We previously have looked at the work which the 62 men sent to Bangham, South Australia, for the State’s Railways (SAR) Commission were expected to do. We’ve noted also that, maybe one month arrival their arrival, 17 or 18 were sent via Adelaide to Peterborough, to train as porters and cleaners.
BANGHAM CAMP CONDITIONS
How the men had been living was described in a May 1948 report from the Commissioner for Railways, who wrote, “In the camp at Bangham, the men are living under AWU [Australian Workers Union] conditions, and the camps have to be reasonably mobile, while at the same time conforming to the conditions under the award or agreement covering AWU workers.
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| The Bangham tent camp is at the rear of the shelter shed; in the foreground, it appears that the broad gauge line has been laid while the narrow gauge remains in place, with some spare rails to the left of the line; Question: how did the photographer get this perspective in 1948-49 without a drone? Photograph courtesy of Tatyana Tamm |
“It is not, therefore, practicable to establish more buildings at Bangham, even if we could get the material.
"The camp, consists of tents, mess rooms, ablution, and sanitary facilities, but there is no recreation hall.
“Whatever additional amenities are provided will have to be general to all AWU camps, if demanded, or we shall be accused of giving amenities to Balts which we could not give to Australians. The men in this camp work a five-day week and are at liberty to be away from the camp from 4.30 p.m. Friday until 7.30 a.m. Monday.
"It is the intention, as soon as possible, to provide a large camp at Narracoorte [sic] where men from Bangham and other isolated camps in the South-East can spend the week-end."
The Commissioner for Railways was replying to representations from the Hon LH Densley, Member of the Legislative Council, who also was a member of the Tatiata District Council. The Commissioner’s reply was published in the Narracoorte Herald of 17 May and the Border Watch of 20 May.
While Mr Densley’s letter has not been published, the nature of the commissioner’s reply and Mr Densley’s dual memberships suggest that he certainly was a civic-minded individual.
Sanitary facilities at the camp could be condemned by the local medical officer as inadequate, the Tatiata Council’s Health Officer, Dr KD Krantz, commented on the reply.
In moving that Cr Densley be thanked for his representations in the matter, another Councillor said that an inspection of the camp could be made by the Health Inspector, and if sanitary conditions were found to be inadequate, a report could be submitted to Council.
The local Health Inspector carried out this instruction and reported back to the Council that, “Sanitary arrangements consist of a series of movable cubicles over pits on a sandy rise. Cubicles are moved on to fresh pits and old ones filled in at frequent intervals. However, washup water and some kitchen refuse was being deposited in a shallow hole near the kitchen. I instructed the camp attendant to provide refuse buckets and have the material buried each day.“I do not consider that these men are being subjected to any undue hardships in regard to camping conditions as the amenities provided for them are equal to those provided for local men under similar conditions." This report appeared in Bordertown’s Border Chronicle of 17 June 1948.
Did the men feel that the conditions were only a slight improvement on those endured when drafted into the German Army, as many of them had been? At least there were not bombs and bullets flying around, but see below.
It wasn’t only moving the rails from the train which had brought them to the Wolseley railway yards (as discussed in the previous blog entry) which was dangerous. Even travelling to work might have more than normal dangers.
On 2 September 1948, a ganger probably had had his life saved by former medical students after a motor trolley carrying the men had stopped suddenly. The ganger was thrown heavily to the ground when a bar came lose, creating an obstruction which led to the sudden stop. After being treated on the scene, the ganger was admitted to hospital with several head injuries as well as a broken leg and ribs, according to Border Chronicle.
At this time, we do not know if this incident involved anyone from the First Transport. Tragically, a workplace accident did lead to the death of one of the First Transporters later that month.
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| Miervaldis Indriksons' ID photo from his Bonegilla card Source: NAA |
Miervaldis Indriksons, then aged only 30, was driving a front end loader to fill in a railway dam at Narracoorte. The machine toppled and Indriksons tried to jump clear, but caught his foot in the steering wheel. He was taken to the local hospital but died two hours later from his internal injuries, on 15 September 1948.
Lutheran Pastor K Hartman of Bordertown conducted the funeral the next day. The railways arranged transport to allow his fellow countrymen to attend. The funeral also was attended by the Engineer in Charge of the broadening, EL Walpole, the man who was to speak to the Mount Gambier Rotary Club eight days later on what the broadening project involved (see previous entry).
