Stasys Malickas (1922-1984): Another Iron Knob Employee, by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

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

Source:  Julie Henderson & Lacey Milier on Find A Grave

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.

Vladas Mituzas (1919-1956): An Early Death, by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

Rasa found a sad report in a May 1956 issue of the Lithuanian-Australia newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė: “Vladas Mituzas, aged 38, tragically ended his life in the Yarra River on 7 May. It seems that the deceased jumped from a city bridge into the river, seeking death”.

So what was Vladas' life like before this decision?

Vladislavas Mituzas was born on 7 April 1919 in Žagarė, Lithuania, to Jonas Mituzas and Zuzana, whose maiden name was Juknaitė. He finished high school, and apparently started studying at Vilnius University.

Vladas Mituzas' photo from his Bonegilla card

Source:  Bonegilla Migrant Experience

Documents from the Arolsen archive tell us that Vladas’ profession was bookkeeper and he spoke Lithuanian, German, and Latvian. He probably had learnt the Latvian from neighbours, since his hometown of Žagarė is on the Lithuanian-Latvian border.

Vladas had left Lithuania on his own, as shown by a 1946 message in the newspaper Žiburiai stating that he was looking for relatives and friends. At that time, he lived in Oldenburg.

At his interview for resettlement in Australia, Vladas must have talked about prior farming experience, as his potential occupation was recorded as “medium farmer”. As a bookkeeper studying at a university, he would have completed high school, but the interview records says only “5 years elementary school”.

He was selected to travel to Australia on the First Transport. His first residence in Australia, as for all the other passengers, was the newly opened Bonegilla migrant camp.

From 15 January 1948 to 23 January Vladas was in Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital, Melbourne. This probably was due to ill health or, perhaps, suspected tuberculosis (TB).

His first job in Australia was fruit-picking for Messrs Dundas Simpson of Ardmona, in northern Victoria, where he was sent with at least 180 others on 28 January 1948. This lasted for a good 6 weeks, as Vladas did not return to Bonegilla on 13 March 1948. Soon after, on 18 March, he was sent to Tasmania to pick more fruit – apples this time.

He immediately integrated into Tasmanian life, playing soccer for the South Launceston team, as reported by the local press in May and June. His integration should have been helped by the good English noted on his Bonegilla card.

At that time, he was probably happy, with hopes that his new life would be successful. We can say this because here is what is written about Vladas in a November 1948 publication from the Department of Immigration, Tomorrow’s Australians, under the title, Happy Picking Apples:

Lithuanian, Vladas Mituzas grins as he munches an apple while helping to harvest the crop at an orchard near Launceston, Tasmania.

“One of the many Balts employed by orchardists in the district, Mituzas is described by his employer as ‘well educated and an excellent worker’.

“A first class soccer player, Mituzas was selected to represent Tasmania in an interstate soccer carnival at Melbourne recently, but had to decline because of seasonal work.”

(In the past few years, Australians have been asked to call soccer by its international name of football instead, but problems can arise because there are 3 other codes of football played widely across the country.)

Vladas Mituzas and apple

Source:  Tomorrow's Australians

Alcohol was a problem for many of the early migrants who had survived World War II. Vladas was no exception.

On the same day that Tomorrow’s Australians was reporting his soccer success and his excellent apple-picking, the Hobart Mercury was reporting his appearance in the Launceston Police Court after being arrested for “having charge of a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor”.

Vladas had been wheeling his motorcycle in Charles Street, Launceston, while drunk. He explained his behaviour by saying that, in his homeland, it was not an offence to wheel a cycle while drunk. He knew he had too much to drink, and was taking the machine to a garage until he sobered up.

A passing Dutchman had to be brought into the court to interpret proceedings for Vladas, despite that “good” English.  The irony of this situation and the headline used in the Mercury (Dutchman was Easy to Understand) is that, back then, Australians used to refer to anyone saying something they could not understand as speaking "double Dutch".

The judge said he was satisfied Mituzas thought he was not doing wrong, and placed him on a good behaviour bond for six months. The “interpreter” said Mituzas sorry for the offence, and when he wanted to come in from Lilydale again to have some drink, he would travel by bus. At that time, Vladas lived in Lilydale, an area about 27 km north of Launceston.

We know that he decided to sell the motorcycle in July 1949, because Rasa found in a notice that he wanted to get 75 pounds for it. The advertisement was in a Launceston newspaper, with his contact details being “c/o H. Wilson, Lilydale”. A record card kept by the South Australian Office of the Department of Immigration says that he spent some time in Hobart, working for Cadbury, Fry, Pascall, a confectionery manufacturer, as a labourer, presumably after Lilydale.

