Margarita Vrubliauskienė (1911 - 1990): Canberra goes on strike over Balt housemaid, by Daina Počius and Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 18 July 2024 and 9 February 2025

‘When attractive Balt housemaid Margarita Vrubliauskiene waved a mop at the manageress of the hostel where she is employed, it nearly plunged Canberra into a major upset’.

So began one of many newspaper stories about an altercation which almost brought Canberra to a standstill. Over a three-day period in August 1949, newspapers from Innisfail in North Queensland south to Hobart in Tasmania, through Melbourne and Adelaide to Perth and Geraldton in Western Australia reported the situation. Grafton, Lismore, Wagga Wagga, Broken Hill, and Narrabri worried as Canberra negotiated.

The housemaid was Margarita Sadauskaitė-Vrubliauskienė. She was born in 1911 in St Petersburg. She arrived in Australia aged 36 on the First Transport ship, the General Stuart Heintzelman, on 28 November 1947. She was sent to work at the Mulwala House hostel in Canberra on 22 December. The hostel was run by the Department of the Interior for up to 240 public servants in Canberra.

Margarita Vrubliauskiene's photo from her Bonegilla card

Source:  National Archives of Australia

When Margarita was ill in bed, she had refused a request from the new management for her to work. This had led to what the Secretary of the Canberra Branch of the Liquor and Allied Trades Employees' Union called “pin-pricking”. Margarita had interpreted something said as a threat to return her to Germany and understandably became hysterical.

On 10 August, she was given 48 hours’ notice of dismissal for alleged insolence and insubordination. Fifty colleagues walked off the job in support of her. The Department of the Interior sent some staff to help but they could not cope, leaving 202 Mulwala residents to prepare their own dinners and breakfasts.

Margarita had worked at Mulwala for nearly two years with no fault found in her work. The local Conciliation Commissioner said that she could stay at Mulwala until another job was found for her but refused to order her reinstatement. Hearing this decision, the 40 employees of Mulwala Hostel who had walked out stayed out. They were on strike! As the strike continued, the residents had to make their own beds and clean up after themselves …

The Commissioner stated that he thought it was in Margarita’s own best interests that another place of work be found for her. He would not reinstate her because, if he did, “Mulwala might as well be handed over to the staff to run it themselves”. Revolutionary thought!

The strikers comprised 23 Balts and 17 Australians. The Balt strikers probably included Viktoria Berdagans who had been sent from Bonegilla to the Hostel together with Margarita. As well, we know from their Bonegilla cards that Ramona Biemelis and Jevgenija Zagorska had arrived to work there soon after. 

The 202 residents included 13 First Transport women who had been sent to Canberra to work as typists: Irina Fridenbergs, Elvira Kärmik, Heldi Kull, Valeska Lans, Veronika Ludzitis, Lucia Maksim, Vally Meschin, Aino Meere and her sister Maimu Naar, Elin Põldre, Reina Roosvald, Natasha Shersunova and Juta Usin. This headcount from the Bonegilla card records does conflict with statements elsewhere that 10 of the women in Canberra were working as typists.

On the following day, the strikers decided to join Margarita’s case with that of another migrant employee alleged to have received unsatisfactory treatment. Unless both issues were settled, and the manager with his wife removed from Mulwala within 24 hours, the Mulwala staff would seek the support of the staff of 15 other hostels in Canberra, and 5 hotels. Such a general strike would affect around three thousand residents of these establishments.

What was more, a number of newspapers noted, State Premiers, the Federal Cabinet and members of the Liberal Party, all of whom were due to meet in Canberra the following week, would be preparing their own meals. As the Hobart Mercury headlined on 12 August, ‘Tin-openers may be in demand’.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior, responsible for the hostels, asked the Conciliation Commissioner to order the Mulwala strikers back to work. He refused to do this. However, he told the Union that he would not hear an application to vary the award governing its members’ pay and conditions unless they returned to work on 12 August. The hearing for the award variations had been due to start on 15 August, but the Commissioner proposed not starting for another 3 months.

The Union Secretary told the Commissioner that he had advised the staff against striking but they had been reluctant to return to work. They had asked that their problems be discussed with the Union’s executive. The Secretary advised that the general strike would not be started until NSW State executive had considered the situation.

However, the threat of not hearing the case for the award variations worked. On Friday night, 12 August, the strikers decided to return to work on Saturday morning and abide by the decisions of a special meeting of Union members on Sunday. A deputation of staff from Mulwala and another hostel with some issues, Gorman House, headed by the Union Secretary, had called on the head of the Department of the Interior. He had promised to investigate their complaints if they returned to work. The strikers were concerned that if they stayed out, they would prejudice the claims of their fellow members to early consideration of improved conditions.

