Woomera, South Australia, by Jonas Mockūnas

Rocket range

The idea of establishing a rocket range in outback Australia — with the impressive title of the Anglo-Australian Long-Range Weapons Establishment (LRWE) — originated soon after the end of World War II. Concerned by the lack of adequate defences to the German V-2 rockets during the war and by growing Cold War tensions in the post-war environment, the Anglo-Australian Joint Project was established in 1946 with the LRWE as a centrepiece.

A huge parcel of remote land in South Australia — the Woomera Prohibited Area — was declared in 1947, for use as a testing range for new rockets and guided missiles. At its peak, the range covered 270,000 square kilometres, an area larger than the United Kingdom, and accommodated both military and civil aerospace testing facilities. Today, the somewhat smaller prohibited area is called the RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC).

Growing up in Adelaide during the 1950s, I was vaguely aware of the rocket range, as tests were occasionally reported in the local media. I also knew that some of the Displaced Persons (DPs) who had arrived in Australia after the War had worked there, including my father and a few of his Lithuanian friends and acquaintances. It was only a few years ago that I began to comprehend the massive scale of the project, or the contribution made by refugees, largely thanks to the research of Associate Professor Andrew Saniga of Melbourne University.

Tent lines at Woomera in 1947 or 1948 in the base camp of No. 2 Airfield Construction Company,
RAAF, engaged in constructing the airfield for the rocket range

Source:  Australian War Memorial PO1984.001

DPs Employed Despite Security Questions

Once the Prohibited Area was established, the Department of Works and Housing was tasked with building a village and other infrastructure at Woomera. Labour was in short supply, so despite the security considerations at the military-controlled site, newly-arrived DPs under work contract to the Australian government were also brought in to assist with the construction phase.

Some of the ‘Balts’ who had reached Australia in late 1947 on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, the First Transport, began arriving at the Woomera worksites from April 1948, having been redirected from their initial placements in fruit picking or other jobs. The first major placement, of 50 men from the Bonegilla migrant camp, was despatched on 2 June 1948; by mid-1949 there had been over 400 DPs sent to the rocket range, and 360 were still there despite the harsh work and living conditions. 

Most likely there were few attractions in this remote environment for the new migrants other than their pay packets, which were larger than could be found for unskilled work elsewhere in Australia; the June 1948 contingent started on a wage of £7/10 per week, accommodation and meals included. By April 1949 my father, who had arrived on the Second Transport, recorded that most unskilled wages started at £11 per week.

Hundreds of DPs Employed at Woomera

In May 1949 the Security Officer at Woomera compiled a Nominal Roll of the DPs who had been employed at Woomera from April 1948 to April 1949. Numerically, the Poles were the largest group (112), followed by Lithuanians (92), Latvians (89) and Estonians (38). The Nominal Roll, together with the Bonegilla records, show at least 34 Balts from the First Transport at Woomera during the late 1940s:

Estonians Kuusk, Lembit Latvians Abolins, Voldemars Apinis, Janis Bergtals, Sergejs Bergtals, Nikolajs Kondrats, Vilis Muiznieks, Elmars Osins, Augusts Osis, Eriks

Lithuanians Balsevičius, Bronius Brazauskas, Antanas Budrionis, Antanas Dailyde, Vladas Janonis, Zenonas Kildišas, Adolfas Laurinavičius, Povilas Lileika, Algirdas Lizaitis, Algirdas Meškelis, Vilgelminas Navickas, Albinas Norkeliunas, Antanas Norkūnas, Vytautas Petruškevičius, Jonas Petruškevičius (nee Salytė), Viltis Reisgys, Anskis Rimkevičius, Eduardas Sivickas, Vincas Staugas, Eduardas Strankauskas, Jonas Valinčius, Kazys Venzlauskas, Antanas Volkovas, Simonas Zakarauskas, Jurgis Zeronas, Romualdas

[Some names in the list above have had links added to them, which will take you to the biographies of those individuals.  More links will be added as more relevant biographies appear on this blog.]

