The Young at Bonegilla

The Young at Bonegilla R E C E I V I N G YO U N G I M M I G R A N T S at Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre

1947 - 1971

Bonegilla … as their parents learned the Fresh Start music: physicians nailing crates, attorneys cleaning trams, the children had one last ambiguous summer holiday.

Les Murray, ‘Immigrant Voyage’ from Ethnic Radio: poems, Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1977.

Between 1947 and 1971 about 309 000 people arrived in Australia via the Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre in North-east Victoria. Bonegilla was the largest and longest-lived post-war migration reception centre. It usually accommodated about 3 000 people, but could and did hold as many as 7 700 at one stage. Almost all were drawn from non-British European countries.

Bonegilla was a young person’s place. Very few of the adults were over 35 years-of-age. Sometimes as many as one in three of the migrants and refugees were under 16.

Migration was generally a preserve of the young.

1. How did Australia try to meet the challenges involved in the reception of children, teenagers and young adults as part of its post-war mass immigration program?

2. How do those who were young remember their arrival experiences at Bonegilla?

Front cover: 98.332 Albury LibraryMuseum (ALM)

Taking in young immigrants - policies, facilities and services In the immediate post-war years Australia wanted to increase the size of its population: a large workforce would boost economic development; more people could better defend the country. The most desirable migrants were work-ready young men and women from the United Kingdom and from Europe. They would help the nation with its immediate post-war reconstruction needs. Those yet too young for the workforce were a longer-term investment in population growth. Even though there was a post-war baby boom, the Government remained anxious to address demographic problems arising from the low birth-rate during the depression and war years. Young immigrants would overcome the decline in youthful age groups.

Prizing the young

As a priority Australia sought employable young men and women from the United Kingdom. It also entered an agreement with the International Refugee Organisation to take in non-British Displaced Persons, first selecting the young and able. It accepted displaced families from mid-1948, and the number of children arriving increased rapidly after April 1949 until the scheme ended in 1953.

Overall children comprised 25% of all the Displaced Persons Australia accepted. More were born after their parents arrived.

Herald-Sun Photographic Display, ALM.

A carefully selected group of 839 young men and women arrived at the newly opened Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre in December 1947.

They were plainly meant to illustrate to the Australian public the kind of attractive and industrious young migrants who wanted to come to Australia from the European Displaced Persons’ camps. The average age was about 23years: seven of them were less than 18 and one, Irina Vasins, was a 14 year-old girl.

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Publicists selected children to present positive images of immigration as program milestones. Left, Maira Kalnins, aged 7, Latvia 1949 was selected to be the 50 000th Displaced Person and, then, Isobel Saxelby, Great Britain aged 6, was selected to be the 100 000th post-war migrant.

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Border Morning Mail (BMM) 2 July 1949.

When Arthur Calwell visited Bonegilla in July 1949 he ‘had a word for every child he passed.’ These were ‘the little boys and girls whose courage and valour might in the future be needed with that of the children of native-born Australians to preserve this country if ever it is attacked.’

Children were prized as it was thought they would be readily adaptable.

‘When we bring alien children here they can be more readily assimilated, will learn English and will absorb the Australian point of view more quickly than adults.’ Arthur Calwell, Commonwealth Parliament Debates (CPD) May 1945.

‘Their children who are attending Australian schools will grow up Australian.’ BMM 28 May 1949.

‘Some of the adults will never learn the language, but it is the children we look to. They will make the best migrants.’ Henry Guinn, Director of Greta, 1953.1

‘Of all the migrants Australia desired, the best were children who were of an impressionable age and who could be moulded to the Australian way of life.’

Alexander Downer, Minister for Immigration, 1958.

CPD 14 August 1958 p.19.

A surge in migrant numbers from 1948 to 1951 put pressure on reception centres like Bonegilla. To make way for the increased number of new arrivals, it became imperative to move people out to workplaces as quickly as possible. Yet, family accommodation remained difficult to find. Consequently holding centres were opened to accommodate dependants when there was no workplace accommodation near a family’s breadwinner. The holding centres were usually in former air force and army camps in a wide scatter of country towns. Women and children were sent from Bonegilla to Holding Centres in places such as Uranquinty, Cowra, Scheyville and Parkes (NSW), Benalla, Somers and Rushworth (Vic).

The surge in numbers put pressure on schools. So, for example, enrolments at Wodonga primary schools doubled between 1948 and 1951. There were insufficient classrooms, and classes had to be held in church halls.

Parents were alarmed at class sizes of 70.

Young workers were needed and they could be expected to settle quickly into jobs where they would learn and follow Australian ways. Classrooms and playgrounds would help the nation absorb the children, the most malleable of the new arrivals.

Meeting the challenges of receiving young displaced persons Providing for young new arrivals

NAA A12111, 49/22/12

Initially reception facilities and services for the children did not match the welcoming rhetoric. The Army Camp at Bonegilla was equipped to accommodate fit young adult men and women. Army indentured food did not meet the needs of children. Language classes were designed for adult workers. There were no playgrounds.

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Many of the children of migrants employed at Bonegilla initially attended nearby Mitta Junction School where they joined in the full range of school activities.

‘Mr Jobling, School Inspector explained to Wodonga Mothers’ Club that there were no plans to provide separate schools for migrant children. ‘… It was desirable that migrant children should become “part of our own country” and they should mix with Australian children…. Who would want it otherwise?’

BMM 15 February 1951.

As a result of the 1949 health scare measures were taken to improve not only the hospital but also the accommodation facilities for children. Blocks were set aside for families with very young children. Newly renovated family huts were heated and equipped with a hot plate and bassinettes.

Parents had access to a refrigerator in each block. The block kitchens got additional supplies of eggs and milk. Parents with young children could use a special infants feeding room at flexible times.

In September 1949 there was a health scare. Recently arrived children died: 19 in all, 13 of them at Bonegilla.

There was a flurry of activity to explain that all was well at Bonegilla. An inquiry found that children suffering from gastro-enteritis had been on a ship-board diet of boiled water for a prolonged time. The inquiry was also critical of how the Bonegilla hospital was under-staffed and inadequately equipped.

By January 1953 immigration authorities were boasting ‘Child Migrants Have Put On Weight! Many of the migrant children attending the National Fitness School at Bonegilla were too fat to take part.’ BMM 8 January 1953.

Calwell told Parliament that, ‘The deaths are tragic reminders of the conditions of privation under which children are still forced to live in war-devastated Europe… [The deaths] should encourage Government ‘to redouble [its] efforts to bring to Australia as many as possible of these innocent victims of war’s cruel aftermath…’ CPD 7 September 1949, p.5.

Herald-Sun photographic display, ALM.

The health scare of 1949 increased awareness that more children die during war and its aftermath from starvation or illness than from violence. Displaced children from former war zones were vulnerable.

Herald-Sun photographic display, ALM.

Health official explained that Bonegilla Reception Centre took special care of children who showed signs of malnutrition.

A nourishing diet was supplied. There was a 200-bed hospital staffed with two doctors and eight Australian nurses. They were assisted by a nursing and domestic staff of over 100 migrants, including six who were practising doctors in Europe and others with nursing experience whose qualifications were not recognised in Australia.

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Receiving families Not everybody was convinced that Australia should be encouraging immigrants other than those who were work-ready. They argued that workers who came with dependants were more expensive for government to support than single workers. It was difficult to place men and women with families in employment, as the housing shortage made it difficult to get family accommodation.

Further, government had to supply education, hospital and other social services to support dependants.

Nevertheless, the Australian Government persisted with family migration. Young single workers might suit the needs of the workforce, but families seemed to be a longterm investment in population-building.