The Sunday night meeting of 150 Union members decided unanimously that the Mulwala staff should remain at work and abide by conciliation. This was on the basis that the head of the Department of the Interior would make full in inquiries into the actions of the manager and his wife while at both Gorman House and Mulwala House. The strike was over.

The husband and wife management stayed on. We know that Margarita would have been found a new workplace but do not know where it was. As other women from the First Transport were working at 6 of the 15 hostels, there was plenty of choice. 

As for the hysteria on misunderstanding that she would be sent back to Germany, Margarita has gone out of her way to ensure that she was on the first ship of displaced persons to Australia. 

She must have heard that all of its passengers were supposed to be single. She had separated from her husband so that she could claim to be single when interviewed, even though anyone with a knowledge of Lithuanians could tell from her surname ending that it belonged to a married woman. 

She had placed her daughter, Henrika, in a German hospital run by nuns, to be brought to Australia as soon as Margarita could arrange it. Clearly, she was very keen to get out of Germany, maybe – like many others – keen to get as far away as possible from Europe and war.

It is possible that Margarita's obligation to work in Australia ended only six weeks after the strike ended.  The Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, had decided that the workers from the First Transport mostly had done such a good job, that most should be released from their two-year obligation early.  The new date was 30 September 1949.

Margarita seems to be the only person from the First Transport examined in detail to not have applied for Australian citizenship.  A citizenship file for her has yet to be indexed on the National Archives of Australia's RecordSearch online database.  Searching for her name on the National Library of Australia's Trove collection of digitised materials including the Commonwealth of Australia's Gazettes does not produce a notification of citizenship granted either.

This being the case, we lack the usual details on her movements as she settled down in Australia after the compulsory work period ended.  We do know that she had partnered with a Pole, taking his family name of Woskresinski.  

The first public record of her location after Mulwala House is in the Border Morning Mail of 1 July 1952. There, the social columnist's reports on the ladies' outfits at the Central Workshops (RAEME) ball at Bandiana, in northern Victoria (and close to Bonegilla) held five days previously.  Mrs Woskresinski wore a black velvet gown with white lace and a fox fur.

She again merited a report in the Border Morning Mail, in July 1953, this time at much greater length, because of a Wodonga Court case.  She had brought a charge of using insulting words against against a neighbour.  

The words were in Russian, but Margarita and her neighbour on the other side heard and understood them, and recorded them.  The words were used in relation to Margarita trying to move on a cow which, she said, was eating trees in front of her home.

The written words were handed to the bench of two, possibly Justices of the Peace, and a translation was offered by a court interpreter.  The bench found the Russian neighbour guilty, fining him £1 and ordering him to pay £6/7/6 in costs. That £6/7/6 was the equivalent of a good week's wages in 1953.

The three neighbours then were at a place called Little River, now Killara.  The name of the Little River has reverted to the Kiewa River.  Henrika and her husband, Alfredas Kuljurgies, were living there also.

None of  the New South Wales, Victorian or Australian Capital Territory (ACT) historical births, deaths and marriages indexes reveal  the registration of a marriage involving either the Woskresinski or Vrubliauskiene names.  In the case of the ACT, however, access to historical marriages records is available only to 75 years ago, which currently is early 1950.

We have been told that Margarita was for a time the manager of the Clifton Guest House, later the Clifton Motel in Albury.  It is almost across the road from the Albury Railway Station, so must have been constantly popular when passengers still had to change trains to switch from the Victorian rail gauge to the New South Wales one and vice versa.  The standard gauge railway from Sydney to Melbourne via Albury was not opened until 13 April 1962.

Margarita, still Woskresinki, died on 25 May 1990, aged 78.  Henrika Kuljurgies was listed as her only child on the death certificate, and also was the informant.  Also noted was Margarita's marriage to 'Waelow' Woskresinki, but Henrika had not advised when and where this took place. 

At a guess, a government clerk could not read Henrika's handwriting, because she would have written 'Waclaw'.  Waclaw Woskresinki arrived in Australia from Britain under the new United Kingdom Free Passage Scheme on the SS Strathnaver on 10 August 1948, disembarking in Sydney. Born in Poland in 1919, he had left the Rougham Camp, Suffolk, England, to migrate, and was headed to the Bathurst camp in New South Wales. These details all point to Waclaw (a variant spelling of Vaclav) having been a member of the Polish military who had fought alongside the British during World War II.  

