Calwell's Beautiful Balts

Calwell's Beautiful Balts DISPL ACED PER SONS at Bonegilla

Between 1947 and 1953, Australia selected and took in more than 170 000 of post-war Europe’s Displaced Persons. Most were drawn from Germany. They included many who did not wish to stay in or return to places that had come under communist control. In the main, they were dispossessed or homeless Poles, Yugoslavs, Latvians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Czechoslovaks, Estonians, Russians, Germans and Romanians. Because the first contingent to arrive in Australia was made up of people from the Baltic countries, all migrants were commonly known as ‘Balts’ irrespective of their nationality. They were sometimes called ‘DPs’ or ‘reffos’ or ‘Eastern Europeans’.

Australia, unlike other countries which took in Europe’s refugees, established specially designated centres to receive the newcomers and ‘to assist their easy absorption into the community’. The Commonwealth Reception and Training Centre at Bonegilla was a large disused army camp not far from Hume Dam on the Murray River. It was about 9 km from Wodonga, over 300 km from Melbourne and 600 km from Sydney. It became Australia’s largest and longest-lived reception centre, taking in and processing more than half of all the Displaced Persons that arrived before 1953 and large numbers of assisted migrants and other refugees, principally from non-English speaking European countries, between 1951 and 1971.

Altogether about 310 000 people entered Australia via Bonegilla.

The first contingent of Displaced Persons leaving Port Melbourne for Bonegilla, 8th December 1947. NAA A12111, 47/3/5

Vasins, c.1948, ALM

Cover photos: Top - Irma Tammeray and Norbertas Simonelis from Latvia being baptised into Australianness in the Murray River. Pix, 31 January 1948 Bottom - Three members of the first contingent of Displaced Persons in ‘comfortable and roomy’ huts at the newly opened migrant reception and training centre, Bonegilla, January 1948. Lilija Zieds, 29, Tamara Upmalis, 23, and Ruta Rage, 19, were from Latvia. Pix, 31 January 1948

Calwell's Beautiful Balts

Arthur Calwell, the first Minister for Immigration, argued it was necessary for Australia to boost its population so as to undertake a vigorous post-war reconstruction program and to ensure it could defend itself. He looked first to Great Britain for prospective migrants. On a visit to Europe in 1947, he agreed to take refugees and said that he was ‘deeply impressed by the bearing, physique and industrious character of the Baltic people’.

The Government thought it was important to ‘condition’ the Australian public to accept the proposed influx of a large number of immigrants, many of whom would be non-British. Calwell insisted that special care be taken to select, then introduce, the first contingent of Displaced

Persons from Europe. Plainly first impressions were important, and the arrival in December 1947 of the first contingent of 839 young men and women from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was carefully stage-managed.

Albury’s Border Morning Mail was the media closest at hand to give Calwell’s ‘Beautiful Balts’ close scrutiny.

It reported that they were attractive, cheery, eager to work and neatly clad. The women had ‘surprisingly good complexions and figures’. In smiling they displayed ‘splendidly formed white teeth’. The men were suntanned, strong and good humoured. All were supposedly eager to work as labourers or domestics. They were ‘particularly good types’ (BMM, 9 December 1947).

The men were suntanned, strong and good humoured.

All were supposedly eager to work as labourers or domestics. They were ‘particularly good types’ BMM, 9 December 1947

Cheerful young men from the first contingent at Bonegilla.

NAA A12111, 47/3/7 Calwell's Beautiful Balts

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Swimming in the Murray River. There were 729 men and 111 women in the first contingent on disembarkation. NAA A12111, 47/3/8

Looking to Australia from the steps at Bonegilla. George Broders, 1947, ALM. The average age of members of the first contingent was about 26.

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The Australian Women’s Weekly reported that the immigrant women were all marriageable. Indeed, romance was already in the air and at least three couples had or were about to exchange vows. The other new arrivals were on the lookout for husbands.

There was, they said, no need for them to change their unpronounceable surnames, as they might not have them long. Further, the Australian Women’s Weekly noted, their job expectations were realistic. Latvian ballerina, Antonia Baranovskis, like the other young women, was interested in becoming a waitress or a typist in Canberra. Another story, three years later,

showed that the newcomers had been prepared to roll up their sleeves: an Estonian baroness was working as a hospital orderly in Melbourne (18 February 1951).

