Updated 11 August 2025.
Kostas Bušma is third from the right in this photograph sent to his family in Lithuania by Rasa’s grandfather, Adomas Ivanauskas, in Australia. This made her interested to find out who this man was and about his fate.
The photo was most likely taken during some Lithuanian gathering or celebration, because three of the four men in it are known to be Lithuanian. It was probably taken when her grandfather lived in Melbourne.
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| On the left is Rasa's grandfather's girlfriend, Beryl, then Rasa's grandfather, Adomas Ivanauskas, then an unknown man, then Kostas Bušma, then an unknown woman, then Julius Petkinis; we believe that this photograph was taken in Melbourne Source: Collection of the author |
Kostas before Australia
The man third from the right was born on 1 October 1923 in Gailiskiai village, Skuodas district, Lithuania. Kostas Bušma’s parents were Juozas and Veronika, maiden name Janutyte. This information is from his birth record in Ylakiai church. On his birth record, his first name is Konstantinas. By his time in Germany, he had shortened this name to Kostas to make it simpler.
Unfortunately, the German Arolsen Archives has no digitised documents about Kostas or Konstantinas Bušma. The record of his interview for possible migration to Australia says that he was “forcibly evacuated by the Germans”, however. Perhaps, like Juozas Abromaitis, he was seized from the street or a workplace to be sent to dig trenches for German soldiers.
The record of interview also states that he had completed the basic 4 years of primary school education in Lithuania. In addition, he had attended 2 years of trade school, studying to be a mechanic.
He had worked as a locksmith in Lithuania from 1939, so from when he was 16, until 1944. He also found work as a locksmith in Dresden, Germany, from 9 October 1944 until May 1945. Perhaps his evacuation to Germany was not as forcible as that of Abromaitis, after all, especially if he did not leave Lithuania until the July-October period like most of the others.
He had been employed as a car mechanic for 9 months before his interview. His place of employment was the REME Workshop, Wetter. REME stands for Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, the branch of the British Army which maintains its equipment.
A Website established by former members of the British Army of the Rhine points out that the lowest military rank at Wetter was Sergeant, as 35 officers supervised 1745 local civilians. Since the Website goes on to talk about the local community without mentioning Displaced Persons, that military rank and those numbers may have applied when the workshop was at its peak, not necessarily in 1947. Nonetheless, the base would have been a large employer of locals in that year, probably taking on Displaced Persons in preference to the recently defeated enemy.
Kostas almost did not make the selection for the first group of Displaced Persons to travel to Australia. The interview record states that he is “temp. medically unfit”. The reason apparently is “W.R.” and a “blood test was still to come to hand”. Near the bottom of the record, “Rejected” has been covered in typed crosses and replaced by “A”. It is not possible to enquire further into the lack of fitness because, perhaps unique among all the selection documents for the First Transport, the medical papers are missing.
Kostas’ start in Australia
Kostas’ Bonegilla migrant camp card confirms that he arrived in Australia with the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman on 30 October 1947. Another early document is USAT General Stuart Heintzelman passenger list from National archives of Australia. This shows that Kostas Bušma left Germany for Australia from Lintorf DP camp in the British zone.
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| Kostas Bušma's identity photo from his Bonegilla card Source: Bonegilla Migrant Experience |
Kostas’ first job in Australia was with the South Australian Department of Woods. He left Bonegilla camp in a party of 33 men on 7 January 1948, sent to Mount Gambier, just over the western border from Victoria. The men started work on 9 January 1948 and were paid a £5.12.6 salary each week.
On 19 November 1948, Kostas applied for a transfer to the "Rocket Range". By this The District Employment Officer, Mount Gambier, recording the application, probably meant the Woomera range, also in South Australia. Probably Kostas had found out from other Lithuanians working there that the pay was much better as civilians earned at least £9-10 per week. He was told on 20 January 1949 that his application had not been approved.
Kostas disappears
The District Employment Officer advised his Regional Director in Adelaide in November 1949 that Bušma had disappeared from his employment on 12 February 1949 and his current whereabouts were unknown. Meanwhile, the Department of Immigration, having been advised of his disappearance on 25 February, had located him in the Melbourne suburb of Albert Park. He had been told to return to Mount Gambier but that effort must have been given up by June. In that month the Adelaide Office of the Department of Immigration transferred his file to the Melbourne Office.
Kostas and kindness
Two newspaper reports, as well as the photo which starts this tale, show that Kostas sometimes mixed with other Lithuanians. On 10 May 1955, the newspaper Mūsų Pastogė in an article on List of Donors reported that Kostas Bušma had donated 10 shillings for Lithuanians remaining in Germany. On 11 December 1963, the same newspaper in another List of Donors reported that he had donated another 10 shillings, this time for the Australian Lithuanian Community. The size and frequency of the donations indicate a man with not much money to spare.
Kostas becomes an Australian
Kostas Busma acquired his Australian citizenship on 3 April 1960. His address at the time was 81 Robert Street in Northcote, a Melbourne suburb. At this time, we lack information on where Kostas lived between his Albert Park address in mid-1949 and his 1960 Northcote address, let alone what work he did, with one exception.