The earliest from the First Transport to arrive at Woomera was Vilgelmas Meškelis, on 25 April 1948; he had already worked picking fruit for J Nethersole and Son, at Ardmona in Victoria, before being sent to Iron Knob in South Australia after a return to the Bonegilla camp. He was followed by four others during May 1948 (S. Bergtals, Laurinavičius, Navickas and Norkūnas). Nine members of the June 1948 contingent from Bonegilla were First Transporters.

Most of the men were employed as labourers on the various construction projects, although a few were given semi-skilled or trade tasks. Elmars Muiznieks, a mechanic in Latvia, was employed in the mechanics workshop until he was dismissed (see below) and Romualdas Zeronas was employed as a cook’s offsider until he too was dismissed.

The Bergtals brothers, having had prior supervisory experience, were given more responsibility, Sergejs as a ganger/foreman, and Nikolajs as a ganger/draftsman. Albinas Navickas worked as a linesman, Jonas Petruškevičius as a stone mason, and Anskis Reisgys as a cable joiner.

Viltis Petruškevičius, née Salytė, the only woman in this group, worked as a waitress; she had opted to go to Woomera to accompany her husband Jonas after they married in April 1948.

Building the spur line to Woomera, 1949

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Conditions in the early construction camps were often relatively primitive, even for men who had spent years in Europe’s Displaced Persons camps. Many had elected to put up with the conditions as a means of saving a nest-egg towards their futures in the big cities, others enjoyed the new-found freedom in the bush including the relatively unrestrained opportunities for alcohol and/or gambling. Not surprisingly, around 6 per cent of the DPs were dismissed for various transgressions within that first year.

Escapade Led to Deportation

Perhaps one of the more colourful escapades was that undertaken by two Latvians, Elmars Muiznieks and Julius Gravans who stole a truck in Woomera in February 1949 but were soon apprehended, fined £20 Pounds in the Port Augusta Police Court, and dismissed from their employment.

Deportation Order for Elmars Muiznieks

Source:  Arolsen Archives

What may have started as a lark did not end well for these men: ignoring their work obligations to the Australian Government, they then made their way to Melbourne, but were soon arrested by the Victorian Police operating at the request of the Department of Immigration. The authorities had clearly had enough — the men were given dictation tests, in Italian and Romanian, and declared prohibited immigrants before being deported in September 1949. Ironically, the First Transport Balts were released from their work obligations to the Commonwealth at the end of September 1949.

FOOTNOTES

1. The Nominal Roll does not list all of the above names; in particular, Viltis Petruškevičius and Algirdas Lileika do not appear on the Roll and have been included because of other substantiating documentation. If searching the Nominal Roll, please be aware of other errors also, including incorrect arrival dates to Australia (several First Transport passengers are shown as arriving in November 1948, whereas the year should be 1947), and incorrect listing by nationality (for example Budrionis and Laurinavičius are both listed under the Latvian heading).

2. There are many other issues associated with Woomera that are beyond the scope of this post. Prof Saniga touched on a few of these in the 2022 exhibition catalogue, referring to the irony of ‘war-weary European migrants‘ who had been displaced from their own homelands being sent to work on a military project that had involved ‘the displacement of Aboriginal people, mainly the Kokatha, from their tribal lands’.

ANN'S ADDITIONS

In a 2025 paper, Scriver, Cooke and Saniga note that ‘At least six different Aboriginal Peoples were impacted by the LWRE. Much of what had been the country of the Kokatha People ... would thereafter be designated the Woomera Prohibited Area. 

'The extent of the impact was much greater, however, as numerous other groups would also be profoundly affected ... along the thousands of kilometres of the rocket range’s firing line that traversed their ancestral countries between Woomera and the northwest coast of Australia. 

'These included the Nakako, Pitjantjatjara, Ngatatjara, Mardu and Nyangumarda Peoples ... tracking and clearing people from the fall zones of spent rockets by the LRWE’s Native Patrol Officers, including the removal to mission reserves of women and children of the Manjiljarra/Martu Wangka and Yulparija Peoples, some of who had reputedly never left the desert previously.’

We should note that what may seem ruthless now was just part and parcel of what had happened to many people across Europe and Asia during and after World War II, especially in the Baltic and other Eastern European countries from which the DPs came. 