Initially men and women were housed separately.

The pool of employable young men and women that Australia sought as a priority from the International Refugee Organization was soon to be exhausted. When displaced families began to arrive from mid-1948, the arrangement of providing separate dormitory-type quarters for men and women had to change, and better provision had to be made for receiving children.

Welcoming new Australians. Australian Women’s Weekly, 3 January 1948

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Bonegilla reception and training centre

The nation was to be confident not only about the selection of appropriate migrants but also the reception and settlement arrangements the Government had put in place.

‘A delicious breakfast helped quell some of the dissatisfaction. Fried lamb floating in fat, porridge, marmalade, coffee and white bread – a feast possible only in the Ministry back in the Soviet Union… there were big golden oranges’.

A Pix magazine story on ‘Migrants learn to be Australians’ (31 January 1948) was based around a photographic essay showing the arrangements made for shelter, food, language and civics instruction, health screenings, job placements and recreation at Bonegilla. Australia was plainly providing a stepping-stone from which migrants could move forward to become exemplary citizens.

The food was always the same, but that didn’t matter to us and it was plentiful. After [the refugee camp in] Italy we really liked it.

(Gordana, Yugoslavia in the late 1940s).

(Dmytro, Ukraine, 1949).

Huge trays of baked potatoes and the tinned peaches.

Mutton for breakfast, lunch and tea.

(Irene, Poland, 1949).

(Sarma, Latvia 1949).

Food was used to ease newcomer anxieties - and even to make up for the discomforts of the spare accommodation. Staff prided themselves on being able to sit new arrivals down to a meal within, at most 65 minutes, even at the busiest of times. NAA A12111, 49/22/9 4

The migrant centre had a large canteen, a railway platform, a hospital, church huts, a cinema, recreation huts and sporting fields. It was like an isolated, selfcontained small town, which sometimes had more people than Wodonga. Hardly any modifications had been made to the former army barracks. Accommodation was basic in corrugated iron huts. Washroom and eating facilities were communal. Publicists showed cheery women working in the laundry, but the facilities looked bleak.

Many migrants from war-torn Europe were apprehensive about the on-going Army presence at the migrant centre. Camp Commandant Kershaw, the first Commandant (renamed Centre Director in late 1948), greeted them in uniform.

One director, RM Dawson, explained that the centre was organised along Army principles so as to handle large numbers of people, but ‘without the sergeant major stuff’ (BMM 10 May 1954). Not everybody was comforted.

‘There was nothing there to uplift the spirit or claim to be civilised… just lots of people put into the vastness of Australia’ (Marta Blows/ Jarymowkz, Ukraine, 1949).

NAA A12111, 49/22/17

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NAA A12111, 49/22/14

NAA A12111, 49/22/11

NAA A12111, 49/22/15

Vasins, 1947, ALM 6

Learning English - finding job and house

The surest way into a job was to learn English. ‘No English, no job’ became a mantra.

‘Perhaps the most important thing is to learn to speak the language of Australians. They are inclined to stare at persons whose speech is different. Speaking in your own language in public will make you conspicuous, and make Australians regard you as a stranger ... [try] to avoid using your hands when speaking because if you do this you will be conspicuous’.

Sketch by Gunnar Neeme (Estonia, 1949, with permission of Lois Carrington).

Department of Information, Australia: Your New Homeland.

Teachers focused on survival English in the five or six weeks they had with their adult students. They used role plays and repetitive rhymes to try to improve oral and aural proficiency, demonstrating common sentence patterns with real objects – ‘I put the cup behind the book’. Little work was done on vocabulary. That would come later in continuation classes, radio-broadcast classes and real life learning.

Classes around Bonegilla could be heard singing or chanting ‘One man went to mow’; ‘Home to dinner’; ‘Three blind mice’; ‘We’re here because we’re here’; ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes’; ‘Pack up your troubles’. At concerts they would sing ‘Holy Night’, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ or ‘Long way to Tipperary’ to show their skills in acquiring English.

