Showing posts with label Akumbakas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Akumbakas. Show all posts

18 November 2025

Three Jakstas refugees on the First Transport, by Daina Pocius and Ann Tündern-Smith

Having noted the names Žilinskas and Smilgevičius three times each on the First Transport passenger list, Daina also wanted to know if the 3 Jakštas men were related.

Aleksas Jakštas (1921-1977)

Aleksas Jakštas started his working life in Australia by picking fruit for W Young of the Kelvin Orchards, Ardmona. He stayed more than one month at this assignment before returning to the Bonegilla camp on 3 April. He would not have needed to unpack because, on 5 April, he was off to Tasmania.

Aleksas in Tasmania

His Bonegilla card provides no more details but Ramunas Tarvydas, in From Amber Coast to Apple Isle, says that he was sent to Premaydena locality in rural southeast Tasmania. Ramunas confirms that Premaydena involved more fruit picking. Both Ramunas and Aleksas’ obituarist, Aleksas Kantvilas, write that his next destination was Ida Bay. If you look back at our entry on the Electrona Carbide Factory, you’ll find that Ida Bay was the source of the limestone needed for the Factory to manufacture its calcium carbide.  The Factory was located near Ida Bay in a place that became Electrona.

Aleksas Jakstas' identity photo on his Bonegilla card

Ramunas quotes from Adomas Stasytis, who he says arrived at Electrona in mid-1948 with his wife, Veronika, both Second Transport (General MB Stewart) refugees, to find that there were 3 Lithuanians there already. From Bonegilla cards, we know that they were Kazys Alseika, Anicetas Grigaliunas and Algirdas Jonas Smelstorius. Either Jakštas arrived later still, or he really was moving limestone at Ida Bay into its transport to Electrona than moving it into the factory.

Aleksas' Personal Life

In Tasmania, he met and married another refugee, Klavdia. His obituarist wrote, in Lithuanian, "They had a daughter but she died early".  From the family's grave (see photograph below), it looks more like Klavdia brought Nina into the marriage from a previous marriage -- perhaps to someone who did not migrate to Australia as there is no public record of him.*

The Klavdia spelling of Aleksas' wife's name and Cyrillic script plus an orthodox cross on the family's grave are among hints that she and Nina were refugees from Russia.  Also, Utkina on the grave is the feminine form of a Russian surname, Utkin, meaning Duck.

Aleksas originated from Kaišiadorys, a village near Kaunas on the road to Vilnius. He was born on 5 October 1921. He spent his childhood and started his education in Kaišiadorys. His AEF (American Expeditionary Force) DP (Displaced Person) Registration form says that he was born in Trakai, a town 50 Km from Kaišiadorys and closer to Vilnius. The form says also that this was his last place of residence.

His parents were Jonas Jakštas and Marijona, maiden name Jurskaitė. His occupation was still student and he hoped to go to Canada. Australia must have come up first.

Aleksas' Education

From Trakai, he moved to Vilnius and studied architecture at the Vilnius Technical University. After the War, according to his obituarist, he continued his studies in Darmstadt, but it was not at the Technical University. That University’s Archives has written to us to say that he is not on its list of past students.

His education is downgraded in the papers which survive from the selection process for his migration to Australia. The tertiary education becomes instead “2 years building technical school” and “2 years secondary in Germany”. Given that Aleksas was already 24 at the start of the 1946 academic year, tertiary study is much more likely than attending a secondary school. Indeed, the selection papers later say that he did not work at all but was a full-time student, making secondary study all the more unlikely.

Aleksas in the Community

Aleksas was part of the Lithuanian community in southeast Tasmania from the start. In 1953, he was first elected to the committee of Hobart Lithuanian Community as its secretary, as reported in the Australijos Lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian) of 21 February that year. Soon he became its treasurer instead.

In 1956, Aleksas represented Tasmania at a Lithuanian sports festival in Sydney. Back home, his goal was to put together a team of Lithuanian basketballers for the 1957 festival in Geelong. The Hobart sports club he founded, Perkūnas (Thunder) was the result of that effort. He managed for it for a long time.

The Perkūnas Sports Club organises its 50th anniversary celebration

Like Juozas Zilinskas in Canberra, Aleksas and Klavdia were to be seen “everywhere and often” in Hobart community life. There were said to be no gatherings, commemorations or entertainment of the Lithuanian community without their participation.

On 30 January 1963, both Klavdia and Aleksas Jakstas of 623 Seventh Avenue in the Hobart suburb of West Moonah received their citizenship certificates.

