Not all about the Heintzelman voyage was happiness. Lost luggage spoiled the trip for several.
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Nikolajs Bergtals: see below for his 'found' story
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Estonian woman, Salme Pochla, would have had her voyage ruined already when told that she would not be allowed to enter Australia. She may or may not have been told the reason: an adverse security report received after the Heintzelman had sailed.
To cap it off, some or all of her luggage, described as “packages", was lost. No trace of it could be found in Fremantle – or Perth presumably, either, since the luggage was transferred there for Customs examination on 29 November.
Then there was Karolis Prasmutas, a Lithuanian man who we have met in an earlier blog entry. Once he had reached his first employer, the State Electricity Commission at Yallourn in Victoria, he set about making written inquiries. He described his luggage as a square box made of “tin aluminium” painted blue. Knowing Karolis from his blog entry, he may well have made the square box himself.
His missing box contained his professional books and tools as well as some clothes and shoes. He suggested that the value of the lost luggage of about £40, around 4 weeks income when the minimum wage was £5/9/-, less tax.
He wrote to the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) representative in Sydney saying that the luggage had not come off the Heintzelman with him. Immigration officials had told him that they would let him know about the luggage when he arrived at Bonagilla. However, the Immigration official he talked with at Bonegilla told him that he had no information.
It was the Provisional Committee of the International Refugee Organisation (PCIRO) which had organised the Heintzelman’s voyage from Germany on behalf of the Australian Government.
A member of the Australian Parliament’s upper house, the Senate, got involved. One reason for Senator Donald Grant’s involvement may have been that he was based in Sydney, like the IRO. He wrote to the company which had handled the Heintzelman’s arrival in Fremantle, the Orient Steam Navigation Company, to say that an IRO staff member had passed Karolis’ letter to him.
Correspondence on the missing box continued for nearly 6 months, until a senior Immigration official in Canberra advised that no further action was required from the Department’s Western Australia office. The definitive advice may have been that from the manager of a transport service employed by the Orient Company who wrote that he had inquired of Stuttgart in Germany without getting a reply and had also had a thorough check done of the Perth camps, a warehouse and the Fremantle wharves.
He noted that in this instance the majority of the names on the packages transported were “impossible to read or understand whilst some 200 packages were without marks or numbers". Due to this, the company had relied on the migrants identifying and claiming their luggage at the Graylands camp.
Although there is no mention of it on the file we have to assume, as the transport manager seems to have done, that Karolis was sent to this camp and not Swanbourne. Either that or the more than 400 at Swanbourne were bussed to Graylands to be part of the scrimmage — a possibility of which there is no remaining evidence.
Having the new arrivals identify their own luggage may well have led to a situation where nice looking luggage was claimed by someone else, especially if it had lost or badly damaged labels.
Karolis Prasmutas was not the only Lithuanian to suffer loss of his luggage. Birute Gruzas, formerly Tamulyte, told me that her luggage had disappeared before she was able to claim it in Perth. As Birute had already lost everything she was carrying when a bomb blew up the bridge she was crossing on her way to refuge in Germany, she was one tough 19-year-old to pick herself up and carry on for the second time in her life.
These are the known cases of lost luggage. How many others were there, if Birute's story is not recorded?
On the other hand, we also have one example of lost articles being found and returned to their owner.
On 5 December 1947, that is 3 days after the Kanimbla had left, a wallet was handed in at the Fremantle police station. Given the contents of the wallet recorded by the police, it may have been more in the nature of a folder or portfolio.
Those contents were a foreign passport in the name of Nikolajs Bergtals, a temporary travel document in the same name, a map of Nord West Deutschland (Northwest Germany), a visiting card, a letter written in a foreign language, two foreign doctors’ prescriptions, six personal references and six photographs.
The man who had found the wallet had a Russian name, Ivan Estinoff. He was said to be “of the Jeanette Fruit Palace” in High Street, Fremantle, so perhaps its proprietor. Given his presence in Australia, he may well have held similar political views to the new arrivals.
The Acting Commonwealth Migration Officer for Western Australia, RW Gratwick, posted the wallet by registered mail directly to Bonegilla on 17 December. It crossed with a letter from the Acting Commonwealth Migration Officer at the Bonagilla camp, LT Gamble, who enquired on behalf of Nikolajs on 21 December. An undated memorandum from Gamble to Gratwick, but with a December receipt stamp, records the arrival of the package still containing all the articles.
Gamble added, “The articles referred to have been handed to the owner who desires to express his grateful thanks for your action in the matter.”
Its arrival must have been something of a Christmas present. No wonder we have another thankful new arrival.
SOURCES
Australian Government, Fair Work Commission ‘The history of the Australian minimum wage’ https://www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/history/history-australian-minimum-wage accessed 30 June 2025.
National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Western Australian Branch; PP482/1, Correspondence files [nominal rolls], single number series; 82, General Heintzelman - arrived Fremantle 28 November 1947 - nominal rolls of passengers https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=439196 accessed 27 June 2025.