Skuja, 1951, ALM

It must have been so frightening for my parents to come without knowing the language, Bonegilla visitors’ comment book.

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Migrants struggled with learning the language, finding work and getting a place to live. They had signed contracts that they would work as directed for two years. Employment officers assessed suitability and dispatched workers to jobs where they were needed in remote areas, industrial centres or capital city factories.

Migrants resented the ways in which their qualifications or former work experience were ignored. They had to start at the bottom, frequently in labouring jobs or as domestics. They received award wages. Unions were protective of the interests of existing members and did not want the newcomers to undermine wages or conditions.

Housing was in short supply. Only British migrants were eligible to apply for Housing Commission homes.

Banks were cautious in advancing house loans. Often migrants had to live in temporary shelters while they built their own dwellings.

Migrants resented the ways in which their qualifications or former work experience were ignored. They had to start at the bottom, frequently in labouring jobs or as domestics.

Interview with an employment officer and an interpreter. NAA A12111, 55/22/83

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En route from Bonegilla to work as domestics and aides in Melbourne hospitals, 1948. Girls over 16 years could expect to be separated from their families to take up allocated jobs in a cannery or clothing factory or as a mother’s aide. From the Sun ‘Bonegilla Photographs’ exhibition, 1987.

Rudolf Svehla (Czechoslovakia) building his family home in Lavington.

BMM, 26 May 1951

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Others, apart from publicists, had opportunity to view the first and other contingents of the Displaced Persons as they arrived.

‘What we saw at Bonegilla was a dispirited group, many of them suffering from the after-effects of malnutrition, gaunt faces, bare ribs and haunted eyes. Most of them had lost all they had ever owned, and the rest of their family as well. They had been fitted out in very correct grey suits and the inevitable Australian street hats for the men and floral dresses for the women. They each had a cheap cardboard suitcase, as well as a bag of toilet articles that had been supplied by the Red Cross on their arrival in Melbourne’ (Alan Hodge, teacher 1947-48).

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Boys perform on stage with both Union Jacks and Australian flags, as befitted new British-Australians. Kolek, 1950, ALM

Learning cricket at Bonegilla. NAA A12111, 1/1955/22/122

The Bonegilla Light Orchestra performing in Canberra, January 1951.

Vyhnal, 1951, ALM

Calwell’s Beautiful Balts, Summer 1947-48.

Herald (Melbourne), 14 December 1947

Rehearsing for a concert to raise funds for the RSL as a community project, 1949.

From the Sun ‘Bonegilla Photographs’ exhibition, 1987.

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Engaging with the community

The Government followed a policy of assimilation. The migrants were to renounce their cultural identities and blend into Australian communities: they were to merge, disappear from view and be absorbed. At Bonegilla teachers gave them lessons on coinage, imperial measures, and the geography and history of Australia.

In welcoming newcomers the Centre Director invariably advised them to speak only English and to forget past national differences. They should not, they were told, live in separate communities once they left Bonegilla.

Apart from the lessons and exhortations, the newcomers were expected to become aware of and accustomed to the Australian way of life in other ways. Sun, sport and schools for the young played important parts in the absorption of new ways.

At Bonegilla the policy of assimilation was interpreted as helping the migrants ‘to take their place in the community’. They were encouraged to engage with the local community. At concerts on festive occasions, they were asked to parade colourful aspects of their European heritage. Some wore national costumes, displayed their handicrafts, played musical instruments or performed dances and sang. Others joined in local basketball, table tennis, football, chess or bridge competitions. Still others actively supported local community activities, fighting bushfires or raising money for the local charities.

The onus was on the migrant to adjust to the community.

The host society was reluctant to change. So for example, Mrs Guinn, wife of the third Director, explained facetiously that although her Italian son-in-law still cooked spaghetti, he had learned to avoid garlic. More seriously she went on to express unease about the ways in which women from some nationalities at Bonegilla seemed to adopt subservient roles. They chopped the wood, cleaned the men’s shoes and walked behind their husbands. (BMM, 11 July 1957).

