Nikolai starts Australian life with a job in his speciality
By some fluke, Nikolai Müristaja, recruited as a Labourer to Australia from Estonia via Germany after WWII and travelling here on the General Stuart Heintzelman, was sent for his first job after arrival to employment which really suited him.
Might this have been because his first employer, recorded on his Bonegilla card as “Geo. W. Speirs of Griffiths” (sic) had thought to ask at Bonegilla if any of the new arrivals had trained as a jeweller or watchmaker?
The fluke would have been anyone know that Nikolai had this training, and advising Mr Speirs of it. (I am assuming that Nikolai's own English and knowledge of his industry in Australia was not yet up to the task of making his own enquiries.)
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| Nick Müristaja with friend, Griffith, NSW, 1948 Source: Collection of Valeria Mets Blackburn |
Watchmakers and Jewellers
The Estonian Pärnu Päevaleht newspaper reported, on 9 February 1935, that Nikolai Muristaja was about to receive a certificate commemorating his passing of examinations in the field of working on time-pieces.
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| The one known newspaper advertisement for the business opened by Nikolai in the northeast Estonian town of Kiviõli, as a watchmaker who also sold moderately priced crystal, gold and silver object, optical requirements, etc. Source: Rahvaleht, 30 May 1940, through DIGAR |
George W Speirs, according to a notice about his will published in the Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales on 30 November 1962, was a Jeweller and Farmer in Griffith, New South Wales. Since Jewellers often are Watchmakers and repairers too, what a match with Nikolai!
In time (no, that pun was not intended), Nikolai opened up his own business as Nick Muristaja the Jeweller. This was not in competition with George's business, but because it was getting more work than he and Nick could handle in the one workshop.
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| Nick the Jeweller opens his second business, this time, in Griffith, NSW Source: Estonian Archives in Australia |
The Estonian Archives in Australia, in its collection of papers relating the Nick and his wife, Nora, has an advertisement for Nick Muristaja, The Jeweller, clipped from an unknown Australian newspaper with no date. It also has a clipping from the Riverina Daily News, dated 21 October 1970 and titled, Griffith Jeweller Bows Out.
The latter reports that Nick worked for “this particular jeweller for about 15 years”, meaning that he would have started his own business in perhaps 1963. This was soon after George Speirs died, but a business in the family name still exists in Griffith. It is likely that Nick first helped the family and executors with the handover to its heir or heirs.
Selling his business in 1970 means that Nick ran it for only 7 years.
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| Nick the Jeweller bowing out from his Griffith shop Source: Daily News, Griffith, 21 October 1970 via Estonian Archives in Australia |
His plan was to retire to the coast. An anonymous, undated summary of Nora’s life, including Nick, held by the Estonian Archives, places this on the NSW Central Coast.
Nick's Birth and Death
Having been born on 16 August 1912 (in Leisi, on Saaremaa Island) Nick was aged only 58 in October 1970 and 71 in July 1984. He died on 5 August 1989, just before his 77th birthday. Either he was temporarily unwell in 1970 but recovered in retirement, or he had made and invested enough money for his foreseeable needs and those of Nora.
In July 1984, Nick still had enough money saved to travel to North America for ESTO (the global Estonian cultural festival) held every four years, this time in Toronto, Canada. According to Vaba Eesti Sõna (Free Estonian Word), he also had stopovers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Lakewood (New Jersey, where many Estonians lived) and Long Island, New York, and would move on to Europe.
Nick Marries
Nick and Nora had married on 8 December 1951, not in Griffith where Nick was living, but in another Riverina town, Leeton. It is about 45 kilometres away from Griffith as the local birds fly, more by the local indirect roads. Why Leeton was chosen we no longer know.
The Riverina Daily News journalist, Jim Mulcair, told his readers that the couple had first met in Germany and their marriage was followed by a one-day honeymoon in another local town, Narrandera. Nora then flew to Adelaide, where she was working as a nursing aide in the Northfield Mental Hospital.
Nikolai's early life and War
Jim Mulcair summarised Nick’s early life in Estonia as training in the village of Vändra, about 45 Km northeast of the city of Pärnu, and in the capital city, Tallinn. He than opened his own shop in the northeast town of Kiviõli. This is where he was located, close to Russia, when the Soviet Union first invaded in the summer of 1940.
He told Mulcair that, “I lived an adventurous life during the War, experiencing the good and the bad. I found myself at the front line, fighting the Nazis, who captured me 3 times. I escaped from their prison camps in Germany, Russia and Czechoslovakia, the last one of which was the worst camp I have seen.”