The exception is due to Kostas telling fellow workers that “England is on her last legs, and it wouldn’t be long before we take over”. The place where he said this was the Government Aircraft Factory (GAF), back when planes actually were made in Australia. Special Branch of the Victorian Police thought that the comment was worth bringing to Immigration’s attention; ASIO (the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) advised that this was not a security issue.
Kostas’ work
He probably was working in the GAF’s main premises at Fisherman’s Bend, next door to the place of his arrival at Port Melbourne, 12 years earlier. He may have been helping to assemble English Electric Canberra twin-jet tactical bombers or Jindivik jet-powered radio controlled target drones. In any event, he was in much more suitable employment, as a former locksmith and motor mechanic, then when he was cutting down trees or otherwise working with timber near Mount Gambier.
Australian electoral rolls for around every five years from 1963 until 1980 confirm that Kostas continued to live in Melbourne, at addresses which were close to each other. On the other hand, 6 known addresses from 1960 onwards indicate someone who moved frequently because he was renting his accommodation.
The occupations given on the electoral rolls were machinist, process worker, body builder and body maker. ‘Process worker’ is someone doing repetitive tasks, maybe on a production line, in a factory. ‘Bodymaker’ and ‘body builder’ may refer to someone helping to manufacture cars or, in Kostas case, airoplanes. The cars' bodies are their shells, excluding the mechanical parts. Perhaps this term is used also in plane construction.
We think that Kostas lived alone and had no relatives in Australia. There is no-one else with the same family name at any of his addresses.
Kostas’ death
His death certificate says that he died on 11-13 August 1983, aged 59. In the Melbourne newspaper Teviskes aidai, on 19 August 1983, a notice said that Kostas Bušma had died during the previous week in Melbourne, wrongly said to be aged 58.
With no-one looking for him, the police had taken him to the crematorium. A Mr Arlauskas had cared enough to report this to the community. Kostas would have been taken to a morgue, not a crematorium, as he was not to be cremated or buried until a post-mortem had been held and enquiries to locate relatives had been exhaustive.
From the death certificate, we can find out that Kostas died while living at yet another address, 24/82 Nicholson, Fitzroy, Melbourne. This was a 3-storeyed house built at the height of Melbourne’s wealth, in the 1880s. From Kostas’ unit number, 24, we can tell that it had been subdivided into at least 24 units, 8 per floor. From later evidence, it seems that these were rooms with shared kitchen and bathroom facilities.
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| Kostas' final address, 82 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy Source: Google Maps Streetview |
At least the formerly grand home was in a grand position, across the road from the parklands surrounding Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building. This was built in 1879-80 to house the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1980-81 and also was the home of the Commonwealth of Australia’s first parliaments, from 1901 to 1927. We have to hope that Kostas was well enough to appreciate this grandeur.
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| If Kostas could not see the Royal Exhibition Building from an upstairs window, this is how he would have seen the neighbour from the front door of 82 Nicholson Street; the commemorative World Heritage Site banner being an addition from 2004 or after Source: Donaldytong on Wikipedia |
The death certificate says, ‘Not any’ against ‘occupation’, and this also was left blank on the 1980 electoral roll. Kostas was too young to be eligible for an aged pension, but he might have been receiving another type of income, for example, a government pension if he was too ill to work.
The death certificate also says that Kostas was buried only on 30 September 1983. This 6-week gap was because the police searching for relatives in Australia. It also was because he died when no-one else was present, so the law required a post-mortem examination and inquest into the death. The inquest was held another 6 weeks after the burial, on 14 November 1983.
The coroner declared that Kostas had died from “a traumatic sub-dural haemorrhage on (sic) the evidence adduced I am unable to say how the Deceased came to sustain the injury.” That was after examining depositions from 7 witnesses, 3 of whom were residents of the same address. One was a frequent visitor to this address and another its owner. A policeman and the doctor who conducted the post-mortem made up the numbers.
Only one of the witnesses was Lithuanian: he was Vytautas Matulaitis, the pensioner who had identified Kostas’ body. He confirmed that Kostas had an invalid pension, the type available to Australians who are too ill to work. As Vytautas lived on the opposite side of Melbourne’s Central Business District to Kostas, we have to hope that they used to meet at the Lithuanian club in North Melbourne, so with other Lithuanians also.
Vytautas swore under oath that he had known Kostas for 20 years, that is, since around 1963. Another friend must have been Mr Arlauskas, initial or first name not given, but possibly Victorian resident Juozas, who cared enough to report Kostas’ fate to Tėviškės aidai. Yet another friend, Rasa’s grandfather, Adomas Ivanauskas, had left for Western Australia and died earlier, in 1980.
Kostas’ neighbours in the rooming house added that he had few friends, presumably based on his lack of visitors to this address. They and the building owner said that he was a heavy drinker, particularly after pension payday.
His next-door neighbour had been woken by a noise outside his door before midnight on 10 August. He found Kostas there, lying on his back, snoring, on the floor with blood splashed on a nearby wall. He asked another neighbour to help him move Kostas into his own room, but that neighbour refused, so the next door neighbour went back to bed. Some hours later, after he woke again and found Kostas in the same position outside his door, he held him under the armpits to drag him back to his bed. He managed to manoeuvre Kostas onto his bed. Kostas was still bleeding from the nose.