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Australians were expected to be hospitable. The Catholic Archbishops and Bishops of Australia issued a pastoral letter advising congregations they had a solemn duty ‘in placing and absorbing immigrants into our community, and in making them feel at home amongst us’. The Catholic and Lutheran churches appointed chaplains at Bonegilla. The YWCA organised welcomes. The CWA held handicraft exhibitions, concerts and International Days. Apex arranged for Santa Claus to visit Bonegilla.

Migrants, however, complained that beyond formal welcome occasions, the local community was indifferent.

Celebrations of internationalism ended with ‘Good night, see you next year’. (Martin 1965. p30).

Beyond Bonegilla, in different settings, each migrant had to work out what it meant to retain connection with his or her families’ homeland(s) and at the same time develop a sense of belonging in Australia.

Australians were expected to be hospitable. The Catholic Archbishops and Bishops of Australia issued a pastoral letter advising congregations they had a solemn duty ‘in placing and absorbing immigrants into our community, and in making them feel at home amongst us’.

ALM

Negotiating coins at the canteen. Photograph album ‘Bonegilla’ compiled by RM Dawson, 1952, ALM

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The surge in numbers, 1949 to 1950

There was an increase in the flow of migrants when additional shipping became available in 1949 and 1950.

Bonegilla had difficulty in coping with up to 10 000 newcomers per month. Tents and some Nissen huts were used temporarily to house the extra numbers.

Deep-pit latrines were dug. English classes were held outdoors.

The average stay in holding centres was about four months. Teachers said their English classes in these centres were more settled. They adapted lessons to meet women’s needs. Mothers and young children learned through nursery rhymes – ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’, ‘Polly put the kettle on’, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’.

‘It seemed that ‘they were not really prepared for us’ (Dragoslava Williams, Yugoslavia, 1948).

To make more room for the new arrivals people were processed more quickly. Farming was declared an essential industry, and migrant labour became available to farmers.

‘Once employment officers would ask migrants where they preferred to work. Now they don’t seem to care. They just send the people where they have vacancies, without asking them if they have any preference’ (Masing Uno, Estonia, BMM 15 June 1950).

Convoys of buses moved dependant women and children to holding centres at Uranquinty and Cowra if there was no accommodation where the husband had work.

The separation of families into dependants and breadwinners caused distress. Richard Urbanavicius (Lithuania, 1949) rode a bicycle between Albury and Uranquinty to visit his wife and baby daughter at weekends. Other men, posted further away, tried to visit once a month. Families sent from Bonegilla to Port Kembla for work, found there was insufficient accommodation. Wives and children were sent on to Scheyville, (near Windsor) and there was no direct public transport from or to Port Kembla. There were several protests about conditions at some holding centres in small towns and some workers’ hostels near industrial workplaces during 1950. The separation of families seemed to foment discontent at Bonegilla, too.

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Children at Uranquinty Holding Centre.

Pix, 18 March 1950

BMM, 1948

New arrivals from Germany and Austria in one of the many administrative queues at Bonegilla. BMM, 22 October 1949 Calwell's Beautiful Balts

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Concerns - attitudes - perceptions

Opinions and impressions varied. Generalisations are contestable, but opinion polls indicated Australians accepted the new immigration program. The Government’s conditioning campaign worked. However, the host society expressed some concerns and worried about the health of the new arrivals. TB seemed to be a common problem, and, indeed, 50 out of the 140 beds at the Bonegilla hospital were for TB cases. The close living quarters meant that children with infectious diseases like measles had to be hospitalised. Polio was a worry.

Photo: Bruce Pennay

BMM, 9 September 1949 16

Bonegilla came to public notice when thirteen newly arrived children died from malnutrition in the winter of 1949. There was a flurry of activity to explain that all was well at Bonegilla. An inquiry found that children suffering from gastroenteritis had been on a ship-board diet of boiled water for a prolonged time.

The host society worried also about migrant criminal activity. Newspaper headlines assigned responsibility for crimes by the nationality of the perpetrator or the broader designation of ‘migrant’. When migrants from Germany and other former enemy nations were admitted, there were fears that Nazi collaborators might be coming to Australia. In the main the Displaced Persons were usually portrayed as the blameless victims of war. Newspapers insisted that newly arrived migrant women were ‘attractive’ and both men and women were ‘good types’. While some saw them as diligent and thrifty, others saw them as ‘money-hungry’ and expressed disapproval of married migrant women in paid work. In general the bulk of the population was indifferent rather than hostile. The migrants ‘were lucky to be here’.

