An ‘Aussie’ looks at the ‘Balts’ and ‘Reffos’ by John Mannion

The aftermath of WWII in Europe was characterised by devastation and misery, which led to seemingly insoluble problems, one of the most difficult being the Displaced Persons. Millions of people were crowded into the UNRRA camps in Germany, Italy and Austria. There were too many to resettle permanently in Germany, a country in chaos where they had been wronged and lacked means of support. 

Many countries including Australia turned their attention to the Displaced Persons and in 1947 Australia launched the "Australia Scheme" under which, eventually, 180,000 DP's would be accepted to increase the population for national security and economic development. Both sides of Federal Parliament agreed that it was essential to increase the rate of migration as a means of attempting to ensure the security of the country. 

The main hindrance was the shortage of ships, but this was resolved by the International Refugee Organisation, which had ships at its disposal to bring them to Australia. 

Commissioned in 1945 as a US army troop transport, the United States Army Transport, the General Stuart Heintzelman was converted to the DP Operations Germany and Austria at the end of 1946. When she sailed from Bremerhaven, Germany on the 30 October 1947, she was on her fifth DP voyage and her first to Australia.

This sketch of the General Stuart Heintzelman was used on one of the newsletters
published on board during the voyage to Australia

She arrived at Fremantle on 28 November 1947. This shipment of 729 men and 114 women from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia heralded the longest phase of planned migration to Australia since the convict days. 

These young and healthy refugees fleeing Communism were all under 40 and had been screened to ensure they were fit and healthy and free of fascist sympathies. They had agreed to be directed to live anywhere and prepared to work at any job in Australia for two years.* 

The majority were destitute and demanded and expected little. They were fleeing destroyed and war-weary countries and had a gutful of Russians, Germans and the European war where they had lived in camps for several years, to a country where the word democracy was more than a word. In return they would help rebuild Australia's resources which were run down and short of manpower after the war, and lay the foundations for future permanent migration. 

Most of the newcomers were to be sent to country areas where they were put to work on farms, mining and quarrying, railway construction and maintenance, road and bridge building and similar major works, along with timber and saw-mill work and food processing.  Termed the “Balts” or “Reffos”, terms not often heard today, they were later known as Calwell’s "New Australians", Eastern European migrants and many other colloquial names. 

On arrival at Fremantle, the Heintzelman passengers were housed in former army camps for several days and then boarded the HMAS Kanimbla, bound for Port Melbourne where they disembarked at East Princes’ Pier on the 8 December 1947. 

This iconic image shows the Kanimbla at berth at Princes' Pier, Port Melbourne, on 8 December 1947, with one of the two trains taking its passengers to their next home, at Bonegilla

Source: National Archives of Australia

Princes’ Pier’s neighbour, Station Pier was to become the gateway to a New World for more than a million newcomers until the last migrant ship, Australis, docked in 1977. Although Princes’ Pier has been dismantled, Station Pier continues as a cruise ship terminal. These days Station Pier also is regarded as a symbol of the mass migration that has transformed Australia, particularly in the post-war period. Internationally, it should rate as highly as New York's Ellis Island. 

The now 839 newcomers on the Kanimbla were first welcomed to Australia by the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, the man who had authorised the program which brought them to Australia.  Then they came down the ship's gangway wearing numbered identification tags and were met by officers of the Department of Immigration. Special trains then took them to Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre in north-eastern Victoria near Albury, NSW. 

The newcomers underwent varying weeks of rest, reception, medical examinations, basic survival-level lessons in English, orientation lectures and job placement. 

Living in a country largely dominated by the eastern states and their capital cities, it was not only Sydney and Melbourne that were influenced by immigration however. South Australia — and we are more than Adelaide — also accepted many Displaced Persons. 

Australians became increasingly aware of the influx of migrants, as did those at Peterborough with migrants numbering 10 per cent of the population of about 4,000 during the ‘60s and '70s. 