Aleksas' Early Death

In 1970 Aleksas was diagnosed with a serious illness, threatening the rest of his life.

Aleksas was an amazingly caring and talented person, his obituarist wrote. What he did, he did well, so that it was beautiful, perfectly finished; he had "golden hands", people used to say. He was open and honest; he didn't have any anger or deceit.

A hundred of his friends, compatriots and acquaintances gathered for his last farewell on 2 April 1977. He had lived for only 55 years, destined never to see the forests and fields of his motherland again. Accompanied by song, he descended to the ground covered by the tricolour flag and a handful of sand from the Neris river in Lithuania, as a farewell trumpet sounded.

The deceased left behind his lovely wife, who was loved and respected by everyone. He also left behind his father in Vilnius and three sisters and their families in Lithuania. Klavdia passed away early also, less than 15 months after Aleksas.

They are interred with Nina in the Cornelian Bay Cemetery, Hobart.

The grave of the Jakštas family in Cornelian Bay Cemetery, Hobart:
the Cyrillic at the top translates as "Ninochka", clearly her mother's pet name for Nina and
it is likely that "Aliusik" was Klava/Klavda's pet name for her husband, Aleksas;
note also the Orthodox cross at the top of the grave, which is in the Cemetery's Methodist section

*  The Arolsen Archives has a file for Klavdia Utkina (b 21 May 1928) and her daughter, Antonina (b 5 March 1948) which reveals that Klavdia married Peter Ivanovich Utkin, a fellow teacher, in Harbin, China, in 1947.  As of 1 May 1957, they were separated and his whereabouts were unknown.  

Klavdia and Nina set out for Tasmania from Hong Kong on 30 December 1957 by ship, with Klavdia's aunt, Cleopatra Krasovskaya.  They would have been travelling under an immigration program which Australia ran for White Russians from China.  This program was started after lobbying co-ordinated by the Australian Council of Churches and was at its peak during 1957-59.  The Utkina/Krasnovskaya party was headed for Klavdia's friend who was living in the inner Hobart suburb of Glebe.  All of this is to say that Aleksas and Klavdia would not have met until 1958 at the earliest. 

Algirdis Jakštas (1926-1999)

Algirdas or, in a more familiar manner, Algis, Jakštas hit the page 1 headlines in various editions of Sydney’s Daily Mirror afternoon newspaper on 25 August 1949. They reported that he had been found that morning with a knife wound above the heart, in the East Hostel, Yallourn, Victoria.

In most of its editions, the newspaper added that Algis has sought treatment the previous day for mental illness from a Yallourn doctor. It added that he now was in a serious condition in the Yallourn Hospital.

He must have recovered both from the knife wound and the mental illness, as his life continued for nearly another 50 years. He was 73 years old when he died on 26 February 1999. He was buried in Melbourne’s Springvale Botanical Cemetery on 2 March 1999.

Indeed, he was the longest lived of the three Jakštas men from the First Transport.

Algis in Germany

Algis was born 16 January 1926. His Australian Selection Report says that he had “Fled from Russian regime with parents”. He had 6 years of secondary schooling in addition to 6 years of primary, so he was well educated.

Algirdas Jakštas from his October 1947 selection papers

The selection team thought that his General Appearance was “Good” and he could be suited to heavy labour. His previous work experience was on his father’s farm, for 2 months every year (doubtless during the summer).

He was quite a linguist, with a knowledge of Russian and Polish in addition to the expected Lithuanian and German. In addition, his knowledge of English was “fair”.

Someone has added in pencil to another form used in the selection process, “Parents lost in East Prussia”.

His identity photographs came from a photographer operating in the Baltic Camp Watenstedt, where he was living. Another First Transport Lithuanian living in the same camp with his parents and siblings was Vladas Akumbakas.

Algis' First Jobs in Australia

Accepted for migration to Australia, his work contract took him to the pine forests of Mt Gambier in South Australia where he worked for the State Forestry Department.

By August 1949, he had been transferred to Victoria’s State Electricity Commission, Yallourn, where he made page 1, at least of the Daily Mirror.

Algis Starts a Family

The RecordSearch index to its digitised documents maintained by the National Archives of Australia shows only one Algirdas Jakstas entering Australia. Therefore, it would be the same person who next appears in the Australian press prior to his marriage, on 10 February 1951, to “Heather Jean, second Daughter of Capt. and Mrs A. Moore, Kew Street, Indooroopilly.” This notice appeared in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper of 8 February 1951.

During the next year, Capt. and Mrs A. Moore announced in the Courier-Mail that Heather Jakstas had given birth to a son on 13 July.