It is interesting that Nikolai focussed on fighting the Germans, yet finished the war in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. I suspect that he told the Australian journalist what he wanted to hear, knowing that the Germans were Australia’s enemy during the War. For Estonians and other Baltic people, the Germans were unwanted invaders but the Soviet Union, based in Russia, was even worse.
The Australian selection team’s report on the intending immigrant has him working as a watchmaker for 5 years (from that 1935 certification), followed by 7 years as a labourer, including the last 5 months labouring for a farmer in Germany. It looks everyone was too busy to get watches and clocks repaired during the War.
The selection report leaves empty the places where the team might have recorded Nikolai's date of arrival in Germany and his reason for coming.
Mulcair’s report continued, “After the War, no-one seemed to know what Nick was so he was placed in a Displaced Persons camp.” An Arolsen Archives record card for a file destroyed in 1951 reports that Nick was in “DP Shop Oldenburg”, presumably the workplace associated with his camp. His medical examination for migration to Australia was carried out in Oldenburg, confirming the separate record of being in a DP camp there. Another sheet records his address as “Assembly Centre 224”, which a Web search confirms as likely to have been in the Oldenburg area, where there were camps for Baltic people and Poles.
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| Photo of Nikolai Müristaja from his 1947 selection papers Source: National Archives of Australia |
While Nick has only two records in the Arolsen Archives, his wife-to-be, Nora Lellep, has 6. She was in DP Camp 2515, and DP Camp Sandplatz, in Oldenburg, explaining how she and Nikolai may have met in Germany. She was classified then as a Nurse. (She had been the Head Housekeeper on a farm owned by the President of Estonia, Konstantin Päts, an association which would make her, even now, prima facie a political refugee.)
More on Nora
Soon after the marriage, Nora was touring northern Tasmania in February 1952 when she was involved in a fatal motor vehicle accident. The driver of a panel van which collided with the car in which she was travelling, with a driver and 4 others but not Nikolai, died before he could be moved to a larger hospital in Launceston. The accident was front page news in the North Eastern Advertiser based in Scottsdale.
The anonymous, undated, summary of Nora’s life says that she worked as a nurse in Tasmania but says nothing about the time. She also had nursed at a mental hospital near Newcastle, at the Concord Hospital in Sydney (which we have considered in some detail already) and in Melbourne. It does not mention Adelaide.
Nick and Nora Become Australians
Nick became a naturalised Australian on 20 November 1957. Nora was naturalised in the same ceremony, but for some reason known only to officialdom, this was confirmed in a Commonwealth Government Gazette 4 months after Nick’s naturalisation was announced.
Retirement and Gardening
According to the Archives’ summary, Nora and Nick had retired to the Central Coast before moving to the Estonian Retirement Village in Thirlmere, NSW. After Nick died, on 5 August 1989, days before his 77th birthday, Nora moved into the Retirement Village’s Hostel. That is where I met with her 20 years ago.
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| Nora Müristaja's own photograph of her late husband, Nikolai Source: Müristaja collection scanned 7 August 2006 |
She was in her nineties then, and thought that the man in the large framed photograph might be her brother when it was her husband. She could still remember winning gardening competitions with the garden she and Nick developed in Griffith though. Jim Mulcair reported first prizes in Griffith, Riverina and Sydney garden competitions. Nora showed me the certificate for what might have been a Sydney Morning Herald competition, but it appears not to be in the Estonian Archives collection.
Ülle Slamer, who had worked with Nora when both of them had first arrived in Australia, celebrated Nora’s 100th birthday in late 2012 in Meie Kodu. She confirmed that the first prize was in a Sydney Morning Herald competition, in 1963. Retirement to the Central Coast was a home in Gosford, where they also won a first prize for gardens in small towns.
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| Nora accepts a sash for winning one of the garden competitions Source: Estonian Archives in Australia |
They also created a new garden around their unit in the Thirlmere retirement village. When Nora moved into the hostel, she started a rock garden there.
Jim Mulcair and Ülle Slammer both mentioned Nora’s bark paintings. They were popular with purchasers in Griffith and, later, in Newcastle (a major city north of Gosford).
In 1987, “O.P.” reviewing the art exhibition at the 13th Estonian Days gathering at the end of the previous year, included both Nikolai and Nora as less well known exhibitors. We could expect someone who made his living from jewellery as well as watch repairs to have something of an artistic bent.
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| Nora Müristaja on her 100th birthday Source: Meie Kodu via DIGAR |
Nora lived to be 101 years old. Her ashes now lie next those of her husband of 38 years, in a repository in the Thirlmere Cemetery.