To the “outsider” Peterborough was a “railway town” and farmers and graziers generally looked down on "railway people" with suspicion. They even had their own internal Australian Rules Football association — Railways, Towns, Rovers (Catholics) and Terowie — and they played soccer (and so did some of the Aussies) and footy on Sundays! 

But generally the new Australians were accepted “to a man”. Many of them lived and worked in isolated railway settlements along the lines from Port Pirie to Cockburn, Gladstone to Wilmington, and Terowie to Quorn and beyond. 

Port Pirie in the west to Cockburn on the NSW border in the east: by road,
because Google can't find public transport by rail between these two towns;
Gladstone is on the line between Port Pirie and Peterborough,
Wilmington is shown north of Port Pirie, Quorn is north of Wilmington but
Terowie, not shown on this map, is some distance due east of Port Pirie and SSE of Peterborough

Source:  Google Maps © 2024

As time passed however, the Australian people came to realise that these “new Australians” found what they were seeking, the chance to rebuild their lives in their new homeland at a time when Australia was still a colonial country, populated largely by Anglo-Irish migrants. 

Australian society was dominated by “native-born” at the top, with the mentally ill, children (despite the propaganda that babies were the best migrants), Aborigines and migrants generally overlooked. 

A retired Peterborough railway worker once asked me "Where do you reckon Australia would be without the Second World War?" The answer would be very subjective and the man in question did speak with a broad European accent, but there is no doubt that Australia would not be the place it is without the vast number of Europeans who arrived here after WWII. 

For one, we not have the diversity of culture and European family names we now have in our midst, many of which are now accepted “Australian” names, after having married into native-born families. 

The men, women and children identified by these names have several things in common — they came to Australia seeking freedom, and a new start, and they worked for the railways. 

I spoke with one bloke who came from Germany as a four year old, to Peterborough via Bonegilla, Mildura and Woodside camps, with his Polish parents. He doubted if he would or could make the sacrifices his parents made for him and his brother! 

The hundreds of people who contributed to this story did nothing really extraordinary, but they were remarkable people, are proud of their achievements, and deserve to be remembered for making Peterborough and Australia their home, and for their role in the Australian story and our developing culture. 

My interest in post WWII migrants has not waned and I must thank my partner, Helena, for her understanding 20 years ago when I traipsed from one part of the country to the other recording people’s lives. Perhaps it helped that she too is one of those migrants, coming to Australia with her parents and younger brother in 1968 from the Czech Republic. 

In my next blog entries, I will tell you the stories of a couple of the men who I met through the Relaying Our Tracks project. 

* Ann's notes: Arthur Calwell, in a statement to the press and radio, had announced before the arrival of the Heintzelman that all of the Displaced Persons were under 40, but the reality was that 8 were aged 41 to 43. 

Those on the Heintzelman actually had agreed in Germany to one year only of work as directed. The Australian Government changed the requirement to 2 years when it learnt that this was the time expected by Tasmania's Hydro Electric Commission of the former Polish soldiers who had arrived from Britain in October 1947. 

Since this was while the Heintzelman was on the high seas, its passengers were not told about the change until they were in the Bonegilla camp. According to Endrius Jankus, this was not until 20 December and there almost was a riot when the camp Commandant announced the change at an assembly. We have seen already, in relation to Endrius’ story, and will see in some biographies to come that the change continued to prey on the minds of the new arrivals.

Light editing, choice of illustrations and their captions by me.

SOURCE

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Immigration, Central Office; A12111, Immigration Photographic Archive 1946 - Today, 1946-; 1/1947/3/6, Migrant Arrivals - Displaced Persons from Europe - HMAS Kanimbla arrives at Melbourne with the first group of displaced persons (Dec 1947) from where they will join the train bound for Bonegilla Migrant Camp.  They travelled from Europe to Fremantle on the GENERAL HEINTZELMAN and transhipped to the KANIMBLA. CATEGORY: photograph, FORMAT: b&w negative, TYPE: cellulose acetate, STATUS: preservation material, 1947-1947.