‘Family migration is best for both adults and youngsters. Adults can be helped to settle down through their children, and young migrants whose parents are with them tend to do better here than those without family ties.’ Immigration Advisory Council Report, 1960.2

Not all the accompanied children arrived or stayed in cohesive family groups. Australia accepted non-British children only if they arrived as members of a family.

Nevertheless, at least two groups of unaccompanied youths were directed to Bonegilla. The first group of unaccompanied displaced youths, aged 16 and 17, appeared at Bonegilla towards the end of 1949. They were orphaned street kids. Regarded as the ‘toughest bunch’ they became the charge of Jerzy Sikorski as mentor and liaison officer.

Sikorski had the reputation of being a stern multi-lingual disciplinarian. After a few weeks they passed to the care of Child Welfare Departments in NSW and Victoria, which were to place them principally in rural work. Another similar group of unaccompanied young refugees arrived in 1957 after the Hungarian uprising. They were sponsored by the Federal Catholic Immigration Committee, which arranged for their employment and accommodation.

Displaced men and women, with children but without partners, proved difficult to place in jobs and accommodation. Displaced men who needed child carers were sent to Holding Centres.

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Displaced women who were widows, deserted wives or unmarried mothers with children were often redeployed specifically to Benalla. Authorities worried that they would become long-term residents as their job prospects were low. At Benalla some factory work was available to them.

The absence of a mother meant that inappropriate responsibilities were often thrust on children, particularly daughters.

Mr Lalic, Yugoslavia 1948, arrived as one of several displaced men without wives but with young children.

He found a job working on the Snowy River Scheme, but was unable to provide accommodation for all of his six children. He took his two eldest boys, Steven, 14, and Merko, 10, with him to Cooma. This left his eldest daughter, Milicia, 13, to care for his other daughters Ljubica, 8, and Boja, 2 and his other son Ranki, 6 at Uranquinty. Milicia did that until she married in 1950. That left Ljubica to look after the youngest two.3

It was not uncommon for families to fall apart. Some parents found that they had to pass over job opportunities because the accommodation that accompanied the job was inadequate for their family. A few placed their older children with institutions or put them up for adoption.

Separation of dependants to holding centres placed pressure on fragile marital relationships and parents sometimes went separate ways.

Government expected the churches to assist the newly arrived. Resident chaplains from a variety of denominations, but principally from the Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian and Orthodox churches, offered pastoral care and support. Unlike other migrant donor countries, the Netherlands provided welfare officers who lived and worked at Bonegilla and provided assistance to Dutch assisted migrants. From about 1951, when assisted migrants began to arrive, qualified social workers were appointed to help individual families work through problems.

Improving conditions for young assisted migrants In December 1950 the Commonwealth Immigration Planning Council and the Immigration Advisory Council held a rare joint meeting at Bonegilla. Together they made arrangements for Australia to enter into agreements to receive more non-British migrants as the Displaced Persons scheme drew to a close. The nonBritish would be welcomed as assisted migrants, but they would still be directed to reception centres and then to workplaces.

The immigration authorities were plainly impressed with what they saw on their inspection of Bonegilla. It would continue to be Australia’s major reception centre. Assisted migrants, even more than displaced persons, tended to migrate as family units rather than as single young adults.

About half of all assisted migrants arrived as members of a family. To meet their needs and, indeed, to continue to attract them, the Department of Immigration began to give greater attention to how it provided for the reception of children.

NAA A12111, 51/20/16.

NAA A12111, 51/20/18.

Children performed a special concert for visiting immigration authorities.

Official visitors were pleased with the care provided for children at Bonegilla.

BMM 26 July 1952.

A Dutch family unpacks in a recently renovated accommodation unit in 1952. The crudely finished army huts were divided into private cubicles as part of the improvements to attract and retain assisted migrants.

Unlike the huts, the cubicles were lined, ceilinged and painted.

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Schooling At Bonegilla newly arrived assisted migrants insisted from the start on better arrangements for their children.

The Dutch, one of the first groups of assisted migrants, organised informal school classes conducted by volunteer parents.

A primary school opened at Bonegilla in 1952, but initially enrolled only the children of resident staff. In 1953 a class began to help transient children with English. A crèche was established to care for the very young when their mother was hospitalised. Pre-school kindergartens began for those over two and a half. The crèches and the kindergartens had qualified staff. They were equipped with appropriately sized children’s furniture, toilets and wash basins. The migrants themselves used money from an amenities fund, which drew on profits from the canteen and the cinema, to provide decorative murals and even a toy house. They established a hobby hut for boys and girls.

The Department of Immigration installed outdoor play equipment, including sand pits, swings and slippery dips.

Trees were planted.

NAA A12111, 56/22/58.

Dawson photograph album ALM.

NAA A12111, 49/22/24.

Dawson photograph album ALM.

Pre-schools, kindergartens and schools played important roles in helping to assimilate both the children and their parents. They provided opportunities for the children to acquire language and social skills. Teachers encouraged parents to support their children’s schooling. They invited mothers to social meetings. They visited them and encouraged them to take part in school and community activities. They issued newsletters that gave advice, for example, on the choice of children’s winter clothes.

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‘Pre-school training is essential to the migrant child to ensure that he [/she] enters school life with confidence.

Confidence that will be gained by a familiarity with the Australian way of life and language and a feeling that he [/she] is on a fairly equal footing with the Australian child, a footing which may well colour his [/her] whole future life.’ Olga Leschen, Social Worker, 1952.4

Migrants urged the employment of special teachers to give intensive language training in small groups at school.

In 1970 the Commonwealth took action and provided financial assistance to meet the costs for preparing and supporting teachers of special classes for migrant children.

This aid flowed after Bonegilla closed. Even later, from 1978 on, new emphasis was put on teaching and learning ethnic/ community languages.

Recreation

BMM 21 August 1959.

Parents accompanied children on excursions to Wodonga to see a bakery or to learn about trains.

BMM 21 August and 1 October 1959.

‘Our New Citizens –And They Come From Sweden.’ Transient children, whose parents were awaiting a work placement, had separate classes during the few weeks they were at Bonegilla. The classes focused on teaching English and ‘the Australian way of school life’.

The special classes were still large.

Four teachers taught 150 in 1959.

Recreation officers organised leisure activities for reception centre residents, paying particular attention to the young with games and competitions at the YWCA, sports days, concerts and dances. Special occasions warranted special attention at school and through the Centre as a whole.

School concerts for parents and visitors were carefully prepared. There were a variety of Christmas and Easter celebrations according to different national traditions.

Birthday (or name day) celebrations did not vary as much.

Government emphasised the role parents had to play in helping their children.

Government inquiries in 1956 worried that ‘migrant parents tend naturally to cherish much of their old life – the costumes, culture and language of their homeland. Some carry this too far. Their children also err, and too often tend to reject completely anything which is not Australian.’

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An inquiry in 1960 found that ‘most [migrant children] settle down more quickly and apparently more easily than we had expected’. Most teachers estimated it took one to two years ‘to settle down’. Nevertheless, they emphasised the importance of acquiring, English if young people were to participate in the social life of the school and the community. The report urged a national campaign to encourage parents to speak English in the home ‘for their children’s sake’.5

A survey of NSW schools in 1968-69 prompted further inquiries into the education and needs of migrant children.

Again knowledge of English was seen as the prime factor determining the ability of young people to settle easily. Up to 37 per cent of primary school pupils and 20 per cent of secondary school pupils were reported to be having language difficulties.6 7

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Recreational facilities and organised events provided healthy diversionary activities that helped the idle avoid mischief and trouble. But they were also part of the assimilation process appropriate to a ‘Reception and Training Centre’. It seemed that an effective way to achieve assimilation was to help the young mingle with others.