Algis Goes Flensing

So it would be the same Algirdas Jakštas who had an article headed, Beprotnamis Ar Banginių Medžioklė (Madhouse or Whaling), published in the Australijos Lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian) newspaper of 10 January 1953. It describes the author and his wife travelling by motor boat to Moreton Island, where they met the director of a whaling company. This director had promised his wife a job as a cleaner previously.

Moreton Island is a large sand island sheltering Brisbane, in Moreton Bay, from the Coral Sea. The former whaling station at Tangalooma now is an education and conservation centre.

Algirdas was put to work on the flensing deck, presumably on one of the 3 Norwegian ships whose crews were teaching Australians how to process the whales they had caught. The Australians, so Algirdas wrote, then started to attack him verbally. 

Flensing deck at Tangalooma Whaling Station, 1960

Those Australians were replaced by others but “they” (the new employees? the company?) “began to use other methods (so runs the translation into English) such as not letting him sleep during the day to recover from his night shift, threatening to fence his accommodation off with barbed wire, and even to deport him”.

As a result of this, Algirdas wrote, he was admitted to a Brisbane hospital where he remained for 2 weeks. In view of his previous medical history, the reader does have to wonder if this was a mental hospital or ward.

In the same issue, Algirdas inserted an advertisement which advised that people wishing to write to Liutaveras Januškevičius should use the address, “Algirdas Jakštas, 21 Bromston Street, Gladstone, Queensland”. Gladstone is a coastal city still more than 500 road kilometres and 6 hours driving north of Brisbane. 

Algirdas must have thought that moving further north would help him escape tormenting Australians. Ann, who lived even further north in Queensland for 6 years more than 50 years ago, know that this was a mistake: the further north you go, the more isolated from the outside world and its events the other residents become …

Algis Writes Again

Three years later, Algirdas had another long article headed, “Įdomūs Kelionės Įspūdžiai ...” (Interesting Travel Impressions) published in Australijos Lietuvis. This piece was based on a story Algirdas found a magazine published by a Melbourne Lithuanian sports club, about a drive from Melbourne to Adelaide. A friend who was driving in his small car was so worried about making the trip that he made his will beforehand. 

The driver, his wife and passengers saw the car in front of them leave the road and land upside down in a field but no-one was injured. Adelaide was disappointing because the friend’s Melbourne sports club did not win and for other, apparently minor, reasons. Algirdas suggested that his friend’s next trip to Adelaide should be by train or even plane.

Algis Back in Victoria

On 3 December 1960, Algirdas was granted Australian citizenship. He had left Queensland for Victoria, wisely in Ann’s opinion, and was living at Clarke House, Elmshurst Road, Bayswater, then on Melbourne’s rural-urban fringe. As far as we can find, Clarke House was the residence of a Clarke family, identified as such for the Post Office and visitors before the new Elmshurst Road received street numbers from the local government.

And that’s all the public information we have about Algirdas, until the appearance of his 1999 burial on the Find A Grave Website.  The headstone shows that his marriage to Heather Jean did not last, as the person buried with him is called Wanda.

Algirdas and Wanda Jakstas' headstone at Springvale Botanical Cemetery, Melbourne

Fridrikas Jakštas

Fridrikas came from Žiogaičiai village in the county of Tauragė. The summary report on him by the Australian selection committee categorises him as someone “forcibly evacuated by the Germans” from Lithuania in 1944.

He had 5 years of primary education and 2 years of secondary. His employment experience consisted of 2 years of farming in Lithuanian plus one year as a lumber worker in Germany. He had no knowledge of English.

His Bonegilla card shows that his next of kin was an uncle living in the Rotenburg DP camp in Hannover, in the British Zone. As this was where Fridrikas had his medical examination for migration, he probably was living there too.

Fridrikas' identity photo on his Bonegilla card

Did Fridrikas' Uncle Stay in Germany?

The uncle did not come to Australia nor was he resettled in another third country according to the available evidence. Indeed, one of two Refugee/Displaced Person Statistical Cards describes him as ineligible for IRO assistance. He was a 56-year-old farmer. Maybe officialdom had decided that he would be better off returning to Lithuania or saw him as helped already by another program, perhaps run by the Germans. Maybe he became one of the older, sicker Lithuanians in Germany for whom those in Australia collected money frequently.

Fridrikas Goes to Bangham

Fridrikas was one of the 62 Balts who arrived in Wolseley, a small town halfway between Adelaide and Melbourne, on Wednesday night, 14 January 1948. They were sent there to work for the South Australian Railways. They were to widen the district’s railway gauge. From Wolseley, they were moved to a camp of their own at Bangham.