The Anglo side of this Anglo-Australian project, in particular, might have included survivors of the London Blitz of September 1940 to May 1941 or people whose families had been caught up in it.  The military of both nations had just been fighting against would-be invaders for 6 long years.

Those “growing Cold War tensions” Jonas mentioned at the start affected the attitudes of Anglo-Australian officials to the pre-existing populations.  They had to be moved on for the good of the whole world.

SOURCES

Brisbane Telegraph (1949) ‘Balts jailed; Left jobs’ Brisbane, May 16, p 3 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212265738, accessed 27 January 2026.

Mockūnas, Jonas (snr) (1949) [Personal diary].

National Archive of Australia: Commonwealth Investigation Service, South Australia; D1918, Investigation case files, single number series with 'S' prefix, 1938-1960; S1493/5/2, Nominal roll of displaced persons at Woomera [Long Range Weapons Establishment, Woomera, SA], 1948-1949 https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=856767, accessed 18 February 2026.

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Labour and National Service, Central Office; MT29/1, Employment Service Schedules, 1947-1950; 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 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=23150376, accessed 18 February 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4481, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; PETRUSKEVICIUS VILTIS LODZE, Petruskevicius Viltis Lodze - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947 Also known as NEE SALYTE, 1947-1952 https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=9221636, accessed 18 February 2026.

'Personal file of MUIZNIEKS, ELMARS, born on 4-Jan-1918, born in VALMIERA' 3.2.1 IRO "Care and Maintenance" Program, DocID: 79506031, ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/79506031,  accessed 18 February 2026.

Petruškevičienė, Viltis (1950) ‘Woomera West’ Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) Sydney, August 16, p 4 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article259363646, accessed 18 February 2026.

Saniga, Andrew (2022) 'Woomera' in Immigrant Networks (exhibition catalogue), Melbourne (16 November 2022 to 10 February 2023).

Saniga, Andrew (2024) 'Woomera: A Landscape of Displacement and Renewal' in A. Pieris, M. Lozanovska, A. Dellios, A. Saniga & D. Deynon, Immigrant Industry: Building Postwar Australia, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, pp132-165.

Scriver, P. C., Cooke, S., & Saniga, A. (2025). 'Constructing/curating Woomera: a topology of displacement between northeastern Europe and Central Australia', Landscape Research, 50(7), 1173–1189. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2025.2526505, accessed 18 February 2026.

Wikipedia ' RAAF Woomera Range Complex' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAAF_Woomera_Range_Complex accessed 26 January 2026.

Balts at Bangham (1948-49) Part 2, by Ann Tündern-Smith

We previously have looked at the work which the 62 men sent to Bangham, South Australia, for the State’s Railways (SAR) Commission were expected to do. We’ve noted also that, maybe one month arrival their arrival, 17 or 18 were sent via Adelaide to Peterborough, to train as porters and cleaners.

BANGHAM CAMP CONDITIONS

How the men had been living was described in a May 1948 report from the Commissioner for Railways, who wrote, “In the camp at Bangham, the men are living under AWU [Australian Workers Union] conditions, and the camps have to be reasonably mobile, while at the same time conforming to the conditions under the award or agreement covering AWU workers.

The Bangham tent camp is at the rear of the shelter shed;
in the foreground, it appears that the broad gauge line has been laid while the narrow gauge remains in place, with some spare rails to the left of the line;
Question:  how did the photographer get this perspective in 1948-49 without a drone?

Photograph courtesy of Tatyana Tamm

“It is not, therefore, practicable to establish more buildings at Bangham, even if we could get the material.

"The camp, consists of tents, mess rooms, ablution, and sanitary facilities, but there is no recreation hall.

“Whatever additional amenities are provided will have to be general to all AWU camps, if demanded, or we shall be accused of giving amenities to Balts which we could not give to Australians. The men in this camp work a five-day week and are at liberty to be away from the camp from 4.30 p.m. Friday until 7.30 a.m. Monday.

