Rasa’s grandfather, Adomas Ivanauskas, was among 29 First Transport men sent to work for Broken Hill Proprietory Limited at its Iron Knob mine in South Australia in 4 groups in early 1948. He was likely to have been friendly with the other 28, including Stasys Malickas.
The first group of 10, who were entirely from Lithuania, was sent on 19 February, with Stasy among them. Before this, Stasys had spent less than 2 weeks fruit-picking for J Nethersole & Sons in Ardmona, Victoria, absent from the Bonegilla camp between 29 January and 11 February 1948.
The important thing to know about Stasys is that he was identified by the Soviet invaders in 1941 as actively opposed to them in the then capital city, Kaunas, and imprisoned when aged only 18. Presumably he was released quickly after the German invasion of June that year. The opposition and imprisonment earned Stasys a place in the online Encyclopedia of Lithuania and the World.
But no, he did not flee from the return of the Soviet forces. Instead, the reason he gave his Australian interviewers in October 1947 for being in Germany was that he was “forced to come by (the) German Labour Office”.
 |
| Stasys Malickas' photographed in 1947 for his Bonegilla card Source: Bonegilla Migrant Experience |
Three American Expeditionary Force (AEF) DP Registration Records held by the Arolsen Archives give his usual occupation as Sailor. That may have been enough for the Germans to direct him to work where they wanted him, just as the Australian Government was later to send him where they said he was most needed.
Altogether, 16 Lithuanians from the First Transport were needed at Iron Knob, according to the Commonwealth Employment Service. When they heard that Jurgis Glušauskas-Arminas, then in the South Australian coal-mining town of Leigh Creek, wanted to start a Lithuanian language newspaper but needed financial support, 9 of them donated a most generous total of £6/5/-. While this translates into only $12.50 in Australia’s modern decimal currency, their donation was on the high side of the adult male basic wage in 1948, so at least equivalent to $1005 today.
Stasys was one of the donors, contributing 10/- (10 shillings, the equivalent of a decimal dollar, but equal to $85 today when we consider all the donations).
Since Stasys was in South Australia, we have access to one of those helpful record cards kept by the Department of Immigration’s Adelaide Office. The first entry on the back has him living in Market Street, Adelaide, on 27 June 1949 when maybe he should have been still working where sent in Iron Knob.
The next entry, dated 24 November 1952, does have him in Iron Knob. The following entry, dated 1 June 1954, has him back at an Adelaide address on Gilbert Street. The mysterious “NW” initials besides it may well stand for “No Work”.
Three months later, life had improved apparently, because he had gone to Radium Hill to work as a miner. When Jonas Mockunas wrote about the Electrolytic Zinc activities around Rosebery, Tasmania, the local miners then would not let the new arrivals work underground with them. Attitudes must have changed in South Australia in 1954. Was this because Australians now knew what radioactivity could do from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan to end WWII in Asia? This might have meant fewer Australians willing to work with radioactive ore at Radium Hill.
A final cryptic entry on the back of the card partly translates as “Dept of Mines, EC10 (2) Nov 54, 27.5.57.”
Stasys became an Australian citizen when still based in Radium Hill, on 4 October 1958.
After that, we next read about him after his death in Tasmania, said to be in July 1984. He was buried in the Mersey Vale Memorial Park, at a place called Quoiba, in the Devenport municipality in northern Tasmania. The grave was overgrown when photographed for the Find A Grave website, but that can happen quickly after good rain.
Stasys Malickas' grave in Tasmania
Stasys was only 61 years old when he died. Had mining radioactive minerals at Radium Hill shortened his life?
As the National Archives of Australia’s RecordSearch Website can find only one Malickas, our Stasys, we assume that he was the man who married Betty Edith Malickas, the former Betty Styles. She also was buried in the Mersey Vale Memorial Park but nearly 40 years later. Indeed, her death notice in the Burnie Advocate says that she was the wife of Stan, likely to be the Australianised forename he adopted.
Betty had been born on 6 December 1935, so she was 13 years younger than Stasys, who was born on 24 December 1922. While Stasys was only 61 when he died, Betty had lived for a full 87 years. There was one son in the Advocate notice, so we assume again that Stasys or Stan was his father.
