Beginning Life in Australia, by Viltis Salytė-Kružienė, translated by Daina Pocius

These are excerpts from a speech by Viltis Salytė-Kružienė on 6 July 1997 at Melbourne Lithuanian House for Lithuanian National Day. This article appeared in the 4 August 1997 issue of the Australian-Lithuanian newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė, from which we are using it and its illustrations with kind permission.

Two portraits of Viltis Kružienė
1997 (left) and 1947 (right)

Source:  Mūsų Pastogė, 4 August 1997

One cold day in Germany in October 1947, my sister came to me and asked if I would like to travel to Australia for work. If I agreed, the train would leave for Frankfurt at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, and in Butzbach, near Frankfurt, the Australian commission would be waiting for us, and then maybe in a week or so we could sail to new shores.

There wasn't much time to make up our minds. Although we didn't know much about Australia, we still needed somewhere to settle down for a permanent life. We wouldn't be able to stay in Germany. And who would want to return to the Bolshevik occupation? There was no question of returning to Lithuania in 1947. And so began my odyssey of travel together with other Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians.

In 1947, we sailed to sunny Australia on the American military transport ship General Stuart Heintzelman.

The ship's passengers were mostly young men and women. There were 630 Lithuanian men and 18 women on board.¹ Most of them had recently graduated from school, and their memories were still alive with the bright memories of their teachers who, while educating them, told them that they should live not only for themselves, but also for others, and most importantly, be a useful person for their homeland.

While sailing on a ship, a group of enthusiasts decided to publish a one-off newspaper in Lithuanian. The Latvians and Estonians did the same. The newspaper was called The Baltic Viking. Its introduction read:

"Forced by changeable fate, we had to leave our native hearths, Europe, and go abroad in search of work and bread. Many of our nation's emigrants have long since settled down nicely in the USA, South America, and other countries. We hope to find shelter in that continent of the world that is the most distant from our country and where we will find only a few hundred Lithuanians. We must urgently join their ranks, each time receiving new reinforcements of our own strength. To create an Australian immigrant community, taking unity, nationality, solidarity as the basis, and to strive to maintain close ties with Lithuanians all over the world. Never forget and believe in a happy future. We do not know where our paths of destiny will lead and let neither time nor immense distance break the unity of Lithuanians. On the threshold of a new life, let us remember the words of our Anthem: In the name of that Lithuania, may unity shine ..."

A general meeting was convened in the ship's dining room, and a temporary board was elected, which would represent us if necessary.²

First, in early November, a gathering was organised on the ship to commemorate All Souls' Day.³ Although we did not have a priest, we prayed from the Lithuanian prayer book for all the dead and sang a few hymns together. Every Sunday, mass was held, and hymns were sung.

Scouts for men and women were organised. During the trip, meetings were held and a festive bonfire with an interesting program was held on the deck of the ship. A folk-dance group and a men's choir were also organised. The ship's captain invited the Lithuanian choir to sing for the American crew. One Lithuanian woman dressed in national costume presented him with a modest Lithuanian gift.

The Lithuanian scouts on the Heintzelman hold a bonfire ceremony
(perhaps without lighting the fire)

Source: Mūsų Pastogė, 4 August 1997

Once a week we would receive 10 packs of American cigarettes or some sweets. The women received Elizabeth Arden cosmetics, everyone else received toothpaste and toothbrushes. Today, such gifts mean nothing to us, but back then it was different.

Four weeks passed in a flash. Early in the morning of November 28, the ship approached the Australian coast. Everyone who had just gotten up ran to the deck to see what Australia looked like.

When entering the port of Fremantle, nothing could be seen. The shore was far away, no land, no towers, only rocks, rocks and more rocks. Standing on the deck, I looked at the waves of the sea, and began to doubt whether it was worth going to that shore. Maybe, as someone said, there were only deserts and black bears and kangaroos running around.

However, when the ship stopped in the port and we saw people waiting for us on the quay, the picture changed. Those waiting were the same as us. The mood improved, and when the customs officers hurriedly checked our luggage, we began to go ashore.

The ship brought 849 emigrants to Australia. Out of all, only two people were not allowed to alight: a Latvian woman who was suspected of being politically unacceptable, and a man who developed a mental illness during the trip. The man was Lithuanian.⁴

The buses took us to the intended camp, which was called Graylands, while the rest of the Lithuanians were accommodated in the Swanbourne camp, which was about a kilometer away from the first one.