The British Government, struggling to recover from the War, had asked its Dominions for help in resettling these Poles, who now were as much refugees in Britain as the Displaced Persons in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

Waclaw gave his occupation as builder on the incoming passenger card.  Due to the War and various building tradesmen being otherwise occupied by it, little building of homes had gone on since 1939.  Now the Australian servicemen and women were back in Australia and marrying or, if already married, resuming married life.  There was an amazing shortage of homes in Australia when he arrived.  Perhaps his skills are why Margarita owned something like 7 houses in Wodonga at the time of her death, even though she only had $11 in cash according to Henrika.

Lioginas, Margarita's husband, reached Australia on the Svalbard transport on 29 June 1948. He had been a judge in Lithuania but was sent to the Department of Works in Canberra, perhaps so that he could be near his wife.  After his compulsory employment, he was able to join a Canberra legal firm as a clerk.

Margarita's daughter, Henrika, was 18 when she arrived on the 12 February 1948 on the Second Transport, the General Stewart. She was employed at Mulwala Hostel with her mother. In September 1948, she married a First Transport passenger, Alfredas Kuljurgies, in Canberra.

Henrika painted landscapes from the area surrounding her home at Killara, on the road from Wodonga to the Bonegilla camp. One painting is held in a public collection, at the Murray Art Museum, Albury. She died in October 2010. She is remembered by the Henrika Kuljurgies Reserve, on a creek which runs through the new Killara village built across the Murray Valley Highway from where she used to live.

Lioginas, Leo in Australia, died in 1984 in Canberra. We have been unable to find a death record for Vaclav.

Henrika has explained to Ann that she was not Margarita's biological daughter, but her niece, the daughter of a much younger sister. As for many others, Australia appeared to be Margarita's sanctuary from the turmoil and danger of war, so she was prepared to do whatever was needed to obtain this sanctuary and keep it, for both herself and Henrika.  She also was smart enough to know that investing in property is one of the best possible investments, probably living off the rental income of the Wodonga houses. Margarita emerges from what we know of her life as a strong, clever woman, more than prepared to look after herself and those around her.

Lionginas Vrubliauskas is on the right of this Canberra photo,
a First Transporter, Birute Gruzas, is in the middle and
a gentleman remembered only by the family name Ceposz is on the left.

Source:  Collection of Birute Gruzas

Notes:  We have used the 'Balt' descriptor in this article because this is the word that nearly all the newspaper reporters used.  As a noun to describe a native or inhabitant of the 3 Baltic states, it has been around since at least the late 18th century.  It was quickly applied to the Displaced Persons who arrived on the First Transport, since all of them were from the Baltic states.  The Second Transport, however, brought a greater variety of nationalities, mostly from the Baltic States and Yugoslavia but including 11 Poles, 4 Ukrainians and 2 from Czechoslovakia.  From then on, the variety of source countries grew to include all which now had Communist governments.  'Balt' was becoming inaccurate.

In August 1949, Arthur Calwell, who was Minister for Information as well as Australia's first Minister for Immigration, begged the press to use the term 'New Australian' instead of 'Balt, DP or Displaced Persons'.  However, his request was issued on exactly the day that our strikers walked off the job, so the message had not reached the journalists whose reports we have used.

The RAEME at Bandiana, who held the ball which Margarita attended in June 1952, is the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, an Australian Army corps.

Sources

 

Age (Melbourne), 'ACT domestics talk strike', 12 August 1949, p 3, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/189454321, accessed 4 July 2023.

 

Archives ACT, ‘Find of the month, February 2019, Mulwala House, https://www.archives.act.gov.au/find_of_the_month/2019/february/previous-find-of-the-month-22019, accessed 4 July 2023.

Arolsen Archives, American Expeditionary Force DP Registration Record, ‘Margarita Vrubliauskiene’, DocID 69771010, https://collections.arolsen

archives.org/en/document/69771010, accessed 5 July 2023.

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Border Morning Mail (1953) 'Wodonga Court Yesterday: Russian fined on insulting words charge' Albury, NSW 31 July p 8 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article280398603 accessed 6 February 2025.

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Kuljurgies, Henrika, personal communications with Ann Tündern-Smith, 2003 and 2006.

Mercury (Hobart), 'Tin-openers may be in demand', 12 August 1949, p 1, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/26635831, accessed 4 July 2023.

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