"It is the intention, as soon as possible, to provide a large camp at Narracoorte [sic] where men from Bangham and other isolated camps in the South-East can spend the week-end."

The Commissioner for Railways was replying to representations from the Hon LH Densley, Member of the Legislative Council, who also was a member of the Tatiata District Council.  The Commissioner’s reply was published in the Narracoorte Herald of 17 May and the Border Watch of 20 May.

While Mr Densley’s letter has not been published, the nature of the commissioner’s reply and Mr Densley’s dual memberships suggest that he certainly was a civic-minded individual.

Sanitary facilities at the camp could be condemned by the local medical officer as inadequate, the Tatiata Council’s Health Officer, Dr KD Krantz, commented on the reply.

In moving that Cr Densley be thanked for his representations in the matter, another Councillor said that an inspection of the camp could be made by the Health Inspector, and if sanitary conditions were found to be inadequate, a report could be submitted to Council.

The local Health Inspector carried out this instruction and reported back to the Council that, “Sanitary arrangements consist of a series of movable cubicles over pits on a sandy rise. Cubicles are moved on to fresh pits and old ones filled in at frequent intervals. However, washup water and some kitchen refuse was being deposited in a shallow hole near the kitchen. I instructed the camp attendant to provide refuse buckets and have the material buried each day.

“I do not consider that these men are being subjected to any undue hardships in regard to camping conditions as the amenities provided for them are equal to those provided for local men under similar conditions." This report appeared in Bordertown’s Border Chronicle of 17 June 1948.

Did the men feel that the conditions were only a slight improvement on those endured when drafted into the German Army, as many of them had been? At least there were not bombs and bullets flying around, but see below.

It wasn’t only moving the rails from the train which had brought them to the Wolseley railway yards (as discussed in the previous blog entry) which was dangerous. Even travelling to work might have more than normal dangers.

On 2 September 1948, a ganger probably had had his life saved by former medical students after a motor trolley carrying the men had stopped suddenly. The ganger was thrown heavily to the ground when a bar came lose, creating an obstruction which led to the sudden stop. After being treated on the scene, the ganger was admitted to hospital with several head injuries as well as a broken leg and ribs, according to Border Chronicle.

At this time, we do not know if this incident involved anyone from the First Transport. Tragically, a workplace accident did lead to the death of one of the First Transporters later that month.

Miervaldis Indriksons' ID photo from his Bonegilla card

Source:  NAA

Miervaldis Indriksons, then aged only 30, was driving a front end loader to fill in a railway dam at Narracoorte. The machine toppled and Indriksons tried to jump clear, but caught his foot in the steering wheel. He was taken to the local hospital but died two hours later from his internal injuries, on 15 September 1948.

Lutheran Pastor K Hartman of Bordertown conducted the funeral the next day. The railways arranged transport to allow his fellow countrymen to attend. The funeral also was attended by the Engineer in Charge of the broadening, EL Walpole, the man who was to speak to the Mount Gambier Rotary Club eight days later on what the broadening project involved (see previous entry).

His fellow countrymen must have been the ones who told the Border Chronicle reporter that Miervaldis had been the only surviving member of a family of eight killed during the War. There was believed to be a small son still alive in Europe.

Pastor Hartman had been keeping an eye on the Bangham men since he first visited on 14 January. He discovered that none of the 20 Protestants had a copy of the Bible in English. The next day, the Border Chronicle published his letter appealing for financial help to purchase bibles for the men, with a parallel version in their mother tongue if possible.

There were other incidents among the Bangham men involving the First Transporters. One was Petras Bulke, a Lithuanian who had to be admitted to hospital in March 1948 after accidentally swallowing some kerosene. As the Border Chronicle reported at the time, “Mr Bulke was performing a trick which involved its use”.

It looks like problems getting Petras Bulke to medical assistance had been included in Mr Densley’s letter, since the Railway Commissioner’s reply included, "The Engineer-in-Charge of the work has the responsibility for seeing that sick or injured men are conveyed to the nearest doctor, and, so far as I am aware, his duties in this respect are not neglected even when the injuries are the result of brawls after working hours.