Before getting on the bus, a strange woman gave me a large paper bag full of still warm cakes with jam. That touched me very much, and I thought, how good those Australian people are! I kept thinking about that woman for a long time. Why did she want to please the emigrants who had only just arrived?

In the camp, semi-circular tin barracks, painted white with lime, could be seen from a distance. The weather was beautiful. Neither hot nor cold. After getting ready, we were called to lunch. Before going to the dining room, everyone was given leaflets in which the Minister of Immigration, Mr Calwell, greeted the arrivals.

The second thing that surprised me was that when I entered the dining room, the tables were covered with white tablecloths, and at the ends of the tables stood vases high with oranges. And we had not seen them for many years! After eating a good lunch, we went to our rooms to rest.

The refugees brought from Europe on the ship General Stuart Heintzelman, DPs, Displaced Persons, were replaced by German prisoners of war from the state of Victoria returning to their homeland.⁵

Four days later, in Perth, we boarded the Australian warship Kanimbla, which looked much worse than the American one. However, the Australians seemed much friendlier to us than the Americans. We travelled all week to Melbourne.⁶

True, before sailing to Melbourne, we were questioned at the Greylands camp, and the answers were written down by Australian scribes. They listened how well everyone could "speak English." My knowledge of English was marked "satisfactory."

While sailing on the Kanimbla, the Australians published a daily newspaper. The ship's management invited me to read the text of the newspaper in English translated into Lithuanian, so that even those who did not speak English at all could read what was written in that newspaper. The Latvians and Estonians did the same.

A week later we reached Melbourne. The journey continued on the same day. We went by train to a camp called Bonegilla. The train stopped somewhere in the fields, the Australian soldiers picked us up with our luggage and brought us to the barracks in trucks.⁷

The train for the women is about to leave Port Melbourne for Bonegilla
Contrast this photo with the more frequently use one
taken by a Melbourne Sun photographer (below)

Source:  Mūsų Pastogė, 4 August 1997

The common person in both photos is Helmi Jalak,
sixth from the front in this photo but fourth from the front in the Mūsų Pastogė photo;
the presence of a second class sign in this photo but not the one above suggests a delay in starting
while heads were poked out of different windows

Source:  Melbourne Sun, 9 December 1947

Oh God, the barracks had not been inhabited for about a week. The floors were dirty, there were cobwebs everywhere. There were three beds with mattresses in the room. We put our suitcases outside and went to ask for cleaning supplies. After bringing water, we washed ourselves in our new home, made the beds with clean sheets and warm blankets. We felt like we were in a hotel.

While we were getting ready, many journalists and photographers arrived at the camp. They photographed our every move. The next morning, journalists and photographers followed us from early morning. Soon we received newspapers and magazines with our photos.

The next day, it was announced over the loudspeaker that everyone would have to go to school and learn some Aussie expressions, which would be very useful in everyday life at first, as well as the so-called "Australian way of life".

It was 8 December.⁸ As I was walking through the campgrounds, I met an acquaintance from Estonia who invited me to go with her to an agency that recruits clerks for various office jobs. Since I could not only speak English but also type, I got a job as a typist and translator at the Employment Office in the camp.

I completed my compulsory labour contract in Bonegilla. My other female companions were assigned to work as waitresses or housekeepers. The men were assigned to manual labour and were sent all over Australia as ordinary labourers.

That was the beginning of my life in Australia...

CITE THIS AS Salytė-Kružienė, Viltis (trans. Pocius, Daina) (2025) 'Beginning life in Australia', https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2025/08/beginning-life-in-Australia-by-Viltis-Salyte-Kruziene.html.

Footnotes (by Ann Tündern-Smith)

* Oral history is not about factual details. Viltis Kružienė did a fine job of remembering significant moments in her journey to Australia and the start of her life here, but some of the details, such as numbers, are known to be different from her recall.

1 The passenger list shows only 415 Lithuanian men but 21 Lithuanian women.

2 Elsewhere, Kazys Mieldazys has recorded a representative committee being elected in the Diepholz camp where all gathered before the train to Bremerhaven and the ship to Australia.

3 Kazys Mieldazys also noted the All Souls Day (2 November) service.

4 There were 843 passengers, of whom 4 were not allowed to land: one on security grounds and 3 on health grounds.

5 Additionally, there were former internees, that is, people not deemed to be safe to leave in the community during the war because of their real or alleged Nazi sympathies. Some came from New South Wales but all had been brought to Fremantle from Melbourne by the Australian Navy ship, the Kanimbla.