Through games and play they would ‘settle in’, ‘adapt’, ‘make themselves at home’. ‘feel one of the gang’. Hopefully they would eventually ‘develop a sense of belonging’. They would ‘feel attachment to Australia’.

Some celebrations involving the young at Bonegilla were directly intended to help them assimilate by addressing their national allegiances. In 1953 there were coloured lights, fireworks and a gala dance to celebrate the Coronation. For the children there was a sports day, party food, balloons, a medal and free afternoon films.

The Border Morning Mail decided that the enthusiasm for the celebrations, ‘show how ready these people are to accept British traditions and institutions’. In 1954 five buses carried Bonegilla children to Benalla for the Royal visit. On the way the children sang the National Anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’, ‘lustily’ about eight times.

The Border Morning Mail saw that occasion as a lesson for the children, a demonstration of all the freedoms of democracy’.7 At Bonegilla the young were becoming British-Australians and the framed pictures of the Queen in all pre-school and school classrooms helped them accommodate to that idea.

During the 1960s facilities and services for the young were improved further. Indeed, publicists took many photos to boast of the kind of care available in migrant accommodation centres for the young who were newly arrived. These photos might attract potential immigrants.

They might also reassure the Australian public that the nation was taking good care of the health and well-being of its youngest new arrivals.

A film, ‘A World of Children’, produced in 1961 by the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement, showed children enjoying Bonegilla as one great playground. The film reassured anybody anxious about absorbing large numbers of non-British people. This reception centre was working well. The sun and river at Bonegilla helped produce new Australian citizens.

Improving care for the very young

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NAA A12111, 54/22/27.

NAA A12111, C61/22A/29.

NAA A12111, C61/22A/39.

NAA A12111, 56/22/1.

Teenagers and young adults Through the 1960s and 1970s the annual Citizenship Conventions, which Government organised to address arrival and settlement issues, gave increasing attention to the support for teenagers and young adult migrants who may not have had a full Australian schooling. They looked for ways to help adolescents with English and with career development.

One departmental report found that many high school aged migrants seemed to resent the dislocation that came with the decision their parents had made to migrate.

Parents worried about them growing away from their families. Teachers and others found that, until they learned English, some teenagers were ‘lonely, difficult and aggressive’. In and out of school they tended to segregate themselves from others. It was difficult to meet their needs in overcrowded schools.8 Then, as now, there were problems in finding a clear age marker for the transition from childhood to young adulthood. The charges for accommodation rose progressively after a person reached 16 years. Youth wages, particularly for girls, were not high. After meeting accommodation costs, young people on benefits were frequently left with only five shillings ‘pocket money’, irrespective of age.

Authorities worried that young workers might prefer to have better paid dead-end labouring jobs than a low paid apprenticeships or traineeships. Where parents were in unskilled jobs, language deficiencies were ‘likely to perpetuate the low social economic status of families’. The young might ‘remain in unskilled jobs for the rest of their lives’. Further, many young migrants were not joining Australian youth organisations at the same rate as their native-born peers.9 Children under 16 were admitted as non-worker dependants and did not have to fulfil a two-year work contract. Over 16 they might be permitted to continue at school if their parents were able to provide for them, otherwise they were directed to jobs. All males were placed as labourers and women as domestics irrespective of age, education, qualifications or experience. The jobs could be distant from the places where parents were sent. Young adults seem to have been considered not an integral part of a family.

In times of economic recession jobs were hard to find.

Young men grew impatient with delays. They became bored and uneasy with their prolonged stays in Bonegilla. Many 9

NAA A12111, 56/22/54.

Ava and Ingrid Scheibenreif, twins aged 16, Germany 1956, attended an interview for employment in the presence of their father the day after they arrived at Bonegilla. took part in loud and effective protest demonstrations in 1952 and 1961. Emergency employment was found for most present at the times of the protests Special efforts were made to provide additional recreation activities to help maintain the morale of those forced to stay longer at Bonegilla. Boxing tournaments and additional volleyball and basketball competitions were organised.

The Commonwealth Employment Service provided special youth counselling. The PMG and State Railway Departments offered jobs that entailed training and provided accommodation. The YWCA and the Salvation Army provided accommodation for young people allocated work in the cities. Migrant school leavers could access the English language tuition opportunities open to all adults.

Government provided language classes in workplaces, at night and via the media. Ethnic groups provided opportunities for the young to mix with others and make friends in church and sporting communities. Such measures helped ensure that those too old to enjoy a full secondary schooling in Australia could find friends and meaningful employment. Many did not.

Younger migrant children did better. An analysis of the Census of 1981 showed that first-generation immigrants with primary or secondary schooling in Australia did as well with respect to occupational achievement as other children. They succeeded in gaining access to postsecondary education at a higher rate than the rest of the Australian-born population. With little or no schooling in Australia, non-English speaking migrants, other than those from Northern European countries, were more heavily represented in unskilled or semi-skilled manual work.10 Many talented people remained misemployed.

Schooling in Australia did alter life chances.

Receiving young post-war immigrants

Endnotes – Taking in Young Immigrants

_____________________________________ Australia plainly prized young immigrants and encouraged migration in family units. Initially reception facilities and services for the children did not match the welcoming rhetoric. Prompted by the bad publicity associated with the 1949 health scare, immigration authorities made changes.

It was not until about two years after the first contingents arrived that conditions for the young improved. Even then, concern was increasingly raised about the well-being of older children, teenagers and young adults. At and beyond the reception centres, young newcomers needed assistance to learn English, to join in community life and to find work in which they might realise their potential. Measures taken to meet the needs of the young had mixed success.

Meanwhile, the needs of the host society seemed to be being met. The workforce was expanding with young workers. The migrant young were reported to be doing well at school. There were few reported incidents of social tensions related to absorbing the young. The migrant departure rate was low especially through the 1950s.

There were encouraging rates of inter-marriage and naturalisation. Those who had little Australian schooling had employment and other problems. But overall, it seemed to the authorities that, the migrant young proved adaptable and readily assimilated, just as politicians had predicted.

How do the young remember their reception?

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1

C Keating, The History of the Army Camp and Migrant Camp at Greta, NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, Sydney, 1997, p.66.

Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council (IAC), First Report on the Progress and Assimilation of Migrant Children in Australia, Citizenship Convention, February 1960.

2

S Morris, Uranquinty Remembers, Uranquinty Progress Association, 2001, p.80 and NAA A437/1, 1949/6/385.

3

M-A Jordens, Aliens to Citizens, Allen & Unwin, 1997, p.70.

4

IAC Report, Progress and Assimilation of Migrant Children, 1960.

5

IAC Report Migrant Youth in the Australian Community, 1971.

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BMM 4 June 1953 and 6 March 1954.

8

IAC Report, ‘Migrant Youth Participation in Community Life’, 1965.

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NAA A445, 179/9/5; SP446/1, 100.5/1PART1.

10

M Wooden et al, Australia immigration: a survey of the issues, AGPS, Canberra, 1994, p.168; Jock Collins, Migrant Hands in a Distant Land, Pluto Press, Leichhardt, 1991, 2nd ed. p.12.

The young remember Bonegilla

In 2007 the Block 19 remnant of the former Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre was placed on the National Heritage List. As a result, efforts are being made to conserve the site. The National Heritage Listing indicates the importance not only of the buildings, but also of the oral and written records associated with the site.