"The particular case referred to by Dr. Krantz was of an unusual character, and the delay in conveying the men (sic) to Bordertown was due to prompt advice not being given to the Engineer at Wolseley. We do not of course, keep ambulance vehicles at each camp, but first aid out fits, and employees qualified in first aid are available at all camps."

Dr Krantz further commented to the Tatiata Council that the delay in the case of kerosene poisoning was due to lack of telephone communication. Sometimes vehicles were not available and bad roads were also an obstacle. The lack of telephones in the Bangham area made the news also in August, when a public meeting in Bordertown agreed to petition the Post-Master General to provide telephone services from Bordertown to the area.

The Railway Commissioner had mentioned brawls after hours. This was not the only public mention of violent behaviour among young men traumatised by being caught up in World War II, mostly most unwillingly.

The Border Chronicle of 29 April 1948 reported that Aleksandrs Kirpiconoks, along with a later Latvian arrival, both probably without legal representation, had pleaded guilty to charges of disorderly behaviour and resisting arrest at Wolseley one Saturday earlier in that month. They were each fined £1 with 7/6 costs on the first charge and £2 plus 10/6 interpreter’s fee on the second charge.

A schedule from the Commonwealth Employment Service tells us that the men had been promised a weekly income of £5/19/6. This was a bit more than the basic wage at the time, reported in the Mount Gambier Border Watch as being £5/8/- in Adelaide from the beginning of the first pay period in February. This probably was a gross salary, with Pay As You Go tax yet to be deducted. As well, Railways might have been deducting more to cover the cost of the food for the men, and maybe even the cost of employing the “camp attendant”. The total of £3/17/6 to be paid by Kirpiconoks and his friend may well have swallowed up one week’s wages for both.

Also during April 1948, police were called to sort out a “disturbance” among some of the Baltic men on a freight train on which they were travelling back to the Bangham camp. Several windows were broken. The railway authorities would not allow the train to depart until the melee was sorted out. The result was two of the First Transporters, Antanas Brazauskas and Antanas Budrionis appearing before two Justices of the Peace on charges of wilful damage, for breaking the railway windows, and offensive behaviour. Again prrobably without legal representation, both pleaded guilty and were each fined £1 with 17/6 costs on the first count and £1 with 10/6 interpreter’s fee on the second. The total this time was £3/8/-, still a sobering amount of their weekly income.

In all fairness, I must point out that 9 other miscreants appeared before the Wolseley Court during the month covered by this report. Most cases involved drinking, fighting or “disorderly behaviour”. I have not found more reports of the Bangham camp residents appearing before the courts.

Another untoward incident in January 1949 involved one of the men already mentioned, Antanas Brazauskas. He was attacked in his tent by a fellow Lithuanian who he had regarded as a friend. The attacker found a rifle in Brazauskas’ tent and fired it about twenty times, it was alleged, piercing holes in the tent fabric.

Despite injuries, Brazauskas was able to stagger to the tent of two others who took him to a third tent, where he was “carefully guarded”. One of the men in the third tent, Feliksas Subacius, also was from the First Transport. The men tried to get police help, but had to wait for a day until a policeman from Wolseley arrived.

The men prepared a report to the Regional Director of Employment, Adelaide, claiming that this was not the first time that the attacker had moved against other men. “In the meantime”, they reported, “we approached our superiors and told them that our lives were endangered through the presence of the offender, and that either he or we would have to leave the camp”. The railway authorities had not removed the attacker or informed the men of their intentions by the time they had stipulated, so they had gone to Adelaide to lodge their complaint.

They had asked the Chief Engineer’s Department to give them employment somewhere else in the SAR. The men had been transferred to Terowie, more than 500 Km from Bangham and less than 25 Km from Peterborough.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

“These Baltic immigrants are, generally, reasonably well educated, and a proportion of them have a smattering of English. The latter are selected for transfer to other centres where English is taught, and they are trained for railway traffic duties. The others gradually acquire a knowledge of English from daily contact with Australian workmen.

“It is not practicable for the Railways Commissioner to supply transport to enable a Bordertown school teacher to visit the Bangham camp at nights (as) suggested nor is it practicable to provide additional amenities in these camps for the reasons given. It is considered, however, that the camp at Narracoorte, when constructed will provide relaxation at weekends.”