6 The Kanimbla, like the Stuart Heintzelman, was a troop carrier rather than a warship.

7 The women were privileged to ride in the back of Army trucks. The men had to walk about 3 kilometres between the railway station and the barracks, carrying their luggage.

8 The train trip to Bonegilla station and the Army truck ride for the women occurred on December 8. The date of the first lessons was 9 December.

Source

Kružienė, Viltis (1997) 'Atvykimo Australijon 50 - mėtį minint' ('Celebrating the 50th anniversary of arrival in Australia', in Lithuanian) Mūsų Pastogė, Sydney, 4 August, p 4 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1997/1997-08-04-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 August 2025. 

Lost luggage, by Ann Tündern-Smith

Not all about the Heintzelman voyage was happiness.  Lost luggage spoiled the trip for several.

Nikolajs Bergtals: see below for his 'found' story

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Estonian woman, Salme Pochla, would have had her voyage ruined already when told that she would not be allowed to enter Australia.  She may or may not have been told the reason:  an adverse security report received after the Heintzelman had sailed.

To cap it off, some or all of her luggage, described as “packages", was lost. No trace of it could be found in Fremantle – or Perth presumably, either, since the luggage was transferred there for Customs examination on 29 November.

Then there was Karolis Prasmutas, a Lithuanian man who we have met in an earlier blog entry.  Once he had reached his first employer, the State Electricity Commission at Yallourn in Victoria, he set about making written inquiries.  He described his luggage as a square box made of “tin aluminium” painted blue.  Knowing Karolis from his blog entry, he may well have made the square box himself.

His missing box contained his professional books and tools as well as some clothes and shoes. He suggested that the value of the lost luggage of about £40, around 4 weeks  income when the minimum wage was £5/9/-, less tax.

He wrote to the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) representative in Sydney saying that the luggage had not come off the Heintzelman with him.  Immigration officials had told him that they would let him know about the luggage when he arrived at Bonagilla. However, the Immigration official he talked with at Bonegilla told him that he had no information.

It was the Provisional Committee of the International Refugee Organisation (PCIRO) which had organised the Heintzelman’s voyage from Germany on behalf of the Australian Government.

A member of the Australian Parliament’s upper house, the Senate, got involved. One reason for Senator Donald Grant’s involvement may have been that he was based in Sydney, like the IRO.  He wrote to the company which had handled the Heintzelman’s arrival in Fremantle, the Orient Steam Navigation Company, to say that an IRO staff member had passed Karolis’ letter to him. 

Correspondence on the missing box continued for nearly 6 months, until a senior Immigration official in Canberra advised that no further action was required from the Department’s Western Australia office.  The definitive advice may have been that from the manager of a transport service employed by the Orient Company who wrote that he had inquired of Stuttgart in Germany without getting a reply and had also had a thorough check done of the Perth camps, a warehouse and the Fremantle wharves.

He noted that in this instance the majority of the names on the packages transported were “impossible to read or understand whilst some 200 packages were without marks or numbers". Due to this, the company had relied on the migrants identifying and claiming their luggage at the Graylands camp. 

Although there is no mention of it on the file we have to assume, as the transport manager seems to have done, that Karolis was sent to this camp and not Swanbourne. Either that or the more than 400 at Swanbourne were bussed to Graylands to be part of the scrimmage — a possibility of which there is no remaining evidence.

Having the new arrivals identify their own luggage may well have led to a situation where nice looking luggage was claimed by someone else, especially if it had lost or badly damaged labels.

Karolis Prasmutas was not the only Lithuanian to suffer loss of his luggage. Birute Gruzas, formerly Tamulyte, told me that her luggage had disappeared before she was able to claim it in Perth. As Birute had already lost everything she was carrying when a bomb blew up the bridge she was crossing on her way to refuge in Germany, she was one tough 19-year-old to pick herself up and carry on for the second time in her life.

These are the known cases of lost luggage. How many others were there, if Birute's story is not recorded?

On the other hand, we also have one example of lost articles being found and returned to their owner.

On 5 December 1947, that is 3 days after the Kanimbla had left, a wallet was handed in at the Fremantle police station. Given the contents of the wallet recorded by the police, it may have been more in the nature of a folder or portfolio.

Those contents were a foreign passport in the name of Nikolajs Bergtals, a temporary travel document in the same name, a map of Nord West Deutschland (Northwest Germany), a visiting card, a letter written in a foreign language, two foreign doctors’ prescriptions, six personal references and six photographs. 