During their five-weeks' sojourn in Bonegilla migrant camp the new arrivals learned some basic English, but only three or four of the men could converse fluently. They adopted German as the common language of conversation. While the men hoped to improve their English, it would be extremely difficult while living together in such an isolated spot. The camp was situated about 14.5 kilometres from Custon, where the predominant features of the surrounding country were scrub and sand. The men were housed in tents.

The men had been promised by Australian immigration authorities in Germany that they would only be required to work one year. After having spent years in limbo in DP camps, they hoped to find permanent positions quickly so as to end camp life.

A representative of the Commonwealth Employment Service met the party at Wolseley. The twenty Lutheran members of the party were welcomed on Wednesday afternoon at the Bangham camp by Pastor K. Hartmann, of the Lutheran Church, Bordertown. Pastor Hartmann planned to conduct services at the camp. Fridrikas was of the Lutheran faith.

Fridrikas Goes to Adelaide

There is no notation on Fridrikas’ Aliens Registration record card, now in the Adelaide collection of the National Archives of Australia, to say that he was released from his contract to the Australian Government on 30 September 1949. There also is no known reason why he would not have been released on that date. Along with the others, he probably headed for the State capital, Adelaide, as quickly as could be arranged.

The Aliens Registration record card notes that his next employment was as a labourer with Chrysler Dodge and his residential address had become 16 North Parade, North Adelaide. This change is undated.

The next notation of the record card is employment as a labourer with Hansen & Yuncken of Torrensville, builders. Fridrikas’ new personal address was 10 Athol Street in Woodville North, as of 27 October 1949.

Fridrikas Goes to Sydney

The following notation records that the South Australian Department of Immigration file of papers about Fridrikas had been sent to the Department’s Sydney office on 6 January 1950. Fridrikas had spent less than 2 years in South Australia.

He had moved to St. Mary's, now a western suburb of Sydney, 45 Km for its Central Business District. Although closer to the Blue Mountains than to central Sydney, the area has seen European settlement, initially in the form of land grants, since 1807. Even the Anglican Church after which it was named was built more than 180 years ago, between 1837 and 1840.

In St Mary’s, Fridrikas built a house with his own hands.

Fridrikas is Married

Fridrikas Jakstas and Lidia Ruta Jakstas, both of 160 Bestic Street in Kyeemagh, a Sydney suburb where the Georges River meets Botany Bay, obtained Australian citizenship on 30 October 1960.

If we knew more about the life history of Lidia Ruta Jakstas, we might know why Fridrikas moved to Sydney rather than staying in South Australia. The vast majority of First Transport men sent to South Australia lived the rest of their lives there.

The person who wrote his obituary less than 18 months after the citizenship ceremony, for Mūsų Pastogė, someone who signed himself only as J, wrote that Fridrikas had moved to Rockdale “a few years ago”.  Rockdale is the larger, better known suburb to the west of Kyeemagh, so the reference is to his Kyeemagh move.

Fridrikas Goes into Business

The obituarist wrote that Fridrikas had bought a “colonial goods store”.  The 160 Bestic Street address is indeed part of a commercial street front with second floor residences. The Jakstas’ address now houses a personal fitness and weight-loss business, according to Google Street View.

The shops at 158-164 Bestic Street, Kyeemagh, as recorded by Google Street View in June 2022;
160 Bestic Street is second from the corner, now housing Advanced Personal Training

The building’s style is 1930s Art Deco, so it would have been about 20 years old when Fridrikas and Lidia owned or were buying part of it.

Fridrikas Dies Young

Fridrikas died in Rockdale Hospital on 31 March 1962 after being unwell for three days. This young man, just 34 years old, left behind a grieving wife and parents and brothers in Lithuania.

In death, Fridrikas returned to his previous Australian home. Fr. E. Lyenert and Fr. Kosticin officiated at the funeral rites in St Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in St Mary’s and at the graveside. A representative of the Sydney Lithuanian Evangelical Lutheran Parish Council spoke beside Fridrikas’ grave, in St Mary’s Cemetery. More than 70 people accompanied him to his eternal resting place.

The anonymous obituarist saw Fridrikas as a sincere Lithuanian and a quiet, hardworking and dutiful family man.

From her gravestone next to that of her husband, it looks like Lidia lived another 44 years without remarrying. She was buried there on 9 August 2006.  

