Flaavi Hodunov (1927–2023): SAR Train Driver, by John Mannion

Updated 5 April 2024.

Estonian-born Flaavi Hodunov was another of the 18 with good English selected at the Bangham camp to be sent to be Peterborough. My three previous blog entries, on Australia's post-WWII displaced persons' program, Peterborough in general and Paul Deimantas in particular, refer. 

Flaavi's ID photo taken in Germany before departure to Australia --

Source:  Tatyana Tamm collection

Flaavi Hodunov's ID photo from his Bonegilla card
clearly a mistake has occurred!

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Flaavi was a keen railway man and eager to learn. He recalls the ‘Roundhouse Rat’, a V-class steam shunting engine that was fired with big lumps of coal thrown into the firebox by hand.

'The little engine that could', the Roundhouse Rat, is on the left of this photo;
built in 1877, it was already at least 70 years old when the First Transporters met it
for the first time; it is now on display in a Naracoorte park

Source:  State Library of South Australia

He spent over three years at Peterborough and celebrated his 21st birthday at the Railway Institute. Eventually he moved to Adelaide and built his own home. 

He recalled that a few weeks after the arrival of the ‘very first’ Balts at Peterborough, another group arrived, followed by many more. Many families were separated as a result of the work contract and accommodation. 

Flaavi and another Estonian, Artur Klaar, moved out of the hostel and found private board with the Linke family, through the Lutheran Church, on a dairy farm at Peterborough West. 

Two Baltic boarders, standing and kneeling on the left, with the Linke family

Source:  John Mannion Collection

The first means of transport for the Balts was on foot, push-bike and motor-bike. 

The push bikes could be used for recreation too;
here we have Juozas or 'Joe' Donela on the left with friends

Source:  John Mannion collection

It was difficult at first but these men later recalled the acceptance they received from Peterborough railway men including Ray Schell, Dave Rosser, the Brennan brothers, Lionel Noble, Peter Smallacombe and many others. 

Flaavi's girlfriend, Walya [Wasylisa Proszko], came to Australia with her parents and sister [on the Wooster Victory, in May 1949]. They too stayed at Bonegilla. She had to wait until Flaavi found her a job as a domestic with the Casey family on a farm east of Peterborough. 

Walya's Bonegilla card, with that assignment to the Casey family

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Walya recalls that, while she was at Bonegilla, some of the locals came to see what these Balts look like, just out of curiosity. The general opinion was that they ‘looked just like us!’ 

Walya remembered being given clothing, in particular a bright pink raincoat. ‘When you don't have much, you remember things like that’ she told me. 

Men and women were in separate accommodation at Bonegilla. 

Everybody had to work for two years so, in order for the couple to marry, the authorities agreed for Walya working near Flaavi. According to Flaavi, when they married, Walya's contract was cancelled. 

Walya's family were reunited after they came over from Sydney for the wedding at Peterborough Lutheran Church [on 26 December 1949] and found work in Adelaide. 

Walya recalls the trip from Bonegilla to Peterborough well. She was given a packed lunch of sandwiches and a couple of eggs. ‘All I had was a suitcase and a handful of papers. I was unable to speak a word of English’. She reckoned that she has never waited so long for a train. 

On arrival at Adelaide station, she could not ask questions, but a Lutheran priest advised her in German how to get to Peterborough. Walya remembered that the train trip to Peterborough was in the dark, so she couldn't see where she was going, but when she did arrive, there was no platform. This was unheard of in Europe. 

The Peterborough Railway station, 1974, still without a raised platform

Source:  Lionel Noble collection

‘I expected a street with houses and shops on both sides of the street but found a very, very poor street, very scary, with one big hotel dominating the long Main Street’. 

The Hotel Peterborough would have dominated Walya's first view of
Peterborough's Main Street

Source:  John Mannion collection

Peterborough's Main Street, with
a hotel in the distant centre, around 1950

Source:  Lionel Noble photographer, John Mannion collection

Many of the migrants, including Walya, didn't like country life, but Flaavi reckons he would still be in the bush if not for Walya. 

According to the men I spoke with, Heini Koch, a descendant of the original Petersburg settlers, did a lot of work for the ‘lads who could not speak very well English’. 

Before they married, Walya would visit Linke's on weekends. As a married couple, the Hodunov's rented a little tin house that Flaavi had renovated for the new bride, near the hostel on Telford Avenue. They eventually rented a railway cottage. 

Flaavi found out that it was very hard to get transferred to city, but once he did, he excelled on the job and was the first 'Balt' to graduate as an SAR driver at Mile End.

Flaavi's achievement of locomotive driver status was celebrated in the New Australian,
a monthly publication for migrants from the Department of Immigration, in its August 1952 issue; the fettler work actually was when he was based at Bangham, near Wolseley,
the cleaning job was after redeployment to Peterborough and initial training there

Source:  New Australian, August 1952

Flaavi (right) on the job as a fireman, before his 1952 promotion to driver

Source:  John Mannion collection

He liked his job in the railways and worked freight trains back to Peterborough after the broad gauge was extended from Terowie to Peterborough in 1970. 