The card then has an East Richmond address in inner Melbourne for Vladas, without any dates or remarks about his workplace or type of work. From inner Melbourne he moved to the inner Sydney suburb of Paddington and to work in central Sydney, in the St James Hotel in Elizabeth Street.

The card has him notifying the Adelaide, South Australia, office of the Department of Immigration in November 1952 that he now was living on South Terrace, in the central city, while working on North Terrace, in the Botanic Hotel. His occupation was cook, something of a change for a former bookkeeper and fruit-picker.

He must have arrived in Adelaide before reporting as required under the Aliens Act, since the Australijos Lietuvis newspaper reported that, on 23 August 1952, the football team Vytis (Chase) has been joined by the famous football player Vladas Mituzas from Sydney. On 27 September Australijos Lietuvis recorded, “Last Sunday, Vytis football players easily defeated the Australian team, Woodville North. Goals were scored by Kitas (4), Mituzas (2) and Armonas (1)".

The next move was back to Melbourne, with the Adelaide Office of Immigration transferring its file on Vladas on 4 September 1953. We await access to more files in the National Archives of Australia to find out what happened next.

The announcement of Vladas Mituzas’ death in Melbourne in May 1956 noted that “at first (he) participated in the life of Lithuanian athletes. Later, he was not seen at all among Lithuanians. Those who knew him say that he was fond of alcohol.

“After getting a fever, he was in the hospital for 10 months and only shortly before his death was released from it, having lost half of his lungs.

“During the war and post-war period, the deceased had to survive many difficult hours, and this could have broken his morale.

“The deceased did not leave any savings”. It seems that the hat was passed around among those who knew him, as was the case for another drowning death — but accidental then — 8 years earlier, that of Aleksandras Vasiliauskas.

The obituarist guessed at Mituzas’ last thought in life: “let (this) life and death be a serious lesson to the living who follow a similar path”.

Alcoholism and depression were purely moral issues to this obituarist, clearly, not problems which could be alleviated with medical support. This view would have been widespread at the time though, and persists even today.

Mituzas was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery in the inner north suburb of Carlton, said the obituary. Sadly, the online search engine for Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust, responsible for the Melbourne General Cemetery, cannot find him under his Mituzas last name, the Motuzas variant used by the obituarist, or either the long or short forms of his first name without a family name. Apart from this tribute and its sources, he appears to have become lost.

A decade after Vladas’ death, the Consulate-General of Lithuania in New York was looking for him in 1967. Its advertisement was published in three newspapers: Sandara in Chicago, Keleivis in Boston and Tėvynė in New York. Perhaps the search was being carried out at the request of relatives. If the search was tried in Australia, the family may have received their answer without the need for publication.

It was a pity that Vladas was separated from his family by circumstances beyond his control and was less fortunate than his older brother. Julius (1911-1999) lived in Lithuania as a Doctor of Physical Sciences who was a building materials specialist. He published more than 120 articles and patented 7 inventions. He had a wife and two children. The two brothers had completely different destinies.

CITE THIS AS:  Ščevinskienė,  Rasa and Tündern-Smith, Ann (2026) 'Vladas Mituzas (1919-1956):  An Early Death'

SOURCES:

‘AEF DP Registration Record, Mituzas Vladas’, Folder DP2742, names from MITUKIEWICZ, Wiktoria to MYZEQARI, Andrea, DocID: 68318293, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/68318293, and https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/68318294, accessed 7 October 2026.

Australijos lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian) (1952) ‘Futbolas’ (‘Football’, in Lithuanian) Adelaide, SA, 30 August, p 8 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/280312004, accessed 7 October 2026.

Australijos lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian) (1952) ‘Futbolas’ (‘Football’, in Lithuanian) Adelaide, SA, 27 September, p 4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/280312637, accessed 7 October 2026.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection, ‘Vladas Mituzas’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203899158, accessed 6 October 2026.

Elektroninis Archyvų Informacinė Sistema (Electronic Archives Information System), ‘Joniškio dekanato bažnyčių gimimo metrikų knyga’ (‘Birth register book of churches in the Joniškis deanery’, in Lithuanian), New Žagarė church birth Record 25, 1919.04.07, p 177 https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/share/?manifest=https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/view/267630300/275710919/lt/iiif/manifest&lang=lt&page=177, accessed 6 October 2026.