‘Bonegilla hold powerful connection for many people in Australia…. [It] forms an important part of Australia’s recent collective memory and has become a symbol of post-World War II migration. It represents the role of Australia as the ‘host’ nation….

Bonegilla and its associated oral and written records yield insights into post-war migration and refugee experiences.’ Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 7 December 2007.

Unlike the other places that so far appear on the National Heritage List, Bonegilla draws on living memory. Visitors have left a large number of photographs and memory pieces at Albury LibraryMuseum. Many date from a reunion in 1987, others from exhibitions and festivals in 1991, 1997, 1999, 2006 and 2007. Some come from From the Steps of Bonegilla travelling exhibition. Most are pithy manuscript entries in a comments book. Several are two or three pages long. A few are longer published works.

Such memory pieces are prized as eyewitness accounts that carry the authenticity of the direct witness. They are the raw materials that help humanise histories of immigration. They make it possible to tap or reflect on the feelings and thinking of the newly arrived. Together they point to recurrent group preoccupations. They indicate perceptions of the character of the centre - its natural and cultural settings. They explain facilities and reception processes from the point of view of migrants.

Nonja Peters has written about migrant experience in Western Australia, both at specific migrant accommodation centres and more broadly throughout that state. She lets the immigrants ‘speak for themselves’ but is aware that

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‘We know that the perceptions and memories of those interviewed have been influenced by the passage of time, by the age of the storyteller, by the process of telling and retelling the story, and by the retrospective understanding of the situation.’1 The way memories are solicited and recorded affects what people recall.

For those who were young on arrival, migration is remembered as a family experience, recalled through the prism of parental anecdotes and photos, as well as through direct observation. They recall different arrival experiences, but there is much that is common about their memory pieces: • Children are skilled eavesdroppers and voyeurs, sensitive to nuances of language and gesture. At Bonegilla they paid close attention to their parents’ anxieties. They were aware of shifts in their family’s fortunes even if they were not always sure how those shifts might impact on their own life choices. Many, perhaps most, tend to see Bonegilla as a place their parents endured. The young themselves do not seem to have been impressed with the harshness of the buildings and surrounds, but understand their parents’ unease.

• Children know the world more sensuously than adults: they have eyes for the immediate detail. They recall new sensory experiences in what were strange surrounds at Bonegilla.

• Many young people remember migration as a great adventure and Bonegilla as a holiday camp where new friendships were easily made. They generally recall unorganised play more readily than organised recreation.

• The young who were long-resident at Bonegilla have kinder memories than those that were transient.

• Bonegilla was a personal transition place, somewhere between the old and the new. It stimulates reflection on how the newly arrived began re-creating themselves.

It reminds them of the challenges involved in learning English. It evokes memories of former selves and remembrance of a variety of feelings, such as optimism, wariness and uncertainty.

In search of family Family fortunes depended, as always, on health, jobs and housing. Many children remember Mother crying. Some remember the stresses of separation when Father was required to work elsewhere or they had to go with Mother to a holding centre. Some recall Father’s occupation prior to migration, and the indignity of his first labouring jobs, that might have involved his working in the wood yard or cleaning the toilets at the reception centre. Anger about the non-recognition of overseas qualifications has remained long after Bonegilla.

‘I remember Mother being heart broken.’ Iliana, Italy 1958.

‘My Mum did not enjoy it.’ Ole, Denmark 1960.

‘It was a difficult time for my mother.’ Anita, Norway 1970.

‘Children take things in their stride, but I can remember my mother and the other women bursting into tears when we first arrived at the huts that comprised Bonegilla.’ Rudy van Acker, The Netherlands 1952.2 ‘It was hot. A family of 7. Dad went to Melbourne to look for a job, so we had to stay behind for six weeks.

It was a lonely time of my mother with the children.’

Nellie d K 1953.

Michal and Vera B, Ukraine 1949, remember the bus taking the men away to work. ‘The women cried as they did not know where the men were going’.

‘He was a maintenance man [with the Water Supply Department] and very good at it, but he never got his tradesman’s ticket because his English wasn’t good enough. He used to get very angry and he’d come home and say, “Look I can fix those things better than qualified tradesmen, but they won’t give me the ticket even though they know I can do the work”. I think his pride was very badly hurt.’ Eleonora Ventura aged 8, Italy 1954.

Pino Bosi, Italy 1951, recalls becoming troubled when his father was allocated work as a labourer, even though he had been an engineering contractor employing hundreds on road, public building and chairlift projects in Italy.3

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Not all families found they could cope with the stresses migration put on intimate relations. Some marriages fell apart. Some children distanced themselves from their parents. Some were made distant.

‘Tensions existed between [my father, Romulus] and my mother [Christina], dating back to Germany, and deepened by her romances with other men on board ship and now also in the camp at Bonegilla. More than once my father was told, “Control your wife, she is stealing our husbands”. When a woman from Bonegilla visited her husband [at the work camp on the Loddon River] she told my father that I was neglected and running wild.’ Raimond Gaita, Germany 1950.4 The family of Stephen Klepiak aged 9, Poland/ Germany 1958, came from war-torn Germany not as displaced persons, but as assisted migrants. Stefan recalls becoming street-wise in Mannheim, collecting bits and pieces from war-ruined buildings and stealing to get food. In a memoir, he tells of the testy relationship he had with his Polish father and German mother. Virtually unsupervised at Bonegilla, he had an exciting time. He rarely attended school. Instead he did shopping errands in Albury and Wodonga for the young men he befriended at the Centre. He scrounged coins and cigarettes. He stole food and anything of value, as the opportunity presented itself.

John Z aged 7, Czechoslovakia 1949, remember his father lost his social service benefits because he refused to go to Cooma. His father did not want to be separated from his family again, as he had been when he was sent to a Nazi work camp. When the next job offer did not provide sufficient family accommodation, he negotiated a foster agreement in Latin with the local priest for John to go to an Albury couple. They used Latin to make the arrangements.

Holiday camp At the time and in retrospect Bonegilla seemed to be part of what was a great adventure. Many recall the joy of imaginative play and discovery in a strange new place.

had a carefree existence. The Murray River and the open paddocks around it provided opportunity for newcomers to familiarise themselves with their new country. This was Australia.

‘It was an adventure.’ Orfeo aged 19, Italy 1952; Panayiotis, T, Greece 1953; Renst S Germany 1953; Sergio aged 18, Trieste 1954; Helga aged 10, Germany 1956; Hank vd M aged 11, The Netherlands 1958; and Klaus G, Germany 1961.

The young seem to have spent a lot of time swimming, boating, walking, picnicking and mucking around about Lake Hume. Family photographs continue to associate Bonegilla with wet cossies and bare feet.

‘I arrived with a bunch of young fellows, all adventurous, and I think we all coped very well and had a ball.’ Ernst Sudnik, Germany 1953.

‘Bonegilla for kids was marvellous because you had more freedom than you had at home.’ Willie Barber, 1954.

‘It was part of a big adventure before settling into a stable home again,’ Monika aged 6, Germany 1961.

‘I always enjoyed the evenings when all the families and their children would get together, and go for walks etc.’ Jose aged 13, Spain 1961.

For many children Bonegilla was a break from the usual – a holiday. Transients did not have to go to school and

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Children recall fears of sunburn, swooping magpies, nasty spiders, possums, bull ants and snakes. Bonegilla was a place to learn about tadpoles, lizards, dragon flies - and catapults. Some remembered magpies carolling and crows cawing. One remembered being startled by the appearance of red bottle brush. Nearly everyone remembers climbing trees.

Many were impressed with the fierceness of the seasons at Bonegilla.

