Krystyna proudly says, "I am a Nomad you know". The constant travelling through out her childhood grew to become a natural need, and staying put now, in her life as a blocky's wife sometimes feels restricting.

So Krystyna takes her hats on tour to folk festivals. She has her swag and her gas cooker. She sleeps in the back of the car near her stall and she only has to please herself. Life alternates between coming back to Cardross, near Mildura to be with her husband and son on the block and loading up the car with hats, and taking to the road.

Some Christmas days are spent inside her tent or 'circus of hats’, as some customers have called it, at the largest festival in the Southern Hemisphere held annually in Woodford, Queensland.

Krystyna speaks with unbridled joy at this unusual way to spend her Christmas. "I set up my card table in the middle of the tent. I have my little gas stove. I cook eggs, which I've brought from home. My pet hens laid them. And then I will have a piece of home made Christmas cake. As I eat I look around me at the hat stands. I am surrounded by them and they remind me of tall Christmas trees – conifer shapes of colour and creation – my creations."

© 2001 Leonie Murphy, P.O. Box 54, Cardross VIC 3496, Non Fiction, Freelance Writer.