Frederick has been buried under the Australianised version of his forename.  Since we know so little about Lidia Ruta, we do not know if Lidia was an Australian version of the Lithuanian Lidija or a variant from another language, let alone if Lida on her headstone is her proper name, a misspelling or a pet name.  We can tell that her married name is misspelt, however.

Lidia's burial in 2006 was next to the grave of her husband,
who had died too young 44 years earlier

CONCLUSION

There are no hints at relationships between these three men on their Bonegilla cards, and we cannot find any other evidence that these three men with the family name Jakštas are related. 

Another nine people with the same surname arrived in Australia in the following years. They also were unrelated to the first three, we believe.

CITE THIS AS:  Pocius, Daina and Tündern-Smith, Ann (2025) 'Three Jakstas refugees on the First Transport', https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2025/11/three-jakstas-refugees-on-first-transport.htm.

SOURCES

AEF DP Registration Record, ‘Aleksas Jakštas’, 3.1.1 Registration and Care of DPs inside and outside of Camps, ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/67433246, accessed 23 September 2025.

Australijos Lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian) (1953) ‘Chronika’ (‘Chronicle’, in Lithuanian) Adelaide, 21 February, p 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/280311807, accessed 23 September 2025.

Border Chronicle (1948), '62 Balts at Bangham, to help broaden rail gauge', Bordertown, SA, 15 January, p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/212918125, accessed 19 April 2024.

Border Watch (1948) ‘Broad Gauge Engineer Gives Amazing Facts Of Huge Undertaking’ Mount Gambier, SA, 25 September, p 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/78591298, accessed 19 April 2024.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1963) 'Certificates of Naturalization', Canberra, 24 April, p 1428, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article241013003, accessed 23 September 2025.

Courier-Mail (1951) ‘Family Notices’ Brisbane, 8 February, p 16 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/50091069, accessed 23 September 2025.

Courier-Mail (1952) ‘Births’ Brisbane, 15 July, p 10 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/50512361, accessed 15 November 2025.

Daily Mirror (1949) ‘Migrant Found with Knife Wound’ Sydney, 25 August, p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/273698139, accessed 24 September 2025.

Dalyvis (Participant) (1955) 'Hobart' (in Lithuanian), Australijos Lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian), Adelaide, 7 February, p 8 , http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article280313783, accessed 23 September 2025.

Find a Grave 'Algirdas Jakstas (1926-1999)' https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/231318643/algirdas-jakstas, accessed 16 November 2025.

Find a Grave 'Frederick Jakstas (1928-1962)' https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/211910034/frederick-jakstas, accessed 16 November 2025.

Gravesites of Tasmania, 'Jakstas Aliusik' http://gravesoftas.com.au/Cornelian%20Bay%20Live/Methodist%20Weslyan/EM/3/Jakstas%20Aliusik.jpgaccessed 16 November 2025.

Jakštas, Algirdas (1953) ‘Beprotnamis ar Banginių Medžioklė’ (‘Madhouse or Whaling’, in Lithuanian), Australijos Lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian) Adelaide, 10 January, p 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article280311958, accessed 23 September 2025.

Jakštas, Algirdas (1956) 'Įdomūs Kelionės Įspūdžiai ... ', (‘Interesting Travel Impressions, in Lithuanian) Australijos Lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian), Adelaide, 5 March, p 5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article280316318, accessed 23 September 2025.

J (1962) ‘Naujas Lietuvio Kapas’ (‘A New Lithuanian Grave’, in Lithuanian’ Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven), Sydney, 7 April, p 7 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1962/1962-04-07-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 24 September 2025.

Juragis, Juozas Almis (Ed.). (1961) Australijos Lietuvių metraštis I (Australian Lithuanian Yearbook I, in Lithuanian) Sydney, Australijos Lietuvių Fondas.

Kantvilas, A. (1977) ‘Hobartas, A A Aleksas Jakštas’ (‘Hobart, RIP Aleksas Jakštas’, in Lithuanian), Tėviškės Aidai (Echoes of the Homeland), Melbourne, 23 April (No. 16), p 7 https://www.spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1977/1977-nr16-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 22 September 2025.

Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (1953) ‘Išrinko naują Valdybą, Hobartas’ (New Board Elected, Hobart’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, 11 February, p 4 , http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article259366077, accessed 23 September 2025.

Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (1956) ‘Hobartas, Nauja Apylinkės Valdyba’ (Hobart, New District Board’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, 8 February, p 4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/259359765, accessed 22 September 2025.

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; 98, JAKSTAS Aleksas DOB 5 October 1921, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005530, accessed 15 November 2025.