‘I remember playing with multi-coloured Christmas beetles while trying to avoid giant bull ants busily building their nest mounds in the dry powdery earth.’

Eddie K aged 5, Poland 1952.

‘My sister and I were very cold and developed lung infections. The hut was unheatable. We were transferred to the hospital but my little sister died.’

Flora F-M, The Netherlands 1951.

Of a morning the hot sun would noisily heat up the corrugated iron huts. Each hut became ‘a tin playedagram’ with its ‘crackcrackcrackcrackcrack’. PiO aged 4, Greece 1954.5

‘They displayed a dead brown snake at school which fascinated me as did the frill neck lizards.’ Herman H aged 6, Germany 1960.

‘Just the sound of black crows each morning waking us very early and lots of stray cats from which we caught ringworm.’ Phyllis K-W aged 7, South Africa 1958.

‘We were suddenly attacked by ferocious black and white birds that came flying low and straight at our heads.’ Elisabeth B, aged 6 1952.

‘A man had brought a tin of jam and put it on the ledge above his bed. By standing on the bed I could see a possum sitting on the ledge digging his paws into the jam and lick, lick, lick.’ Valentia Gillard, Ukraine 1951.

‘Oh, I loved it. I saw a calf being born in a paddock. I named every field and looked at every tree. Hearing kookaburra and magpies in the morning was Australia to me – it still is. We saw snakes and went fishing in the lake. It was wonderful.’ Doina (Himan) Eitler aged 10, Rumania 1949. BMM 27 June 1979.

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‘At Bonegilla there were lots of rabbits and because the food was so bad, the young men used to go and snare rabbits and my mother would buy butter, and they’d fry the rabbits in onions.’ Eleonora Ventura aged 8, Italy 1954.

‘As a child of ten years, it was just too strange to understand.’ Hildegard A, Germany 1957.

Few of the young seem to have been upset by the rudimentary accommodation facilities at the Centre – the eating halls, toilets and ablution blocks. They do remember the strangeness of having to respond to dinner bells and queuing for meals. The deep-pit latrines left a vivid and unpleasant memory. One remembers being afraid of falling into the deep hole (Anon 1956). The shower blocks were ‘airy’. One recalled being embarrassed at the thought of being seen by others when showering (Ines R aged 11, Italy 1951).

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The young remember the food as being plentiful.

Unlike the adults, few remember it as stodgy or complain about the frequency with which mutton was served.

The young remember food indulgences: milk arrowroot biscuits and loads of bread, butter and jam. They remember their first encounters with a whole pineapple, large peaches and the gritty pleasures of eating Milo dry from the tin.

‘I had to translate for my mother, and the whole family hierarchy was upended because I was virtually in control of what as going on….. Now she and Dad were dependent on us. That was very difficult.’ Eleonara Ventura aged 8, Italy 1954.

I remember – ‘Vanilla ice cream in a tiny wee little cones.’ Valentina Gillard, Ukraine 1951.

‘Rectangular ice cream which we called “isis crim”.’

Mauro d N, Italy 1961.

‘A truck came selling watermelons. I never had watermelon before.’ Anne H 1952.

‘Eating sheep for the first time’. Heidilona BierbaumerAlbiers. The Netherlands 1957.

‘Often, a loss of understanding develops between migrant parents and their children, who normally become fluent in English within a short time and deficient in their knowledge of their parents’ native language. A “double generation gap” is created because migrant parents and their children lose a common language in which to communicate freely. It leads the parents to become confused and resentful, and the children to feel ashamed of their parents’ imperfect English and differing outlooks and habits.’ Arvi Parbo, Estonia 1949.7

‘The food was good, but I didn’t like the junket and jelly.’ Anon, 1967.

‘I thought the fruit salad was chopped up vegetables’.

Anon.

‘In the cafeteria I first encountered a toaster, and regularly sneaked back for more toast’. Bernhard Mittelstedt, aged 5, Germany 1954.6

Children had to learn about the social setting of Bonegilla as well as its natural surrounds, smells and tastes. Living in close proximity to strangers and sharing communal facilities was a challenge. Children were hushed and told not to make too much noise.

There was the danger of getting lost. ‘The huts all looked the same.’ Inara K, aged 10.

‘I never felt lonely.’ Jose 13, Spain 1961.

‘Bonegilla was a great equalizer.’ Helena, The Netherlands 1962.

‘There were many “aunties” to watch out for me.’ Anna Piotrowski, Belgium 1950.

Living between languages The young seemed to make the switch to English more easily than their parents did.

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NAA A12111, 57/4/2.

In 1956 Mrs Anna Stahls aged 86, Latvia, was reunited with her daughter and grand-daughter under an Operation Reunion scheme permitted by the Soviet Government. Migrants had to sponsor relatives wanting to join them in Australia and provide accommodation in places other than reception centres. The Lutheran World Service provided loans to help pay fares, when it could.

Children had to bridge worlds between old world and new world languages. Elderly relatives were unlikely to learn English.

Laime Zole, Latvia 1950, remembers going to the cinema at Bonegilla with her gran and whispering the story line to her in Latvian through the show. She and gran preferred musicals and would sing the songs as they walked home after the show. Her step-father insisted that Laime become literate in her own language.

‘We always speak English at home, but I still speak Ukrainian to my father although I am not good at it any more.’ Zeno Katschmarsky, Border Mail 13 Sept 1997.

Jules Visser was called on to translate the Director’s speech of welcome. The Director always urged newcomers to learn English as quickly as possible and to use it often. Visser would translate this advice but added, in the language the Director could not follow, that they should also not forget to teach their children their native language. Otherwise the young would lose contact with their homeland and their kin.

The young found ways to communicate with others from different nations. Sometimes it was via German, the language most likely to be held in common when migrants came from Eastern Europe. There were other ways, too.

‘In [my] class [at Bonegilla] there were students from over ten different nations and no-one could speak English, let alone Australian. Of course, the kids all learned a bit of each other’s languages – all the swear words first.’ Stefan Klepiak aged 9, Poland/Germany 1948.

During the 1950s and 1960s there was no special provision in schools to help newcomers to acquire English. They were expected to pick it up ‘sitting next to Nelly’.

‘We learned English under the buddy system. One Aussie and one New Australian had time together away from the classroom.’ Tom G Germany 1954.

‘Our simple method was to sing to them in English, and they were very quick to pick up the language.’

Jack Dunn, headmaster Bonegilla School, 1952-59, BMM 7 December 1987.

‘We did a lot of sign language to communicate and our lessons were mostly drama, music, games, dance and handwriting.’ John Brissett aged 19, teacher at Bonegilla 1968.

From Greta came the story of a proud headmaster telling how a Latvian girl had impressed visitors singing nursery songs. When she was asked to sing some from Latvia, she said ‘I have forgotten them all’.8

Language differences carried very personal dimensions.

‘The first [three] months were absolutely horrible.

The feeling of being trapped in your own body, not being able to express anything, or not being able to let anyone know what you needed or how you felt or understand anything.’ Eleonara Ventura aged 8, Italy 1954.

Border Morning Mail 21 August 1959.

Playing a singing game at Bonegilla. School presented language challenges. Non-English speaking primary and secondary school aged children report initial bewilderment and confusion for the first three months and difficulties through the first years.

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Those who came as secondary school students retained an accent, principally because phonation gets fixed at about 13 years of age.