Elektroninis Archyvų Informacinė Sistema (Electronic Archives Information System), ‘Joniškio dekanato bažnyčių gimimo metrikų knyga’ (‘Birth register book of churches in the Joniškis deanery’, in Lithuanian) New Žagarė church birth record 65, 1911.04.27, p 54 https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/share/?manifest=https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/view/267629677/275689986/lt/iiif/manifest&lang=lt&page=54, accessed 7 October 2026.

Examiner (1948) ‘Soccer, Seniors’ Launceston, Tas, 8 May, p 14 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/52635583, accessed 6 October 2026.

Examiner (1948) ‘Today’s Teams, Soccer’ Launceston, Tas, 17 July, p 13 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/52642552, accessed 6 October 2026.

Keleivis (Traveller) (1967) ‘Konsulato Ieškomi‘ (‘Wanted by Consulate’, in Lithuanian) South Boston, MA, 15 March p 5 https://spauda.org/keleivis/archive/1967/1967-03-15-KELEIVIS.pdf, accessed 7 October 2026.

Mercury (1948) ‘Dutchman was easy to understand’ Hobart, Tas, 9 November, p 4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/27771241, accessed 6 October 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (1956) ‘Melbournas, Tragiška Tautiečio Mirtis’ (‘Tragic death of a compatriot’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, NSW, 23 May, p 4 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1956/1956-05-23-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 7 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; 601, MITUZAS Vladas DOB 7 April 1919, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005832, accessed 7 October 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; MITUZAS VLADAS, MITUZAS Vladas - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947, 1947-1952 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=9196162, accessed 6 October 2026.

Sandara (The League) (1967) ‘Prašaini Atsiliepti’ (‘Please Respond’, in Lithuanian) Chicago, IL, 17 March, p 3 https://spauda2.org/sandara/archive/1967/1967-03-17-SANDARA.pdf, accessed 7 October 2026.

Saturday Evening Express (1949) ‘Classified advertisements, Motors, Cycles, Trailers For Sale and Exchange’ Launceston, Tas, 16 July, p 15 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/265142734, accessed 6 October 2026.

Tėvynė (Homeland) (1967) ‘Paieškojimai‘ (‘Searches’ in Lithuanian) New York, NY, 7 April, p 3 https://spauda.org/tevyne/archive/1967/1967-04-07-TEVYNE.pdf, accessed 7 October 2026.

Tomorrow’s Australians (1948) ‘Happy Picking Apples’ Canberra, ACT, 9 November, p 8 https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2821961846/view?sectionId=nla.obj-2858970525, accessed 6 October 2026.

Vikipedija, Laisvoji Enciklopedija ‘Julius Mituzas’ https://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Mituzas, accessed 7 October 2026.

Žiburiai (Lights) (1946) ‘Paieškojimai’ (‘Searches’ in Lithuanian) Augsburg, Germany, 27 July, p 7 https://www.spauda2.org/dp/dpspaudinys_ziburiai/archive/1946-07-27-ZIBURIAI.pdf, accessed 6 October 2026.

Zigmas Griganavičius (1927-2016): Another Who Left for America, by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

Zigmas Griganavicius’ Bonegilla card records that he was sent to Mount Gambier in South Australia, on 9 January 1948, to work with the State Department of Woods and Forests there. He was one of a group of at least 32 sent there.

He must have taken one look at Mount Gambier and the work expected, and turned around. He was back at the Bonegilla camp 6 days later, on 15 January.

There is nothing on his selection for Australia file to indicate why he might have found what was expected of him so difficult. He was young, having 5 months before turned only 20. The interviewers judge him suitable for heavy labour. At 5 feet 10 inches (1.8 metres) tall and weighing 180 pounds (82 kilos), according to his Bonegilla card, he should have been sturdy enough.

Zigmas Griganavičius photo from his Bonegilla card

Source:  Bonegilla Migrant Experience

He had 4 years of primary education only, so he was unlikely to be looking for a more skilled job — or so it seemed at the time.  Could he have decided to move away from a personal issue?

Six weeks later, another job was found for him. He was sent back to South Australia, to Mr RO Burgh of Clare, to pick fruit. The Clare name will be very well known to Australian wine drinkers, so he may have been helping with the grape harvest. At the time, but no longer, the Clare region also was a major producer of fruits for drying, such as apricots in addition to suitable grapes.