His fellow countrymen must have been the ones who told the Border Chronicle reporter that Miervaldis had been the only surviving member of a family of eight killed during the War. There was believed to be a small son still alive in Europe.
Pastor Hartman had been keeping an eye on the Bangham men since he first visited on 14 January. He discovered that none of the 20 Protestants had a copy of the Bible in English. The next day, the Border Chronicle published his letter appealing for financial help to purchase bibles for the men, with a parallel version in their mother tongue if possible.
There were other incidents among the Bangham men involving the First Transporters. One was Petras Bulke, a Lithuanian who had to be admitted to hospital in March 1948 after accidentally swallowing some kerosene. As the Border Chronicle reported at the time, “Mr Bulke was performing a trick which involved its use”.
It looks like problems getting Petras Bulke to medical assistance had been included in Mr Densley’s letter, since the Railway Commissioner’s reply included, "The Engineer-in-Charge of the work has the responsibility for seeing that sick or injured men are conveyed to the nearest doctor, and, so far as I am aware, his duties in this respect are not neglected even when the injuries are the result of brawls after working hours.
"The particular case referred to by Dr. Krantz was of an unusual character, and the delay in conveying the men (sic) to Bordertown was due to prompt advice not being given to the Engineer at Wolseley. We do not of course, keep ambulance vehicles at each camp, but first aid out fits, and employees qualified in first aid are available at all camps."
Dr Krantz further commented to the Tatiata Council that the delay in the case of kerosene poisoning was due to lack of telephone communication. Sometimes vehicles were not available and bad roads were also an obstacle. The lack of telephones in the Bangham area made the news also in August, when a public meeting in Bordertown agreed to petition the Post-Master General to provide telephone services from Bordertown to the area.
The Railway Commissioner had mentioned brawls after hours. This was not the only public mention of violent behaviour among young men traumatised by being caught up in World War II, mostly most unwillingly.
The Border Chronicle of 29 April 1948 reported that Aleksandrs Kirpiconoks, along with a later Latvian arrival, both probably without legal representation, had pleaded guilty to charges of disorderly behaviour and resisting arrest at Wolseley one Saturday earlier in that month. They were each fined £1 with 7/6 costs on the first charge and £2 plus 10/6 interpreter’s fee on the second charge.
A schedule from the Commonwealth Employment Service tells us that the men had been promised a weekly income of £5/19/6. This was a bit more than the basic wage at the time, reported in the Mount Gambier Border Watch as being £5/8/- in Adelaide from the beginning of the first pay period in February. This probably was a gross salary, with Pay As You Go tax yet to be deducted. As well, Railways might have been deducting more to cover the cost of the food for the men, and maybe even the cost of employing the “camp attendant”. The total of £3/17/6 to be paid by Kirpiconoks and his friend may well have swallowed up one week’s wages for both.
Also during April 1948, police were called to sort out a “disturbance” among some of the Baltic men on a freight train on which they were travelling back to the Bangham camp. Several windows were broken. The railway authorities would not allow the train to depart until the melee was sorted out. The result was two of the First Transporters, Antanas Brazauskas and Antanas Budrionis appearing before two Justices of the Peace on charges of wilful damage, for breaking the railway windows, and offensive behaviour. Again prrobably without legal representation, both pleaded guilty and were each fined £1 with 17/6 costs on the first count and £1 with 10/6 interpreter’s fee on the second. The total this time was £3/8/-, still a sobering amount of their weekly income.
In all fairness, I must point out that 9 other miscreants appeared before the Wolseley Court during the month covered by this report. Most cases involved drinking, fighting or “disorderly behaviour”. I have not found more reports of the Bangham camp residents appearing before the courts.
Another untoward incident in January 1949 involved one of the men already mentioned, Antanas Brazauskas. He was attacked in his tent by a fellow Lithuanian who he had regarded as a friend. The attacker found a rifle in Brazauskas’ tent and fired it about twenty times, it was alleged, piercing holes in the tent fabric.
Despite injuries, Brazauskas was able to stagger to the tent of two others who took him to a third tent, where he was “carefully guarded”. One of the men in the third tent, Feliksas Subacius, also was from the First Transport. The men tried to get police help, but had to wait for a day until a policeman from Wolseley arrived.
The men prepared a report to the Regional Director of Employment, Adelaide, claiming that this was not the first time that the attacker had moved against other men. “In the meantime”, they reported, “we approached our superiors and told them that our lives were endangered through the presence of the offender, and that either he or we would have to leave the camp”. The railway authorities had not removed the attacker or informed the men of their intentions by the time they had stipulated, so they had gone to Adelaide to lodge their complaint.
