Reader\'s Digest Australia - 07.2019

July• 2019 | 99

village with 16 windmills,
and Kinderdijk with 19
windmills and recognised
as a UNESCO World Her-
itage Site. The windmills
attract millions of foreign
visitors each year.
“In 1970, there were
some 950 windmills left
in complete condition,
but only ten to 15 were in
operation,” said Dolman.
The guild of volunteer
millers was established
then to revive interest
in the craft and to coordinate the
training of volunteers to run newly
restored mills. In the past 50 years
more than 300 additional windmills
have been brought back to life.
“We now have 1256 in operation-
al condition, maintained by almost
3000 volunteers,” says Dolman. Also,
there are still 108 water mills, mostly
in the south and southeast.
Visitors are welcome in windmills
when a blue flag is raised. It is part of
what millers regard as their mission
to keep interest in windmills alive.
Many schools organise school out-
ings to a windmill. A popular desti-
nation is a paper-making windmill
in the village of Westzaan, which
is aptly called De Schoolmeester.
Westzaan was part of the region on
the Zaan River where no fewer than
600 windmills constituted Europe’s
first fully industrialised region in
the 18th century. De Schoolmeester

is now the last remaining active

wind-driven paper mill in the world.

Here wind power is not used to

pump or grind, but to hammer and

cut cotton rags down to individual

fibres. The coarse and heav y sheets

are dried in the wind in a half-open

barn before being sold.

As De Schoolmeester’s professional

miller Arie Botterman, 64, explains to

me how he started work on this mill

when he was 18 years old, a class of

ten year olds arrives for a tour of the

mill. Assembling the group around

him, Botterman goes into an enter-

taining routine.

“Do you know what paper is

made of?” he asks the group. Fin-

gers pierce the air and half-wrong

answers are volunteered in turn.

Within minutes Botterman explains

that “no, parchment is made of an-

imal skins” and “no, papyrus is not

actually paper” and “no, paper comes

Arie Botterman explains the workings of the central

shaft to a class of ten year olds