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‘The teacher anglicised my name to, heaven forbid, “Shirley”. ‘Menna S Finalnd aged 10, 1958 ‘It got confusing being Christoula and Christine at the same time’, aged 6, Greece 1954. ‘[Beyond Bonegilla] I became Margaret and he was Jack. Jack, Jim or John, those were the three names they gave Yugoslav men usually. Women could become Margaret or Maria. If you said, “My name is Branko,” nobody would call you that. They just said, ‘You are Jack.’ You could be Small Jack, Big Jack, or Black Jack [or] different Jims or Johns.’ Gordana9

Growing up at Bonegilla After two weeks at Bonegilla Janina Rozanski, Poland 1949, was sent to Cowra where she had a baby girl.

She wanted to call her new-born daughter ‘Helen’.

When she registered the birth, the official could not understand her and called the baby by her name, ‘Janina’ instead.

NAA A12111, 55/22/80.

Many children remember being hospitalised, usually to contain the spread of infectious diseases like measles, chicken pox, whooping cough or scarlet fever.

Parents remember their hospitalisation, too.

Sometimes misunderstandings stretched beyond language to cultural practices.

‘Harriet was in Bonegilla hospital for many months. I was only allowed to visit her once a week on Sundays for 30 minutes. I used to crawl on my tummy through the grass to catch sight of her; she was out on the veranda, you see. It was just inhuman to do that to a mother and there were quite a few of us.’ Inga Krain, Germany 1950.

‘We lost our little girl after four months here. She got measles and died of meningitis. She got buried the same day in Albury. No church service. Very depressing for us, because they did not ask us anything. They just arranged it the way they liked. I am very sorry. I would have liked her to have had the blessing of the Church.’

Anon (via Jan Toner) The Netherlands 1956.

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Migrants were recruited to work at the Reception Centre.

Many migrant staff lived with their families at Bonegilla for years. Staff families were housed in separate more comfortable staff blocks supplied with a richer diversity of food rations. The children of staff attended the Centre pre-school or primary school. They mixed together while their parents attended social functions at the Hume Public Service Club. They went on staff club family picnics.

They were more likely than the transient young to have opportunity to enjoy a wide range of recreational facilities and activities.

Native-born children of policemen, chaplains, administrative officers and others employed at the Reception Centre add colours and shapes to the kaleidoscope of memory fragments that are very similar to those provided by the migrant youth they mingled with. However, memories of the long-resident children, like those of the long-resident adults, are deep and often affectionate. Their parents had found secure and well paid work at the Reception Centre. They and their families lived in a safe, secure, predictable and familiar community. The long-resident have generally become Bonegilla champions and remember the achievements of the Centre with pride.

For the long-resident children, Bonegilla has the nostalgia of being the place where they grew up.

‘Every weekend [the resident staff/ migrant and nonmigrant] gathered at the [Hume Public Service] Club, the kids all played outside and the parents all mixed together inside. The kids drank a lot of Coca Cola’.

Carolyn (Guinn) Stedman, daughter of Henry Guinn, Director of the Reception Centre, 1954-65.

Alf Besford, a Police Constable at Bonegilla, 1959-64, organised learn-to-swim and lifesaving classes. He started a scout troop composed mostly of the children of resident staff and nearby farmers. Bonegilla scouts enjoyed the camaraderie and challenges of survival camping in the nearby district.

‘…scouts kept them busy and out of trouble for some time. Going camping and learning a lot of new things, as scouts do, was very good for the kids’. Stefan Klepiak, aged 9, Poland/Germany 1948.

NAA 12111, 54/22/28.

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Margaret Walker, teacher, c.1957, recalls morning sessions at the pre-school with the children of Reception Centre staff and afternoon sessions with the transient children who would play happily together even though they were each speaking a different language.

The talented Astra Ramans and Gerda Schymitzek founded a Eurhythmic Exercise Group. Realising they had quite a few very able youngsters in the group they organised a pantomime, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. They followed that with other productions including ‘Scheherazade’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’.

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A Creative Leisure Centre opened from 3.30 to 9.30pm. It had a large library and a small theatre/hall for basketball and indoor games. Children 6-16 years could model with clay, sew, work with wood, cook or, later, watch television.

Bonegilla teams were frequently successful in district competitions. ‘We had the best basketball team.’ Elles E, Greece 1959.

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The young and not so young, the long resident and the transients played football. Being good at sport helped win friends and esteem. It bolstered Bonegilla community feeling.

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A tennis court was available to resident children. They remember being coached by parents, locals and even by visiting tennis stars. For many, tennis was a new glamorous sport: ‘[Before Bonegilla we thought] tennis was the sport of the rich and famous’. Gerda Schymitzek, Germany 1955.

Coming of age at Bonegilla Getting work Bonegilla was primarily a labour exchange. It received new arrivals and accommodated them before they took up work placements that were organised for them. Most young men and women spent only four or five weeks at the Centre. Their principal concern was with the kind of job they would be allocated.

PiO aged 4, Greece 1950s, was too young to remember Bonegilla, but as a playwright and poet he has reflected critically on the way migrants were seen as ‘industrial cannon-fodder’ or ‘wogs for cogs’. All the men were labourers and all the women domestics. PiO uses typography creatively in his poetry.

When the interview with the Employment Officer began – he very politely asked me what it was I would like to do?, and I said “If I told you that would it make any difference?”, and he said [frankly speaking] “No” but it just sounds good when I ask you that….10 After leaving Bonegilla George Kotsiros aged 19, Greece 1955, wanted a job with the State Rivers Water Supply Commission. ‘He said “What sort of job do you want?” I said, “Anything. Pick and shovel, jackhammer or anything at all”. I went to the work site and they gave me a jackhammer.’

and two, because he knew from my face that I was from Southern Italy…. [The Bonegilla revolt] happened over forty years ago but in my memory, and I’m certain in the memories of those who were there, those three months in a military camp, far from our country and our dear ones, were the worst three months of my life.’12

Making friends At Bonegilla, the young found companionship readily with people of the same age. Without transport and with little money they found ways of entertaining themselves. Teens caught up with other teens at the Y, the cinema and at the canteen. A café across the road offered escape to a world of milk shakes, coca cola and a juke box. Walks and picnics also offered escape from the gaze of adults even more cheaply.

Those who worked at the Reception Centre, both the migrants and the native-born, remember making friends readily.

‘I spoke five languages and this was helpful. My job was as a typist, but I also did a lot of interpreting, timesheets and wages. My work was very varied….

Sometimes we worked overtime at the finance office, but it was always fun. The young men in the office showed me how to play cricket, I was the youngest there and everyone in the office seemed to look out for me.’ Eleonora Conolly aged 18, Yugoslavia 1949.

‘I accepted things at Bonegilla as I thought it would be temporary and I would be out of there after one week.

But as time went on many of us become frustrated. At the end I was told that my trade was not recognised in this country and that in fact the promised job did not exist. I felt cheated.’ Giuseppe Paneghel, Italy 1952.11 Giovanni Sgro aged 21, Italy 1952, was closely involved in the unrest when there were no jobs available in 1952. He recalls the long wait for offer of employment, then, feeling angry when a wouldbe employer rejected him. ‘As soon as he saw me this man knew that he didn’t want me, for two reasons – one, I wasn’t big and strong enough,

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‘I found this incredible mixture of Europeans, many highly educated from places I scarcely knew existed. I recall the wonderful conversations, the lively dances in the Club, the lovely days swimming in the lake and rivers, the walks through the very Australian countryside. Despite mess food and tiny rooms, I loved my time at Bonegilla.’ Joan Mitchie, language instructor, 1955.

‘The front of the canteen was also a very important meeting place for us singles.’ Bernhard Rust aged 20, language instructor, 1948.

Enjoying good company – and solitude – in a densely peopled place.

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Friendships sometimes led to romance, courtship and even marriage. Quite a few moved quickly to early marriages.