The man who had found the wallet had a Russian name, Ivan Estinoff. He was said to be “of the Jeanette Fruit Palace” in High Street, Fremantle, so perhaps its proprietor. Given his presence in Australia, he may well have held similar political views to the new arrivals.

The Acting Commonwealth Migration Officer for Western Australia, RW Gratwick, posted the wallet by registered mail directly to Bonegilla on 17 December.  It crossed with a letter from the Acting Commonwealth Migration Officer at the Bonagilla camp, LT Gamble, who enquired on behalf of Nikolajs on 21 December. An undated memorandum from Gamble to Gratwick, but with a December receipt stamp, records the arrival of the package still containing all the articles.

Gamble added, “The articles referred to have been handed to the owner who desires to express his grateful thanks for your action in the matter.”

Its arrival must have been something of a Christmas present.  No wonder we have another thankful new arrival.

SOURCES

Australian Government, Fair Work Commission ‘The history of the Australian minimum wage’ https://www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/history/history-australian-minimum-wage accessed 30 June 2025.

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Immigration, Western Australian Branch; PP482/1, Correspondence files [nominal rolls], single number series; 82, General Heintzelman - arrived Fremantle 28 November 1947 - nominal rolls of passengers https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=439196 accessed 27 June 2025.

The stopover in Perth, 28 November - 2 December 1947 by Ann Tündern-Smith

We've looked already at the carefully organised disembarkation of 839 passengers from the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman in Fremantle, the harbour for Western Australia's capital city of Perth.  We've read the letter of thanks from Roberts Miezitis to the managers of the Swanbourne Barracks canteen.  Below is the covering note from the Acting Commonwealth Migration Officer for Western Australia, RW Gratwick.

The report from the Supervising Manager of both Army camps, or perhaps only the Graylands camp, Mr C Huck follows.

I reckon he fudged his figures because he thought that he had to get a total of 844.  For instance, 114 women is the number on women on the Heintzelman, not the 112 allowed to land.

In reality, there were 843 on the Heintzelman as one person had not embarked at the last minute.  We already know from the disembarkation report that 4 were not allowed to land in Australia, while a fifth was taken to hospital for treatment.  The numbers in Mr Huck's report should add up to only 838.

I wonder also about his 9.30 pm departure time on 2 December, since JB Thompson's report to RW Gratwick says that the Kanimbla had sailed at "1800 hrs." on 2 December.  That time converts to 6 pm.

This lower headcount make the cost per head slightly more expensive than Mr Huck's calculation, as the money was spent on fewer people.  However, given the two debatable figures so far, I've decided that the total number of meals could be out too, so checking is best put to one side.

In any case, on 22 pennies each day translates into Australian decimal currency as 22 cents.  The Reserve Bank's Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator says that what cost 22 cents in 1947 would have cost $7.63 in 2024.  While you wouldn't get a cup of coffee and something to go with it for $7.63 now, the two camp canteens would have had the benefit of buying in bulk at wholesale prices.

Sources

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Immigration, Western Australian Branch; PP482/1, Correspondence files [nominal rolls], single number series; 82, General Heintzelman - arrived Fremantle 28 November 1947 - nominal rolls of passengers https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=439196 accessed 27 June 2025.

Reserve Bank of Australia, Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html accessed 29 June 2025.

Stanislavs Berzins: the First Accident, by Ann Tündern-Smith

We've reported already on two work-related deaths and a fatal motor cycle accident.  Sadly, there were some more, which we'll get to one-by-one.  The first unfortunate encounter with motorised transport or construction equipment happened on 1 December 1947, according to a report in the West Australian newspaper 2 days later.  The first day in December was only the third day in Australia.

Source:  West Australian, 3 December 1947

There was no Stanislaus Benzines on the Heintzelman passenger list.  The most likely casualty was Stanislavs Berzins, who was aged 29, not 19.  Already the Australian press was struggling to cope with the new names, although we know that others from the Baltic States had been living in Australia for decades.

Traffic driving on the other side of the road was the obvious issue as it still is for Australians in Europe and new European arrivals in Australia.  Had this issue been included in the English language classes on board the Heintzelman?  We know nothing of their content, only that they were conducted by Edna Davis.

"Benzines" was an interesting choice for an alternative name, given that some languages use variations on benzene as their name for petrol (or gas/gasoline for American readers).