The owner of the rooming house came 2 days later to collect the rent. Kostas didn’t answer the door but the next door neighbour came out of his room and told the owner about the incidents of the earlier night. The owner managed to break through a panel of Kostas’ door and saw that he seemed to be dead. He then called the police.
No-one had seen how Kostas received the head injury, but the police did no regard the circumstances as suspicious. That is to say, that they thought Kostas had injured himself when drunk rather than being hit by another person. This explains why the coroner concluded that he was “unable to say how the Deceased came to sustain the injury”.
Kostas’ body had been taken from the morgue for burial by the Government contractor on 28 September. This was after police enquiries could not find any relatives and his assets were regarded as not being valuable enough to pay for his burial.
He now rests in the Fawkner Memorial Park, Melbourne, in a grave marked by someone else's name. What will have happened, we know from the fate of Rasa's grandfather, is that 2 or 3 people may have been buried in the same plot at the same time. It looks like another of these people, Roman Kosuszok, possibly another former Displaced Person, a refugee like Kostas, was fortunate enough to have someone who cared enough to pay for a small plaque and mark the graves border with stones and wood.
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| Kostas is sharing a grave in the Fawkner Memorial Park with one or two other people Source: Erin D on FindaGrave |
As victims of war, they and anyone else with them deserve a better fate than this.
CITE THIS DOCUMENT AS: Ščevinskienė, Rasa and Tündern-Smith, Ann (2025) 'Kostas Bušma: Another man in a photo' https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2025/08/kostas-busma-another-man-in-photo.html.Sources:
Ancestry.com, ‘All results for Kostas Busma’ https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=Kostas_Busma&event=_australia_5027&keyword=Electoral+roll&searchMode=advanced accessed 5 February 2025, starts with Australia, electoral rolls 1963, 1968, 1972, 1977, 1980.
Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, ‘Deaths in the State of Victoria’, No 26004/83, Kostas Busma, obtained from https://my.rio.bdm.vic.gov.au/login, accessed 5 February 2025.
Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card Lookup, ‘Kostas Busma’, https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203671575 accessed 5 February 2025.
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1960) 'Certificates of Naturalization’ 30 June, p 2269 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article240549078 accessed 5 February 2025.
Find a Grave ‘Kostas Busma' https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212416517/kostas-busma accessed 11 August 2025.
Lithuanian State Historical Archives, ‘Skuodo dekanato bažnyčių gimimo metrikų knyga,1923-01-01 - 1923-12-31’ in Lithuanian [Church birth register of the Skuodas deanery, 1.1.1923 – 31.12.1923] https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/share/?manifest=https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/view/267602721/316266594/lt/iiif/manifest&lang=lt&page=85 accessed 5 February 2025. [Kostas Bušma’s birth record is on page 85, record number 176.]
National Archives of Australia: Collector of Customs, Western Australia; PP482/1, Correspondence files [nominal rolls], single number series, 1926-52; 82, GENERAL HEINTZELMAN - arrived Fremantle 28 November 1947 – nominal rolls of passengers, 1947-52 [page 26 ] https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=439196 accessed 5 February 2025.
National Archives of Australia: Department of Labour and National Service, Branch Office/Regional Administration, South Australia; D1917/0, Correspondence files, annual single number series with "D" prefix, 1945-1954; D15/49, Displaced persons - survey to determine apparent absconders, 1949-51 [pages 89, 104] recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=426077 accessed 3 August 2025.
National Archives of Australia: Department of Labour and National Service, Central Office; MT29/1, Employment Service Schedules, 1947-50; 21, 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 [page 100] https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=23150376 accessed 5 February 2025.
Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] (1955) ‘Soc. Globos Mot. Dr-jos Melbourne Vajaus Vokietijoje Pasilikusiems Lietuviams, Aukotojų Sąrašas’ in Lithuanian [Soc. Guardianship of the Mother of Dr. Melbourne for Lithuanians Remaining in Germany, List of Donors]’ Sydney, 10 May, p 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/259362346 accessed 5 February 2025.
Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] (1963) ‘Aukos A. L. Bendruomenei’ in Lithuanian [‘Donations to the A. L. Community] Sydney, 11 December, p 2 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1963/1963-12-11-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf accessed 5 February 2025.
PROV, VA 2807 State Coroner's Office, VPRS 24/P0001 1983/1704 Given name : Kostas; Family name : Busma; Cause of death : Traumatic sub-dural haemorrhage; Location of hearing : Melbourne 1983-1983 https://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/020E49DD-F1C6-11E9-AE98-D33BEF04B52E.
Tėviškės aidai [The Echoes of Homeland] (1983) ‘Īš Mūsų Parapių’ in Lithuanian [‘In our Parishes’] Melbourne, 19 August, p 7 https://www.spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1983/1983-08-19-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf accessed 5 February 2025.
Wikipedia, ‘Royal Exhibition Building’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Exhibition_Building accessed 5 February 2025.