Perhaps young people felt more confident in confronting the strange and new if they were coupled.

‘My first boyfriend in Australia. He was German and played the guitar beautifully’ Sylvie, aged 15, The Netherlands.

Young Dutch teenage girls remember the Greek boys living in Blocks close by ‘it was very scary for my older sisters and myself’ Elisabeth K aged 13 and Margaretha J, aged 18, 1962. ‘I was told to watch out for all the single men who were there’. Wilhemiena vd B, Netherlands 1952.

My wedding reception was at the milk bar across the road with milkshakes and ice cream. My father and mother lent their rings for the ceremony. Eugenia Choinska, Poland 1949.13

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Veronika Preusche and Rolf Tesmer, Germany 1959, lived and worked at Bonegilla for three years. After they left they still made their way back to get married there, ‘as it seems like home to us’. BMM 6 December 1967.

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A wedding reception at Bonegilla.

However, with language difficulties and remote from loved ones and friends, many young men and women felt lonely.

‘I was even propositioned by a young Italian man who said I looked like his mother and he wanted to marry me. He obviously thought in his loneliness that a wife who spoke English would be useful. I naturally declined, but he kept on following me around the camp. I was worried. I asked the people in the office to send me to Sydney. They agreed in the end, but I had to pay the fare myself,’ Franca Arena aged 20, Italy 1959.14 ‘I remember returning from a term at Boarding School when the Centre was full of single men. My cousin and I went to the pictures one night to meet a couple of girlfriends and the whole theatre turned around and wolf whistled. I think there were only seven females at the pictures that night.’ Carolyn (Guinn) Stedman, 1954-65.

Similar comments recur. As already explained, many visitors recall Bonegilla as a holiday camp. Most visitors seem to come to Block 19 to pay tribute to their parents for the sacrifices they made in migrating to Australia, in search of a better life for themselves and for their children.

Many see Bonegilla as something their parents endured.

They dwell on the hard coming their family had of it.

Quite a few indicate they were too young to have anything but hazy memory of the Centre. Others have no direct memory; they were born after the family left the Centre.

Still others are children of the children. They tell how ‘Vats Mumma and Vats Tavis’ or ‘Oma and Opa were here’.

Bonegilla is part of family history with which visitors seek connection. Visitors seem to come to Block 19 Bonegilla to capture its ambience and its implications for individual lives. They want ‘to place their parents as well as their own lives in a historical context’.16 The search for family is also a search for self.

‘Mum and Dad left for Australia to give me a future

Marriage statistics in 1961 showed that about half of the post-war migrants had partnered with a nativeborn Australian. However, Italians tended to marry each other. So did the Greeks. Authorities became increasingly concerned about the balance of the sexes in the young adult migrant population. In 1967 and 1968 only 1 in 40 of all single migrants to arrive was female. Efforts were made to broaden the opportunities to sponsor single women from Italy and Greece.15

and a hope. For them it meant leaving family and security. That’s love.’ Jorge G, Spain 1963, Block 19 visitor 8 April 2007.

‘I came to see where my father, Mario, first lived in Australia. I am to grateful to my father to have made such a huge decision to leave Italy and to give his family a wonderful life in Australia.’ Christine I, 1956, Block 19 visitor 2 March 2007.

Reflecting on being a young immigrant Visitor Book Memory Pieces Like all pilgrims, visitors come to tell rather than be told.

The photographs and memory pieces they have left indicate a variety of migrant experiences related to different backgrounds, times of arrival age and gender. Migration is a bitter/sweet process, and the memories vary. Some feel favourably about the reception they and their families had at Bonegilla. Some do not.

‘My parents hated it and were treated badly. In spite of this they made a wonderful life for the rest of their family born in Australia. Thanks Mum and Dad for your sacrifice. Anka S, 1961, Block 19 visitor 16 March 2008.

‘My mother and father came here and they were not happy!!! Parents came with seven children – primitive

Visitor book comments are brief and often made hurriedly.

They convey in bold, broad-brush terms impressions that come quickly to mind. Many tend to follow the pattern of comments already on the page. They seem to be written for other visitors or exhibition/ site curators.

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– insult to our culture and heritage. We were not taught the language.’ Gerda, Block 19 visitor 8 December 2006.

‘My mum says, “I hate this place” ’, Anon, Block 19 visitor, 19 April 2009.

‘I have no memories of my time here. I do have a real understanding of the hardships [my parents] faced and knowledge of why I am who I am.’ Nada P 1963, Block 19 visitor 28 February 2007.

Child migrant memoirs More considered reflections on the migrant experience of the young appear as memoirs or histories in print, on the web or as poems, plays and novels. There are some thoughtful works by post-war child migrants like Andrew Reimer, who did not arrive via Bonegilla. There are also the careful observations of some native-born children that help sharpen the understandings gathered from former residents. Such writing indicates that the experiences of those who arrived at Bonegilla were probably not very different from those of people who came other ways.

In an autobiographical memoir, Andrew Reimer, Hungary 1947, pondered his growing up in an immigrant family during the years the Bonegilla Reception Centre was operating. Reimer observed that the first years of financial insecurity had replaced the much greater perils of war for his refugee family. Their unhappiness lifted over time with improvement in family finances and way of life. It seemed to Reimer that ‘Language holds the key to the newcomer’s experience. It determines the extent to which the migrant may find a congenial place within his [/her] new world’. He recalled ‘living in a state of almost total incomprehension’ during the first months of primary school. Through his teens Reimer actively discarded the old. He aped his peers, broadening his accent and ‘spitting with gusto’. He feigned insatiable interest in cricket and football in a concerted effort to become ‘indistinguishable’. Yet try as he might he found it was impossible to wipe the slate clean: ‘your otherness cannot be expunged’. Gradually, as he grew older, he began ‘letting Europe back into his life’. Reimer, like many migrant children, saw that to survive his parents had learned to be distrustful of others. He wondered if he inherited their suspicious nature and general pessimism.17

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Unlike Reimer, Wanda Skowronska did pass through Bonegilla. She was born at Bonegilla in 1952 of Latvian and Polish displaced persons and lived there until 1957.

She has pondered why so many Bonegilla stories have been told and why her parents seemed comfortable at such a strange place. She admires their resilience. In her maturity she has come to regard the centre’s impermanence as a reminder of the unpredictability and transitory nature of so much in life.

For most [Bonegilla] has some peculiar place in the heart, more so than one would expect of a place one passes through…. [The buildings] have nearly all gone.

However, these empty spaces housed people with dreams - their dreams not of gold but respite, perhaps some sanity and peace – the lives of people learning new things, grasping at new threads of happiness, streets, gatherings.

‘I have come to understand, as have so many others, that [Bonegilla] is truly an iconic place in the land where the “journey” takes on so much significance for the new Australians as well as the original ones’.18

Glenda Sluga, a daughter of migrant parents, published the first full-scale history of Bonegilla itself in 1988. She worried if Bonegilla’s history might be ‘appropriated into the mainstream of immigration history, drowning out immigrant voices’. For her there were many Bonegilla histories: there was ‘a myriad of voices, the plurality of the migrant experience and the constant renewal of cultural traditions’.19

Musings of the native-born City-based journalists only took notice of Bonegilla in its times of crisis – the health scare of 1949 and the protests of 1952 and 1961. For them it became notorious as a bleak and unhappy place. That notoriety set the tone for later musings. As the Reception Centre closed in 1971, Ian Marshall, a Melbourne journalist, penned a harsh farewell.

‘Little Europe closes its doors …. [Bonegilla was] a little Europe in a bleak, improbable landscape of 1941 army huts and gum trees under a hot summer sky….