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; 97, JAKSTAS Algirdas DOB 16 January 1926, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005529, accessed 15 November 2025.

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; 117, JAKSTAS Fridrichas DOB 11 March 1928, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005546, accessed 15 November 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; JAKSTAS ALGIRDAS, JAKSTAS Algirdas - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=9187680, accessed 15 November 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; JAKSTAS FRIDRIKAS, JAKSTAS Fridrikas - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947, 1947-1950 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=9187681, accessed 15 November 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1957; JAKSTAS ALEKSAS, JAKSTAS, Aleksas : Year of Birth - 1921 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GENERAL HEINTZELMAN : Number - 497, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203620931, accessed 15 November 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1957; JAKSTAS ALGIRDAS, JAKSTAS, Algirdas : Year of Birth - 1926 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GENERAL HEINTZELMAN : Number - 496, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203620932, accessed 15 November 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1957; JAKSTAS FRIDRIKAS, JAKSTAS, Fridrikas : Year of Birth - 1928 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GENERAL HEINTZELMAN : Number - 514, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203620933, accessed 15 November 2025.

'Personal file of UTKINA, KLAVDIA, born on 21-May-1928, born in HARBIN and of further persons' 3.2.3 UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/81637386?s=utkin%20klavdia&t=3229806&p=0accessed 15 November 2025.

Sengalvėlis (Old Timer) (1956) ‘Hobartiečiai Rinko Valdyba’ (‘Hobart People Elected a Board’, in Lithuanian) Mūsų Pastogė, Sydney, 15 February, p 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/259359981, accessed 22 September 2025.

Tarvydas, Ramunas (1997) From Amber Coast to Apple Isle : Fifty Years of Baltic Immigrants in Tasmania 1948-1998, Baltic Semicentennial Commemoration Activities Organising Committee, Hobart, Tasmania, p 165.

Wikipedia ‘Moreton Island’ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreton_Island, accessed 24 September 2025.

02 November 2025

Canberra Brickworks, by Ann Tündern-Smith

The Commonwealth Employment Service in the Bonegilla camp sent 5 men to the Department of Works and Housing in Canberra on 3 August 1948. All of them had been working at the Bonegilla camp until late July, 3 after first picking fruit.

We have met the Zilinskas brothers, Juozas and Jurgis, already. The others sent to Canberra were 2 Lithuanians, Vladas Akumbakas and Bronius Narkauskas, and a Latvian, Eriks Tumsevics.

Given that we know from other evidence that the Zilinskas brothers actually were employed initially by the Department as labourers at the Canberra Brickworks, this destination might have applied to the other 3 as well.

However, at least one of them, Vladas Akumbakas, was sent instead to the newly opened roofing tile factory of the Monier company in The Causeway,  now part of Canberra's Kingston suburb.

Bronius Narkauskas had married an Estonian, Helmi Savest, in the camp on 24 July 1948, only 25 days after her arrival in Australia on the Fifth Transport, the Svalbard. Either this was a whirlwind romance or they had known each other in Germany before Bronius left. Regardless, Helmi was the sixth member of the 3 August party.

This entry will concentrate on the Canberra Brickworks, to which at least two of the party of 6 were sent.  They had opened in 1916 to produce materials for the building of the new national capital. Their location was chosen because it is right beside a good deposit of shale, necessary for the type of brick produced.   There was plenty of the other major ingredient, clay, around everywhere:  Canberra gardening is still notorious for the clay soils.

The decision to establish the Brickworks was made around 1913, as part of the earliest plans for Australia's national capital.

The location of the Brickworks relative to other modern Canberra landmarks
Click once on the image to read the labels in a separate page and note that
the Brickworks were connected to the Parliamentary Triangle and the Canberra CBD
by railway lines in the 1920s when the original buildings were going up

The Brickworks closed almost immediately after opening because of WWI labour shortages. Reopened in 1921, they produced the red bricks for important early buildings like the Old Parliament House.

Canberra Red bricks can be seen clearly in the foundation of Old Parliament House
Source:  Canberra Tracks

The same architect, James Smith Murdoch, designed the former Hotel Canberra,
now a Hyatt Hotel, as well as the nearby Old Parliament House;
again, Canberra Red bricks serve ornamental as well as structural purposes
Source: Jpatokal, in Wikipedia

They closed again twice more, during the Depression and during the early years of WWII. They reopened in 1944. 

One month before the First Transport men arrived, the Director of Works was complaining that production was dropping off because the men operating the machines were inexperienced. The machines they were using were the only ones of their type in Australia, making spare parts difficult to obtain.