Business people enjoyed their custom, noting their interest in shoes, radios and different foodstuffs.

Employers saw the migrants as a reliable supply of labour. Fast-growing cities like Wollongong came to depend on them not only in factories, but also for road, water and sewerage construction works. The politically minded noted they were nearly all strongly anticommunist.

For their part, the Displaced Persons themselves were impressed with the strangeness of the new land - ‘even frogs croaked differently to those in the Ukraine’ (Dmytro 1949). The hills, like the army blankets with which they were issued seemed grey and the eucalyptus trees untidy.

They often felt isolated, lonely and even unwanted.

The young men complained that they found it difficult to befriend Australian women and there were too few migrant women. Both men and women disliked being lumped together as ‘migrants’, ‘reffos’ or ‘Balts’ and having to wear responsibility for the misdemeanours of a few. They disliked being categorised as ‘language deficient unskilled labourers’. They complained about Australians being lazy and having poor standards of workmanship (Martin, 1965, Jupp 1994).

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For many Displaced Persons the fears of separation from family and uncertainties about the nature of employment meant immigration was a disappointing experience (Sluga 1988). Egon Kunz (1988) complained that the worst features of the immigration program were the forced assimilation, the insensitive administration of the contract system and the denial of the rights of the highly qualified to practise their professions. He observed that the media established a stereotype.

'In the media the DPs were to be depicted as intelligent, educated, clean-cut and appreciative, not at all the feared foreigner who threatened to lower Australian trade union, health, housing or mateship standards.

These intelligent, accommodating people were to be seen as cheerfully accepting the worst jobs, arriving in endless shiploads to man public utilities, break labour bottle-necks, and generally help the war-tired economy recover.

After a week of hard and lowly toil, they were encouraged to dress up at weekends in national costume and enrich their new homeland culture by performing dances as an expression of their gratitude for being permitted to settle in Australia.' (Kunz 1988, pp.256-257).

Gyula Harmos and Roman Pawlowski, doctors in their home countries, work as orderlies at Bonegilla.

From the Sun ‘Bonegilla Photographs’ exhibition, 1987.

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Beyond Bonegilla

As they left Bonegilla, the migrants were wished ‘good health, wealth and happiness’. Those allocated to jobs were given a railway ticket, an accommodation voucher, a packet of ten cigarettes and were trucked to the railway station. Leaving a communal hostel environment could be unsettling, especially if a people had been there for some time. Josef, a fictional character in James McQueen’s short story ‘Josef in Transit’, used camp cunning to get himself and a small group of friends allocated to jobs in Tasmania.

‘On the train Josef watched the land, still wide, bare, intimidating, slip by once again.

This time there are no food-laden tables at way stations, no speeches, no pink-cheeked matrons, no steaming urns. Now they are only fourteen, a fragment barely discernible, already partly submerged in the silences of the new land. Little by little the great tide of which they were part is disappearing, thinning into smaller and smaller streams, reaching for new and distant destinations. Soon there would be no group, no common identity at all, only single individuals, isolated, finally alone.’

(James McQueen, Uphill Runner, 1985).

From the Sun ‘Bonegilla Photographs’ exhibition, 1987.

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After the displaced persons

The success of the Displaced Persons program opened up the possibilities of mass migration. As the number of refugees decreased after 1951 Australia negotiated agreements with several countries to take in assisted migrants. Little work had been done to prepare the former Army camp to receive the Displaced Persons, but accommodation that might have been considered satisfactory for people accustomed to European refugee camps had to change if Australia was to meet the expectations of voluntary assisted migrants and the donor countries from which they came.