[It was] a depressing first impression of Australia…. It wasn’t a holiday camp.’ Melbourne Herald, 2 October 1971, p.23.

For the young, particularly for those who were long resident, Bonegilla was not so forlorn. In 1979, eight years after Bonegilla closed, Tony Wright, wrote a series of five memory-based articles for the local Border Morning Mail. He interviewed many who had remained in the local area principally because they had worked at Bonegilla and became long-resident in the district. As a young man, Wright looked to those who were now his age. He told stories of the difficulties associated with the migrant experience. He told of both resident and official achievement. The reception centre got some things right.

Bonegilla, Nelson Bay, The dry-land barbed wire ships From which some would never land.

In these, as their parents learned the Fresh Start music; physicians nailing crates; attorneys cleaning trams, the children had one last ambiguous summer holiday.

‘An inordinate number of them [the children] have attended university and have entered the business and professional worlds. They have become the reality of their parents’ hopes and dreams when they uprooted and took the painful step of cultural transplantation.

The Bonegilla creative leisure centre was a garden in which the seedlings of immigration were allowed to grow. Australia is the land which their fruit has flourished.’ Tony Wright aged 25, journalist.20

Ahead of them lay the Deep End of the schoolyard, tribal testing, tribal soft-drinks, and learning English fast, the Wang Wang language.

Ahead of them, refinements: thumbs hooked down hard under belts to repress gesticulation. ahead of them, epithets: wog, reffo, Commo, Nazi, things which can be forgotten but must first be told….

The young remember Bonegilla

BMM 22 December 1968.

Tony Wright marvelled at a Christmas nativity play in which no performer spoke. Mime was appropriate when neither the performers nor the audience shared a common language.

The poet Les Murray married Valerie Morelli, Hungary 1950, who had lived at Bonegilla as a young person. He dedicated one of his early collections of poetry to her and the other displaced persons who arrived with her. Murray empathised with migrants from war-devastated Europe finding they were to be accommodated at Bonegilla and Nelson Bay migrant camps, still surrounded by the barbed wire of the former army camps. They were learning new ways while their children had a break before facing the challenges of the early settlement years.

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Those seeking family and self-in-family see Bonegilla as a place where past and present meet: a place from which uncertain futures unfolded into now known fortunes.

Memories are malleable and perhaps subsequent family and individual fortunes have pushed at and shaped their recall. Perhaps, too, present day community concerns about current migrant and refugee reception processes, particularly the setting up of detention centres, have blurred recall of their own arrival experiences. Bonegilla, for many, has become another place of pain and shame.22 Memory pieces, both those hastily written and those pondered, form patchworks. It is possible to detect repetitions, threads, themes in the patchworks. Like its nearest international equivalent, America’s Ellis Island, Bonegilla presents ‘a multi-vocal and fragmented heritage landscape’.23 To those who experienced it, its meanings, now as then, are ambiguous.

Endnotes – The Young Remember Bonegilla _____________________________________

Nonja Peters, Milk and Honey – but no Gold, 2001, pp.xiii.

1

2

D & M Eysbertse, Where Waters Meet, Erasmus Foundation, Melbourne, 1997/2006, p.30.

Pino Bosi, ‘Requiem for a Migrant Father’, Readers’ Digest, June 1974, pp56-61 quoted in AR Corkhill, The Immigrant Experience in Australian Literature, Academia Press, Melbourne, 1995, p73.

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Raimond Gaita, Romulus, My Father, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1998.

‘Mrs Jonans’ in PiO, Big Numbers, Collective Effort Press, 2008.

Migrant Stories, Immigration Bridge, www.immigrationbridge.com.au

C Keating, The History of the Army Camp and Migrant Camp at Greta, NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, Sydney, 1997,p.66.

W Lowenstein & M Loh, The Immigrants, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1977, p.84.

‘1/- Welcher’ in PiO, Big Numbers, Collective Effort Press, 2008.

M Moss ed. Taking a Punt, City of Darebin, 1997.

Giovanni Sgro, Mediterranean Son, Scoprire il Sud, 2000.

Monica Wiench & Elizabeth Drozd eds, Polish Migrant Stories, Australian-Polish Community Services Inc, Melbourne 2006.

13

Franca Arena, ‘Recollections’ in A Curthoys et al, Australians from 1939, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, 1987, p.366.

14

15

BMM 6 May 1961; NAA A2179, 1964.

16

Tes Lyssiotis, quoted by Glenda Sluga. ‘Dis/placed’ in Meanjin vol. 48, no. 1, 1989, p.159

17

18

24

Glenda Sluga, Bonegilla, 1988, pp.137-138.

20

BMM 30 July 1979.

21

Les Murray, ‘Immigrant Voyage’ from Ethnic Radio: poems, Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1977.

Sara Wills, ‘Between the hostel and the detention centre: possible trajectories of migrant pain and shame in Australia’, William Logan & Keir Reeves eds. Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with Difficult Heritage, Routledge, London, 2009, pp263-280.

22

23

Luke Desforges & Joanne Maddern, ‘Front Doors to Freedom, Portal to the Past: History at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum’, Social and Cultural Geography, 5, 3, September 2004, p453.

Australian Citizenship Convention press release, 11 January 1970.

12

19

Andrew Reimer, Inside Outside: Life between two worlds, Angus & Robertson, Pymble, 1992 Wanda Skowronska, Bonegilla Journey, private publication, c.2001, p6.

References – Taking in Young Immigrants and The Young Remember Bonegilla

Interviews: Inga Krain, George Kotsiros and Eleonora Conolly interviewed by Bridget Guthrie, www.Migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/ belongings.; Bonegilla Scouts by Jean Whitla, Wodonga Historical Society, June 2006; Anna Piotrowski

by Barry York, ho-vn2053172, National Library Oral History; I interviewed Laime Zole, Jules Visser and Carolyn Stedman.

Memory pieces of Stefan come from Stefan Michael Klepiak, The Bonegilla Kid, self-published, Hervey Bay, 2007; Eleonora Ventura and Janina Rozanski from Catherine Murphy ed. Boat Load of Dreams, United Trades and Labor Council, Adelaide, 1994; Joan Mitchie, Marie Ashley, Bernhard Rust from Lois Carrington, A Real Situation, Tara Canberra, 1997; Jose from Glenda Sluga, Bonegilla ‘A Place of No Hope’, University of Melbourne, 1988.

The other memory pieces quoted and the photographs used have principally been drawn from the Bonegilla Collection at Albury LibraryMuseum unless otherwise cited. Full names are given only where visitors have given explicit agreement to be quoted or pictured.

The Bonegilla Migrant Experience www.bonegilla.org.au

Series: At Bonegilla 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) The Bonegilla Collection at Albury LibraryMuseum www.bonegilla.com.au

Receiving Europe’s Displaced (2010) The Young at Bonegilla (2010) Greek Journeys Through Bonegilla (2011) Rubbing Shoulders with Post-war Newcomers (2013)

Acknowledgements: This publication project was supported by funding from the Australian Government through the Department of Environment Water Heritage and the Arts. Albury City Council provided initial seed funding via its Cultural Grants scheme. The Bonegilla Migrant Experience Heritage Park Steering Committee is grateful for that funding and for the support it gets from Wodonga and Albury City Councils and Parklands Albury-Wodonga.

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

Author: Bruce Pennay OAM, Charles Sturt University ISSN: 1834-6359 Published by Parklands Albury Wodonga PO Box 1040, Wodonga, Victoria, 3689 © 2010 Reprinted by Wodonga Council, June, 2016