Clare must have been kinder to Zigmas than Mount Gambier, because his next job, according to a card kept by the Department of Immigration, Adelaide Office, was with the South Australian Railways (SAR) based in Clare.

At some stage in 1949 he was sent to Leigh Creek, 400 km north of Clare, to work as a tractor driver for another State instrumentality, the Electricity Trust of South Australia (ETSA). Leigh Creek was known for the mining of brown coal then used to generate the State’s electricity – in a State which now has generates three-quarters of its electricity from renewables, wind and solar.

The Department of Immigration card records that he was released from his “two year” contract to work where sent on the same date as most others from the First Transport, on 30 September 1949.

It also records that his personal file was sent to the Department’s Melbourne Office on 10 October 1950, indicating that Zigmas had moved there also.

We next come across Zigmas on the occasion of his marriage, on 7 April 1956, to Ramūnė Elena Barkutė. The wedding was celebrated in the church of St John the Evangelist in East Melbourne. As explained in this blog’s entry for Napoleonas Butkūnas, this church had been adopted by Melbourne’s Lithuanian community. The entry for Antanas Varapnickas points out that this may have been because a priest called Pranas Vaseris had moved there.

The Barkus family was well known to Melbourne’s Lithuanian residents since Liudas Barkus was actively involved in various committees of the time.

Zigmas became an Australian citizen on 11 December 1957, when living on Earl Street, in Melbourne’s inner southeast suburb of Windsor. Only one electoral roll with his details has been digitised by Ancestry. It’s a 1963 roll showing him now living on Clayton Road, Clayton, when this was a new, outer suburb of southeast Melbourne. He was working as a wood machinist. Ramune had become an Australian by then too and was working as a clerk, telling us that she was highly literate in English.

There’s only one digitised roll because two years later, the family left Australia for life in the United States. They departed on 18 June 1965. In its issue of 5 July 1965, Mūsų Pastogė reported that, in a letter written from a ship in Sydney Harbour, Zigmas and Ramunė regretted that they were not able to say goodbye to all of their family members due to the illness of their children. They were planning to start their American life with a stopover in Chicago.

Zigmas was born to Ona, previously Pukaitė, and her husband, Juozas Griganavičius, on 12 August 1927. He was born in the Riklikai village in the Ukmergė district. This was recorded on one of those American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) DP Registration Records that we are so fortunate to have still in the Arolsen Archives. His usual occupation was recorded as mokinys, Lithuanian for student. This makes sense when you consider that he was only 12 years old when Germany invaded neighbouring Poland to start World War II during his summer holidays from school.

Rasa has found an online database for notable residents of Anykščiai, a winter resort city about 100 km due north of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, if more by road. One of those notable people is an Albertas Griganavičius, whose parents happen to be Ona and Juozapas (the long from of Juozas). His brother Zigmas was born in 1927, like our Zigmas.

Albertas in described in an English translation as “Physician, civic activist, memoirist”. Later, the biography mentions that Albertas was a board member of the Lithuanian Neurosurgeons Society. Yes, a brain surgeon, if not a rocket scientist …

There were 5 children in this family altogether. The eldest, Petras (1923-2001) is described as a mechanical engineer and emigrant in Chicago. The next in age is Vytautas (1925-2008), who became a priest. Zigmas was the middle child. Next came Marija (b 1931), with the married name of Stalioraitienė, who became a medical professional. Albertas, born in 1934, died in 2015.

The database finds nearly 8,000 words to say about Albertas, when translated into English, including a few about his family. That’s much more than we are going to devote to Zigmas here, but we are now not surprised if Zigmas reacted badly to finding that he was expected to spend the next 2 years chopping down trees.

Juozapas or Juozas was a farmer, manager of the Svirnai manor farm and chairman of the Kavarskas parish committee. The Web describes Svirnai manor as a historic estate in the Anykščiai District, first recorded in 1593. Its ownership fluctuated frequently between different families until the 19th century, when the Tanski family acquired it. They were aristocrats originally from the Mazovia region of Poland. From 1944, with the Soviet invasion, the estate belonged to the State, of course, and probably became a collective farm or part of one.

Ona was no mere housewife and mother, either. The biography of her youngest son describes her as an educator, civic activist, and a tretininkė, a Catholic layperson who followed a rule of life approved by the Church. In addition to such devotions as daily prayers and fasting, the life focusses heavily on charity, community service, and helping the poor.

The influence of his family on Zigmas might have made him much happier helping with a harvest, probably a frequent activity in Lithuania, than doing what was expected of him first in Australia.