Stasys had been a Christmas 1922 present to the former Pranė Tuksevičiūtė and Konstantas Malickas, with his birth recorded in Kaunas.
The Malickas family grave in Kaunas’ Panemunė cemetery contains the burial of Stasys’ father, who died in 1931, so when Stasys was only 8. His mother and one sister were caught by the Soviet reoccupation, dying in 1964 and 1984 respectively.
 |
| The Malickas family headstone in a Kaunas cemetery Source: Cemety.lt |
The papers collected in Germany in relation to his resettlement in Australia say that he had more than the usual education, with 6 years of elementary schooling and 4 years of a commercial school. How this fits in with working as a Sailor is your guess, as the papers go on to record that he had worked for two years as a Salesman in Lithuania.
He told the Australians that he was fluent in Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and German. English was to come, but he clearly was a versatile addition to Australia.
CITE THIS AS: Ščevinskienė, Rasa and Tündern-Smith, Ann (2026) ‘Stasys Malickas (1922-1984): Another Iron Knob Employee’
SOURCES
Advocate, ‘Death Notices, MALICKAS Betty Edith’ https://www.theadvocate.com.au/tributes-funerals/death-notices/486882/malickas-betty-edith/, accessed 9 October 2026.
AEF DP Registration Record ‘Malickas Stasys’ Folder DP2524, names from MALIY, NIKOLAJ to MALIK, Dymitr (1), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from MA, DocID 68152231, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/68152231, accessed 9 October 2026.
AEF DP Registration Record ‘Malickas Stasys’ Folder DP2524, names from MALIY, NIKOLAJ to MALIK, Dymitr (1), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from MA, DocID 68152232, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/68152232, accessed 9 October 2026.
AEF DP Registration Record ‘Malickas Stasys’ Folder DP2524, names from MALIY, NIKOLAJ to MALIK, Dymitr (1), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from MA, DocID 68152233, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/68152233, accessed 9 October 2026.
Australian Libraries and Archives Copyright Coalition, ‘Part 1. Unlocking Orphan Works: The Untold Stories of our Heritage; Case Study: State Library of South Australia, Australijos Lietuvis’ https://alacc.org.au/case-study-state-library-of-south-australia/, accessed 9 October 2026.
Australian Lithuanian History, ‘Australian Lithuanian newspaper’ https://salithohistory.blogspot.com/2008/12/, accessed 9 October 2026.
Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection, ‘Stasys Malickas’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203617276, accessed 9 October 2026.
Cemety, ‘Kostas Malickas’ https://cemety.lt/public/deceaseds/1454071?type=deceased, accessed 9 October 2026.
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1959) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, ACT, 30 April, p 1465 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/240998669/25980515, accessed 9 October 2026.
Elektroninis Archyvų Informacinė Sistema (Electronic Archives Information System), ‘Kauno dekanato bažnyčių gimimo metrikų knyga’ (‘Birth register book of churches in the Kaunas deanery’, in Lithuanian), Kaunas Church of the Holy Cross birth record Nr 31 of 1922, p 51 https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/share/?manifest=https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/view/267358681/316248084/lt/iiif/manifest&lang=lt&page=51, accessed 9 October 2026.
Electronic Archives Information System ‘Malickienė Tuksevičiutė Určiauskaitė Pranė’ https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext/view/322954983, accessed 9 October 2026.
Enciklopedija Lietuvai ir pasaulio (Encyclopedia of Lithuania and the World) ‘Stasys Malickas (1922):103138’ (In Lithuanian) https://lietuvai.lt/wiki/Stasys_Malickas_(1922):103138, accessed 9 October 2026.
Find A Grave ‘Stasys “Stan” Malickas’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/244045023/stasys-malickas, accessed 9 October 2026.
Find A Grave ‘Betty Edith Malickas’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/273262408/betty-edith-malickas, accessed 9 October 2026.
National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, Central Office; A11772, Migrant Selection Documents for Displaced Persons who travelled to Australia per General Stuart Heintzelman departing Bremerhaven 30 October 1947, 1947-1947; 412, MALICKAS Stasys DOB 24 December 1922, 1947-1947 https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005705, accessed 9 October 2026.
National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; MALICKAS STASYS, MALICKAS Stasys - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947, 1947-1958 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=9205855, accessed 9 October 2026.
No comments:
Post a Comment