If he had known that he was about to receive a trained and experienced mechanic, one Jurgis Zilinskas, he would have been happier. Jurgis may well have been as happy fiddling around with brick-making machines as with cars or whatever else he was used to working on. There were no more public complaints about the machinery after Jurgis arrived.

The First Transport men might have found initial accommodation at a Brickworks Hostel in Westridge (the older name for what is now Yarralumla). Perhaps the newly marrieds had a room to themselves there too. This hostel is mentioned for the first time in the Canberra Times on 30 December 1947, in terms of additional accommodation being completed there during 1947. 

The company which carried out a heritage study of the site in 2021, GML Heritage, says that a hostel on the south side of the site was completed in 1945.  It may well have obtained this information from Commonwealth Government files yet to be digitised.

Given the Brickworks Hostel's location, building it from bricks rather than the fibro-cement sheets used for WWII military buildings (including those in the Bonegilla camp) ought to have been an option. This is unlikely, given that almost nothing of it survives, but the building or buildings are likely to have stood on brick piers.  At least it would have been more weatherproof accommodation than the tents offered to the very first employees.

Around one year after the Baltic men’s arrival, on 27 June 1949, Australian coal miners went on strike. Since coal was then the only source of electricity, much of industry was affected badly. A report in the Canberra Times of 2 July 1949 said that the brickworks had shut down already.

The Commonwealth Government of the day, which was formed by the Australian Labor Party and led by Ben Chifley, refused to extend unemployment benefits to those thrown out of work by the coal strike, because it classified the stoppage as an illegal industrial dispute. 

This would have hit all of the Baltic men in industrial employment hard, not just the 5 at the Canberra Brickworks. Note also that the period of the strike, from 27 June to 15 August, was in the middle of the Australian winter.

The strike had flow-on effects in Canberra, with builders having to stand down workers because of a shortage of cement, as well as bricks.

By 13 August, it must have been known that the strike was winding up, as an official was reported by the Canberra Times as saying that it probably would be another week before there was sufficient coal available to restart brick production.

On the day that it should have started up, the relevant union and Government officials agreed to the introduction of a bonus scheme, under which workers would be paid extra on the basis of the number of bricks produced.

Nearly 6 weeks later, 30 September 1949, was the date on which the first Displaced Persons’ contracts would end, as decided already by the Minister for Immigration.  By then, of course, for nearly all of them, it was in their own interests to keep working in Australia.

Jurgis Zilinskas, for one, stayed with the Canberra Brickworks but retrained as a bricklayer. His brother, Juozas, found a job which probably meant less physically taxing work and more mental stimulation, as a storeman with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

Eriks Tumsevics is buried in the original Canberra Cemetery, now called the Woden Cemetery, so he stayed in Canberra, perhaps at the Brickworks. The other 2 left Canberra as soon as they could. There will be more about them in this blog soon.

By the 1950s, extra kilns were needed to support the growing number of homes for Canberra workers. Presumably, extra labour was needed also but, at the least, Jurgis Zilinskas was in a secure job.

By the 1960s, a greater variety of materials was being used in the construction of homes, office buildings and factories. However, Canberra bricks still were used then to construct such national institutions as the National Library and the Mint.  

At some stage, Canberra Creams were produced also, to build such landmarks as the now Australian Federal Police College on Brisbane Avenue, and the former Canberra Milk building at the junction of Wentworth Avenue with Canberra Avenue.  These were the product of white shale from Attunga Point, now a headland on the south side of Lake Burley Griffin.

The Canberra milk factory, built from Canberra Cream bricks and opened in 1937
is at the centre of this overview

The year after Jurgis’ death in 1973, it was decided that brick-making operations ought to be relocated away from the residential suburb of Yarralumla, which had developed next to them (and to their windward). It seems that new kilns were not built, as planned, in the northern industrial suburb of Mitchell, with that site now used as a parking lot for the recent light rail service. The original brickworks fired their last bricks in 1976.

The Yarralumla site with all its buildings and a landmark tall chimney still exists, protected by heritage registration. The ACT Heritage Council says of the site that, “Yarralumla Brickworks is of historical value as the first industrial manufacturing facility within the ACT, and for its integral role in providing the base material used in the construction of the early buildings in the National Capital.

“(It) is a relatively intact representative example of large urban brickworks from the early 20th Century, a type that is becoming increasingly rare nationally and internationally. (It comprises) a cultural landscape where the remaining buildings, structures, equipment and landscape features have the ability to demonstrate the evolution of a range of industrial processes associated with brick and clay production-over a 60 year period.