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| A plaque for Nigoolas Müristaja in the Thirlmere Cemetery (The Estonian version of Nikolai usually is spelled 'Nigulas'; 'Puhka rahus' means Rest in Peace) Source: Ken on Find A Grave |
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: I wish to thank Terry Kass, Archivist at the Estonian Archives in Australia, for copying that Archives' file on the Muristajas for this project.
FOOTNOTE: Estonians think that the Müristaja name might have been handed to the family as a joke, given that Nikolai's meek appearance might have been inherited from his male forebears. It means "Thunderer".
CITE THIS AS: Tündern-Smith, Ann (2026) 'Nikolai Müristaja (1912-1989): Watchmaker, Jeweller, Gardener'
SOURCES
AEF DP Registration Record 'Muristaja, Nikolai' https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/68364350?s=muristaja&t=2740782&p=0, Reference Code 03010101 16 266, Folder DP2802, names from MURINAS to MURNIEKS, Modris (1), ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/68364350?s=muristaja&t=2740782&p=0, accessed 9 June 2026.
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1958) 'Certificates of Naturalization, Nikolai Muristaja’ Canberra, ACT, 8 May, p 1442, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article240891976, accessed 3 June 2026.
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1958) 'Certificates of Naturalization, Nora Muristaja’ Canberra, ACT, 4 September, p. 2870, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article240881940, accessed 3 June 2026.
Geni 'Nikolai Müristaja' https://www.geni.com/people/Nikolai-M%C3%BCristaja/6000000007645412229, accessed 9 June 2026.
Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales (1962) ‘RE will of GEORGE WILLIAM SPEIRS, late of Griffith' Sydney, NSW, 30 November, p 3619, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article220383899, accessed 17 March 2026.
Mulcair, Jim (1970) ‘Griffith Jeweller Bows Out’ Riverina Daily News, Griffith, NSW, 21 October, p 1.
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; 206, MURISTAJA Nikolai DOB 16 August 1912, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4105816, accessed 7 June 2026.
National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; LELLEP NORA, MURISTAJA Nora - Nationality: Estonian - Arrived Sydney per Svalbard 29 October 1948 Also known as NEE LELLEP recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=9195434, accessed 7 June 2026.
National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; MURISTAJA NIKOLAI, MURISTAJA, Nikolai : Year of Birth - 1912 : Nationality - ESTONIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 602, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203729837, accessed 7 June 2026.
North-Eastern Advertiser (1952) 'Serious Accident Near Derby' Scottsdale, Tas, 26 February, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article149421507, accessed 17 March 2026.
“O.P” (1987) ‘XIII Eesti Päevade näitusel’ (‘At the 13th Estonian Days Exhibition’, in Estonian) Meie Kodu, Sydney, 29 April, p 4, https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1987/04/29/4, accessed 4 June 2026.
Pärnu Päevaleht (Pärnu Daily Paper) (1935) ‘Uusi ostustöölist’ (‘New Craftspeople’, in Estonian) Parnu, Estonia, 9 February, p 3 https://dea.digar.ee/page/parnupaevaleht/1935/02/09/3, accessed 3 June 2026.
Rahvaleht (National Paper) (1940) [Advertising] Tallinn, Estonia, 30 May, p 8 https://dea.digar.ee/page/rahvalehtvabamaa/1940/05/30/8, accessed 4 June 2026.
‘Refugee/Displaced Person Statistical Card (Lellep, Nora)’ Reference Code 03010101 14 150, Folder DP2339, names from LEKES, Vavrinec to LELIONKA, Vincas (2), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from L, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/68011981, accessed 7 June 2026.
‘Resettled file, Muristaja, Estonian’ Reference Code 03010101 16 266, Folder DP2802, names from MURINAS to MURNIEKS, Modris (1), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from MI, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/68364349, accessed 4 June 2026.
Slamer, Ülle (2013) ‘Nora Müristaja pühitses 15. detsembril 2012 oma 100 aastast sünnipäeva’ (‘Nora Müristaja celebrated her 100th birthday on 15 December 2012’, in Estonian) Meie Kodu, Sydney, NSW, 30 January, p 8 https://dea.digar.ee/article/meiekodu/2013/01/30/25.1, accessed 4 June 2026.
Vaba Eesti Sõna (Free Estonian Word) (1984) ‘Reporteri Märkmikust’ (‘From a Reporter’s Notebook’, in Estonian) New York, NY, 5 July, p 8 https://dea.digar.ee/page/vabaeestisona/1984/07/05/8, accessed 7 June 2026.