He spent 37 years on the job, 37 years of shift work, and agreed that it was not easy for the women being alone when men away on shift work.

Flaavi and Walya in 2003

Source:  John Mannion collection

Flaavi was born in Estonia's easternmost coastal city of Narva on 21 September 1927, so was 20 years old on arrival in Australia.  He died in Adelaide very recently, on 27 November 2023, aged a hearty 96.  Walya predeceased him, in March 2014, just after her 84th birthday.

POSTSCRIPT by Ann  

Flaavi's life before his voyage to Australia is encapsulated in the document below, a DP Registration Record created in the American Zone of occupied Germany.  In addition to confirming his place and date of birth, it tells us that his parents were Teodor Hodunov and Liidia Kolk, that his usual occupation when the record was created in maybe 1945 was motor-car locksmith, and that his first choice for resettlement was Canada.

Flaavi's name has intrigued me since I first saw it on the Heintzelman passenger list 25 years ago.  Although his Estonian birthplace means that he had Estonian nationality until the time early after the War then that no longer had practical meaning, the name is not Estonian.

The -ov ending of Hodunov indicates clearly a Slavic family name.  The most likely source of Slavic names in Estonia is Russia, but a Russian would spell this name with an initial G, as in Mussorgsky's opera, Boris Godunov, about an early Tsar of Russia.  A Ukrainian friend has confirmed that this is indeed a Ukrainian spelling of the name, where the initial G gets transliterated as an initial H.  It happens with many Slavic names.  An example is the female first name Halina, diminutive Halya, in Ukrainian, which become Galina and Galya in Russian.  I've used this example because I can tell you that this name sounds just the same, but is spelt Galja in Estonian.

Flaavi, my friend said, absolutely was not Ukrainian, so more research was required.  I found that Flavi is known to be a first name used in Rumania, derived from the Latin name Flavius, meaning 'golden'.  Rumania still has many links in its language to the Roman occupation some 2,000 years ago, starting with the name of this nation-state being derived from Rome (or Roma in Latin and Italian).

Flaavi with two a's is a typically Estonian spelling, lengthening the initial vowel sound in Flavi and adding to the normal stress on the first syllable of Estonian words.  The name turns out to be quite multicultural, even before this concept was invented by the Canadians.

Enlarging the digitised document shows that Flaavi's mother's family name was Kolk, which translates from Estonian into English as an out-of-the-way place or, a dangling piece of wood.  Regardless of the reason for its application to his mother's family in the 1830's, when Estonians first got family names, it is authentically Estonian.  The spelling of her first name, Liidia, is Estonian too, although the name has a Slavic origin.  A family like her's, probably living in or near Narva next to where the Russians lived, would have been exposed to a lot of Russian cultural influences.

My conclusion is that Flaavi's mother's family was Estonian, while his father's family probably originated from the part of Europe now divided by the border between Rumania and Ukraine.  Mixing ethnic groups up by translocation was a deliberate policy of the Soviet Union, in an attempt to reduce nationalism developing, but it occurred as well in Tsarist Russia, probably for economic reasons.

Marrying someone who claimed nothing but Ukrainian heritage tends to support the idea that the Hodunovs originated somewhere near the border of Ukraine with Rumania.

As for the motor car locksmith trade, another of the First Transporters, a Lithuanian, called himself an 'engine locksmith' when interviewed by the Australian press in December 1947.  Did motor car and engines (perhaps pulling trains) have different locks to houses in the 1940s and earlier?  Who knows about this?

American Expeditionary Forces Displaced Persons Registration Record
for Flaavi Hodunov in Germany

Source:  Arolsen Archives

SOURCES

Arolsen Archives, 'Folder DP1475, names from HODIONENKO, ANNA to HOFFEINS, Marija (2)'

https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/67368899?s=hodunov&t=2738137&p=0, accessed 20 March 2024.

'Lionel Noble Photo Collection, Peterborough Station', https://lionelnoble.com/station/ accessed 20 March 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] 1947–1956; HODUNOV, Flaavi : Year of Birth - 1927 : Nationality - ESTONIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number - 920, 1947–1948.

National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] 1947–1956; PROSZKO, Wasylisa : Year of Birth - 1930 : Nationality - UKRAINIAN : Travelled per - WOOSTER VICTORY : Number - 85482, 1949 –1949.

'Railway transport: Locomotives and rolling stock 3'6" narrow gauge [B58892/492]', photograph, State Library of South Australia, https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/B+58892/492, accessed 20 March 2024.

Tamm, Tatyana (2024) Personal correspondence.

'V 9, The oldest steam loco in South Australia', http://www.australiansteam.com/V%209.htm, accessed 19 March 2024.