They had asked the Chief Engineer’s Department to give them employment somewhere else in the SAR. The men had been transferred to Terowie, more than 500 Km from Bangham and less than 25 Km from Peterborough.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
“These Baltic immigrants are, generally, reasonably well educated, and a proportion of them have a smattering of English. The latter are selected for transfer to other centres where English is taught, and they are trained for railway traffic duties. The others gradually acquire a knowledge of English from daily contact with Australian workmen.
“It is not practicable for the Railways Commissioner to supply transport to enable a Bordertown school teacher to visit the Bangham camp at nights (as) suggested nor is it practicable to provide additional amenities in these camps for the reasons given. It is considered, however, that the camp at Narracoorte, when constructed will provide relaxation at weekends.”
Relaxation at weekends probably was not what the Hon LH Densley MLC was seeking for the men in his letter referenced above, but it was the conclusion reached by the Railways Commissioner in the reply presented to the Tatiana District Council in May 1948.
Elsewhere I have read that the SAR was employing English-speaking migrants from a variety of places in the United Kingdom, leading the Baltic employees to wonder which English they were supposed to be acquiring by daily contact.
Three months later, another letter, this time to the Adelaide Advertiser from a church minister based in Bordertown, appealed for English language classes for the group at Bangham. He wrote that “constant association with these men has revealed that they have definite potentialities of becoming some of our finest Australian citizens. But, how can these potentialities develop into realities if they are debarred reasonable opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of the language of the country?
“Most of these men began their work with the railways with a knowledge of English which barely exceeded ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Repeated representations have been made to responsible authorities about the camp at Bangham, with the reply that it is ‘impracticable’ to make arrangements for an English teacher to visit it.”
As noted already, the 17 or 18 men speakers of good or excellent English had left in February, while Girts Broders, the original leader appointed by the Employment authorities in Bonegilla, probably had gone too. We have to hope that there were good English speakers among the later groups or the men were somehow picking up enough English to survive from their Australian colleagues.
English lessons finally arrived at the camp in December 1948, after a petition from the SAR at Bangham. The 40 students were supplied with free notebooks and a textbook called, “English for Newcomers to Australia” when they attended their first Friday night class on 10 December. But then their lessons came to an abrupt end, as their new teacher was leaving the district. The plan, thank goodness, was to obtain the services of another teacher in the new year.
It would be good to report that this plan was actioned, but I can find no further mention of English classes for the Bangham men in the South Australian newspapers digitised by Trove, at least until the men probably had left by the end of October 1949.
Indeed, the only 1949 report is the shoot up of Antanas Brazauskas’ tent in January and its consequences. Either the Bangham camp had settled down, or the local press reporters and their editors had lost interest.
Sources
Border Chronicle (1948) 'Balt Swallows Kerosene' Bordertown, SA 25 March p 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212918840 accessed 29 December 2023.
Border Chronicle (1948) 'English Classes for Balts' Bordertown, SA 16 December p 8 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212921875 accessed 29 December 2023
Border Chronicle (1948) 'Petition for Telephonic Service to Bangham Area' Bordertown, SA 19 August p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212920470 accessed 20 April 2024.
Border Chronicle (1948) 'Sanitary conditions at Wolseley Railway Station "A Menace"' Bordertown, SA 17 June p 1
Hartman, KE (1948) 'Tuition for Balts' Advertiser Adelaide 28 August 1948 p 2 194808 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43780741 accessed 29 December 2023.
Narracoorte Herald (1949) ‘Balts Leave Bangham Camp After Disturbance: Lithuanian attacked and injured’ Narracoorte, SA 14 February p 4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article147143280 accessed 15 April 2024.
National Archives of Australia, Department of Labour and National Service, Central Office; MT29/1, Employment Service Schedules; 21 (1947 – 1950), Schedule of displaced persons who left the Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla Victoria for employment in the State of South Australia – [Schedule no SA1 to SA31], 1948 – 1950, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=23150376 accessed 7 May 2024.
National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947–1956; INDRIKSONS, Miervaldis : Year of Birth - 1918 : Nationality - LATVIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number - 761, 1947–1948, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203644069 accessed 15 May 2024.
Wikipedia, 'Les Densley' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Densley accessed 15 April 2024.