Calwell was the initiator and manager of a bold immigration experiment. He ‘demonstrated vision,

The renovation of Bonegilla buildings through the 1950s included basic work like lining the walls and ceilings in the former army huts. Plumbing and sewerage works got rid of the deep-pit latrines. There was better provision of child care. A new crèche and kindergarten, like the hospital, were painted and provided with linoleum.

applause got more and more deafening and exuberant individuals threw themselves at Calwell to shake his hand, several of them even kneeling to hug his knees. I have never seen a politician look so embarrassed, but then I felt embarrassed too at this untoward display of emotion, and towards a politician too!’

Bonegilla received not only assisted migrants from a variety of countries but also more contingents of refugees, among them Hungarians, White Russians, Yugoslavs and Czechoslovaks fleeing political oppression. Calwell’s ‘Beautiful Balts’ had helped pave the way for them all to reach a new land and a new life.

Photo: Bruce Pennay 20

organisational capabilities and the ability to persuade Australians that their future existence demanded a significant increase in population through natural increase and a planned and sustained immigration program’ (Mary Elizabeth Calwell in Jupp 2001).

When Calwell attended one meeting in Albury, ‘The

(Alan Hodge, teacher 1947-48).

Arthur Calwell came to Bonegilla to greet the first arrivals and to kiss the first bride. He came often to encourage newcomers and staff to visit the sick.

Source unknown

To find out more

For migration generally - S Tan, The Arrival 2006 and James Jupp, ed. The Australian People, 2001. For the Dutch generally - N Peters, The Dutch Down Under, 2007 and K Velthuis, The Dutch in NSW, 2005. For Bathurst – C Panich, Sanctuary? 1988. For Bonegilla - Glenda Sluga, Bonegilla: ‘A Place of No Hope’, 1988. For Dutch experiences of Bonegilla – D and M Eysbertse, Where Waters Meet, 1997/2007 and the ‘Where Waters Meet’ exhibition at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience. For further reading visit environment.gov.au/heritage/ places/national/bonegilla Acknowledgements

This work draws on several books and articles, principally Lois Carrington, A Real Situation, 1997; Mary Hutchinson in ‘Accommodating Strangers’ in Public History Review, 11, 2004; Ann-Mari Jordens, Alien to Citizen, 1997; James Jupp, Exile or Refuge?, 1994, and ed. The Australian People, 2001; Egon Kunz, Displaced Persons, 1988; Jean Martin, Refugee Settlers, 1965; and Glenda Sluga, Bonegilla: ‘A Place of No Hope’, 1988; Jayne Persian, Ann Tundern-Smith and Claudia Zipfel shared work in progress. Alex Lyras helped find former residents. Bonegilla Migrant Experience Steering Committee made this work possible.

Series: At Bonegilla

Dymtro’s memories are from Wilton and Bosworth, Old Worlds and New Australia, 1984. Gordana’s memories are from Lowenstein and Loh, The Immigrants, 1982. Unless otherwise cited the other memory fragments are from the Bonegilla Collection at Albury Library Museum.

Images are, as shown, principally from National Archives of Australia (NAA Series A12111), Border Morning Mail (BMM) or the Bonegilla Collection (ALM).

Greek Journeys Through Bonegilla (2011)

Heritage Victoria provided founding for this publication.

The Army at Bonegilla, 1940-71 (2007) Calwells’ Beautiful Balts – Displaced Persons at Bonegilla (2007) Never Enough Dutch – Assisted Immigrants from the Netherlands at Bonegilla (2007) Food at Bonegilla (2007, third edition 2011) Receiving Europe’s Displaced (2010) The Young at Bonegilla (2010) Rubbing Shoulders with Post-war Newcomers (2013) Related works: Albury-Wodonga’s Bonegilla, Albury Regional Museum 2001 Reading Bonegilla: A guide for secondary teachers, Albury & District Historical Society, 2008 So Much Sky, written by Bruce Pennay [for the] Migration Heritage Centre, New South Wales, 2008

The Bonegilla Collection at Albury LibraryMuseum www.bonegilla.com.au

The Bonegilla Migrant Experience www.bonegilla.org.au

Author: Bruce Pennay OAM, Charles Sturt University ISSN: 1834-6359 Published by Parklands Albury Wodonga PO Box 1040, Wodonga, Victoria, 3689 Š 2007 Reprinted by Wodonga Council, June, 2017