Remembering that Petras was described as a mechanical engineer in Chicago, he may well have felt much more settled into his preferred profession than Zigmas felt while working as a wood machinist in Melbourne. Petras may have offered to help his brother find more satisfying work. While Ramūnė had family in Melbourne, Zigmas’ family in Chicago must have won the discussions.

In Albertas’ biography, Zigmas is described as a businessman in Chicago. He had moved to the Los Angeles district before he committed himself to becoming an American citizen on 17 September 1976.

The witnesses to his petition to naturalization swore that they had known him since 1971, indicating when he and his family might have left Chicago.

Various entries in Ancestry and Newspapers.com do not tell us much more about Zigmas than some changes of address. We do not know what business this “businessman” was conducting, or if he moved to another line of work.

There is confirmation of Ramune’s death on 20 February 2005, when she was only 68. She had been born in Lithuania in 1936, so was only 20 at the time of her marriage and 7 years younger than Zigmas. They had two sons, Victor and Edward in the English spelling, the children who were sick when the family sailed from Sydney Harbour. All of this is in an obituary published in the Los Angeles Times on 27 February 2005.

According to an entry on the Find A Grave Website, Zigmas died on Christmas Day in 2016, yet the photograph of the plaque for Ramune and Zigmas is blank where his details ought to be. The plaque tells us the Ramune preferred her middle name of Elena. There is no accessible evidence elsewhere in support of the death date for Zigmas. He was to be buried with her in the Laurel Cemetery, Murrieta, Riverside County, California.

The Griganavicius plaque in the Laurel Cemetery, with Zigmas' birth details only.

Source:  Find A Grave

If accurate, he had passed his 89th birthday at the time of his death. He had been lost to Australia, though, for more than 50 years.

SOURCES

‘AEF DP Registration Record, Griganavičius, Zigmas’ Folder DP1297, names from GRIGAL, ALBERT to GRYGIENCZA, Michal (2), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from G, DocID 67239918, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/67239918, accessed 5 October 2026.

Anykštėnų biografijų žinynas (Biographical Directory of People from Anykščiai, in Lithuanian) ‘Albertas Griganavičius’ https://www.anykstenai.lt/asmenys/asm_print.php?id=113, accessed 6 October 2026.

Australia, Electoral Rolls, 1903-1980, ‘Zigmas Griganavicius’ https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1207/records/91133150?tid=&pid=&queryId=31519525-0f15-4e34-8679-740afa5e3900&_phsrc=mmH97&_phstart=successSource, accessed 6 October 2026.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection, ‘Zigmas Griganavicius’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203643701, accessed 6 October 2026.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1958) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, ACT, 1 May, p 1362 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/240891896/25975951, accessed 5 October 2026.

Find A Grave, ‘Zigmas Griganavicius’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/174887914/zigmas-griganavicius, accessed 6 October 2026.

Los Angeles Times (2005) ‘Obituaries, Funeral Announcements, Griganavicius, Elana Ramune’ https://www.newspapers.com/image/192635355/?article=5299ff31-f626-457b-98cc-52114ee0ed77&focus=0.26300535,0.21829554,0.38208008,0.3228447&xid=3355, accessed 6 October 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (1956) ‘Nauja Lietuviska Seima’ (‘New Lithuanian Family’, in Lithuania) Sydney, NSW, 2 May, p4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/259365600, accessed 6 October 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (1965) ‘Kiek As Sužinojau!’ (‘As far as I know’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, NSW, 5 July, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1965/1965-07-05-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 6 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; 540, GRIGANAVICIUS Zigmas DOB 12 August 1927, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005777, accessed 6 October 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; GRIGANAVICIUS ZIGMAS, GRIGANAVICIUS Zigmas - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=7199430, accessed 6 October 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] 1947-1956; GRIGANAVICIUS ZIGMAS, GRIGANAVICIUS, Zigmas : Year of Birth - 1927 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 914, 1947-1949 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203643701, accessed 6 October 2026.

US, Naturalization Record Indexes, 1791-1992 (Indexed in World Archives Project) ‘Zigmas Griganavicius’ https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1629/records/7943978?tid=&pid=&queryId=a91a67c2-25b6-44ce-8707-e756664dff1a&_phsrc=bUj251&_phstart=successSource, accessed 6 October 2026.

Wikipedia ‘Leigh Creek, South Australia’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Creek,_South_Australia, accessed 5 October 2026.