Relaxation at weekends probably was not what the Hon LH Densley MLC was seeking for the men in his letter referenced above, but it was the conclusion reached by the Railways Commissioner in the reply presented to the Tatiana District Council in May 1948.

Elsewhere I have read that the SAR was employing English-speaking migrants from a variety of places in the United Kingdom, leading the Baltic employees to wonder which English they were supposed to be acquiring by daily contact.

Three months later, another letter, this time to the Adelaide Advertiser from a church minister based in Bordertown, appealed for English language classes for the group at Bangham. He wrote that “constant association with these men has revealed that they have definite potentialities of becoming some of our finest Australian citizens. But, how can these potentialities develop into realities if they are debarred reasonable opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of the language of the country?

“Most of these men began their work with the railways with a knowledge of English which barely exceeded ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Repeated representations have been made to responsible authorities about the camp at Bangham, with the reply that it is ‘impracticable’ to make arrangements for an English teacher to visit it.”

As noted already, the 17 or 18 men speakers of good or excellent English had left in February, while Girts Broders, the original leader appointed by the Employment authorities in Bonegilla, probably had gone too. We have to hope that there were good English speakers among the later groups or the men were somehow picking up enough English to survive from their Australian colleagues.

English lessons finally arrived at the camp in December 1948, after a petition from the SAR at Bangham. The 40 students were supplied with free notebooks and a textbook called, “English for Newcomers to Australia” when they attended their first Friday night class on 10 December. But then their lessons came to an abrupt end, as their new teacher was leaving the district. The plan, thank goodness, was to obtain the services of another teacher in the new year.

It would be good to report that this plan was actioned, but I can find no further mention of English classes for the Bangham men in the South Australian newspapers digitised by Trove, at least until the men probably had left by the end of October 1949.

Indeed, the only 1949 report is the shoot up of Antanas Brazauskas’ tent in January and its consequences. Either the Bangham camp had settled down, or the local press reporters and their editors had lost interest.

Sources

Border Chronicle (1948) 'Balt Swallows Kerosene' Bordertown, SA 25 March p 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212918840 accessed 29 December 2023.

Border Chronicle (1948) 'English Classes for Balts' Bordertown, SA 16 December p 8 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212921875 accessed 29 December 2023

Border Chronicle (1948) 'Petition for Telephonic Service to Bangham Area' Bordertown, SA 19 August p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212920470 accessed 20 April 2024.

Border Chronicle (1948) 'Sanitary conditions at Wolseley Railway Station "A Menace"' Bordertown, SA 17 June p 1

Border Chronicle (1949) 'Balts Leave Bangham Camp After Disturbance' Bordertown, SA 10 February p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212922409 accessed 15 April 2024.

Border Watch (1948) 'Basic Wage Increase' Mount Gambier, SA 20 January p 12 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article78592298 accessed 20 Apr 2024.

Chronicle (1948) 'Labour Shortage Delays New Gauge' Adelaide, SA 21 October p 10 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article93211360 accessed 15 April 2024.

Hartman, K (1948) ‘Bibles for Immigrants’, Border Chronicle, Bordertown, SA, 15 January, p 7, https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212918131, accessed 16 April 2024.

Hartman, KE (1948) 'Tuition for Balts' Advertiser Adelaide 28 August 1948 p 2 194808  https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43780741 accessed 29 December 2023.

Narracoorte Herald (1949) ‘Balts Leave Bangham Camp After Disturbance: Lithuanian attacked and injured’ Narracoorte, SA 14  February p 4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article147143280 accessed 15 April 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Labour and National Service, Central Office; MT29/1, Employment Service Schedules; 21 (1947 – 1950), 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, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=23150376 accessed 7 May 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947–1956; INDRIKSONS, Miervaldis : Year of Birth - 1918 : Nationality - LATVIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number - 761, 1947–1948, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203644069 accessed 15 May 2024.

Wikipedia, 'Les Densley' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Densley accessed 15 April 2024.