“(It) is of considerable technical value from the presence in the one location of a number of different kiln types: Staffordshire (1915), Hardy-Patent (1927) and Downdraft (1953) kilns, which demonstrate an unusually wide range of firing processes. The Staffordshire kiln is especially significant as the only surviving example of this kiln type in Australia.”

Canberra brick kilns under construction;
given the 1921-35 period when the photographer, William James Mildenhall, was active in Canberra, these would be the 1927 Hardy-Patent kilns

The local Residents Association states that no maintenance of the brick manufacturing infrastructure has been undertaken since the Brickworks ceased operation and, since then, the structures have effectively been left derelict for nearly 50 years. It also mentions, though, that in the late 1970s a developer spent over $1 million to repair 2 kilns and ancillary buildings before his company went into provisional liquidation.

This industrial landscape has become the focus of a new housing development, expected to contain 380 homes, so housing more than 1,000 additional residents of Yarralumla. The company which won this contract, Doma, has approval for its Conservation Management Plan and has just started work on preservation and restoration of the Brickworks as I write.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:  I thank members of the Canberra and Region Heritage Researchers (CRHR) who answered my call for advice on the Brickworks with lots of useful leads.  There is more about CRHR on its blog, at https://crhr-cbr.blogspot.com/2025/03/canberra-region-aims.html.  In particular, I thank Mark Butz for pinning down the block in Mitchell originally allocated to a replacement brickworks.

CITE THIS AS:  Tündern-Smith, Ann (2025) 'Canberra Brickworks' https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2025/08/canberra-brickworks.html

SOURCES

ACT Heritage Council, ‘Entry to the ACT Heritage Register, Heritage Act 2004, 20068. Yarralumla Brickworks’ https://www.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/148517/yarralumla-brickworks-entry-to-the-heritage-register.pdf, accessed 18 August 2025.

Archives ACT, ‘Find of the Month, September 2023’, https://www.archives.act.gov.au/find_of_the_month/2023/september/previous-find-of-the-month, accessed 18 August 2025.

Canberra Times (1947) 'Largest A.C.T. Housing Ou (sic) Since 1941', Canberra, 30 December, p 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2733907, accessed 19 August 2025.

Canberra Times (1948) 'Absenteeism Adds To Cost Of Brick Production' Canberra, 2 July, p 5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2753672, accessed 19 Aug 2025.

Canberra Times (1949) 'Only 115 Absentees in Building Trades after Holidays', Canberra, 11 January, p 3 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2784775, accessed 19 Aug 2025.

Canberra Times (1949) 'Heavy Losses on Government Hostels in A.C.T.' Canberra, 11 March, p 5 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2793995, accessed 30 August 2025.  

Canberra Times (1949) 'Close-Down Likely in Canberra', Canberra, 2 July, p 4 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2811723, accessed 19 August 2025.

Canberra Times (1949) 'No Government Employees Yet Stood Down', Canberra, 13 July, p 4 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2813324, accessed 26 August 2025.

Doma, ‘Yarralumla Brickworks’ https://domagroup.com.au/residential/yarralumla-brickworks, accessed 17 August 2025.

Doma Group, ‘Brickworks’, https://brickworksyarralumla.com.au/, accessed 18 August 2025.

Find A Grave, 'Eric Tumsevics' https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/230144442/eric-tumsevics, accessed 28 August 2025.

GML Heritage (2021) Canberra Brickworks Precinct, Conservation Management Plan, Vol 1, pp 26, 76 https://www.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/1945872/canberra-brickworks-precinct-conservation-management-plan-2021-volume-1.pdf, accessed 15 September 2025.

GML Heritage (2021) Canberra Brickworks Precinct, Conservation Management Plan, Vol 2 https://www.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1945880/canberra-brickworks-precinct-conservation-management-plan-2021-volume-2.pdf accessed 15 September 2025.

Libraries ACT, ‘Yarralumla Brickworks’ https://www.library.act.gov.au/find/history/frequentlyaskedquestions/Place_Stories/brickworks, accessed 18 August 2025.

Wikipedia, '1949 Australian coal strike' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Australian_coal_strike,  accessed 29 August 2025.

Wikipedia, 'Hotel Canberra', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Canberra, accessed 2 November 2025.

Yarralumla Residents Association Inc, ‘Canberra Brickworks, History, Heritage and Proposed Developments’ https://yarralumlaresidents.org.au/planning-and-development/current/canberra-brickworks, accessed 17 August 2025.