Disembarking from the Heintzelman in Fremantle Harbour: the Orders, by RW Gratwick with Ann Tündern-Smith

Military precision is not a surprise only two years after the end of World War II.  That's what was required by the Acting Commonwealth Migration Officer for Western Australia, RW Gratwick, in this letter to the Master of the General Stuart Heintzelman.  Of the Heintzelman's three Captains, the Master would have been the Navy one, Cort M Pedersen.  It was more likely the Army one, Transport Commander Captain Valentine Pasvolsky, who organised the passenger as required by the Department of Immigration.

The letter probably was carried to the Heintzelman when a doctor went out to the ship to conduct the medical inspection.  This is as good a time as any to note again that this medical inspection resulted in three passengers not being allowed "debark" (disembark) and enter Australia.

The letter is from a Department of Immigration file, PP482/1, 82, General Heintzelman — Nominal Roll — arrived Fremantle 28 November 1947.  It's been digitised at https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2025/06/disembarking-from-Heintzelman-in-Fremantle-Harbour-19471128.html, but I'm drawing significant correspondence to your attention.

Double-click on each of the two pages to see a more legible size in a new browser page.

Alfonsas Sadauskas (1916-1990), my father, by Vidas Sadauskas

Updated 22-23 April, 31 July and 5 August 2025.

Young Alfonsas

Alfonsas was born on 26 September 1916 in Vabalninkas village in Biržai district, Lithuania.  As a young man he worked at various mills his father had rented, cutting lumber and milling grain. 

Alfonsas and World War II

He volunteered for the Army at 22 and rose to the rank of Warrant Officer.  Towards the end of World War II, after the Lithuanian Army was disbanded, he fought against the Soviet invasion alongside partisans in Belarus. 

Alfonsas moves to Australia

He was selected to come to Australia on the USAT General Stuart Heinzelman, arriving in Fremantle on 28 November 1947.

Alfonsas Sadauskas' photo from his 1948 Application to Register as an Alien

Source:  NAA: MT1078/1, V1959/44899

After initially being sent from Fremantle via Port Melbourne to Bonegilla in Victoria’s North, he was sent back to Western Australia.  His destination was the Mundaring Weir area about 40km east of Perth, cutting timber for his two years’ contracted service.  

This reference shows that not only was Alfonsas an excellent worker,
but his employer at Mundaring Weir was Bunnings Brothers,
forerunner of today's national hardware chain

Source:  Private collection

Seven months after the reference above, Alfonsas received a letter
which must have made him very pleased indeed; also,
 it shows that he had moved from working with Bunning Bros to
being employed by the State Government

Source:  Private collection

Alfonsas' family expands

He would travel to Fremantle to meet the ships coming from Germany to see if any relatives or friends had made the journey to Australia.  None had but, within a couple of years, he found his brother Bronius via the Red Cross.  He was able to sponsor Bronius' travel from the UK to Australia in 1950.  

On one trip to the docks he met Aldona Gražulytė whom he later married in Melbourne.

Alfonsas' children and grandchildren

They raised three children and the family was active in the Melbourne Lithuanian Community:  Aldona taught at the Lithuanian Sunday school for many years; Alfonsas had stewardship of the Melbourne Scouts’ equipment.

Jonas, the eldest child, was a Scout leader and taught folk dancing for a number of years.  He completed a degree in Electrical Engineering and worked mainly with major computer networks and data centres.

Dona, the second child, also taught at the Sunday school as well as being a Scout leader and long-time folk dancer and choir singer.  She completed a degree in Social Work and remained in that field for her entire career.

Vidas, the youngest, danced and was a Scout leader prior to joining the Australian Army.  He worked as a linguist for the majority of his career. 

Alfonsas had six grandchildren (with a total of 10 children between them), some with tertiary degrees, and all with good jobs.

Alfonsas' death

Alfonsas worked with timber his entire adult life, looking after the various machines at a timber yard until he retired at 65. He died on 24 September 1990, just 2 days short of his 74th birthday, and is buried at the Fawkner Cemetery alongside Aldona.

Alfonsas and Aldona's gravestone in the Fawkner Cemetery

Source:  Patricia C on FindAGrave

CITE THIS AS Sadauskas, Vidas (1925) 'Alfonsas Sadauskas (1916-1990), my father' https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2025/04/alfonsas-sadauskas-1916-1990-my-father.html.

ADDITIONAL SOURCE

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Immigration, Victorian Branch; MT1078/1, European migrants general personal files 1959; V1959/44899, SADAUSKAS, Alfonsas,  https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4115588 accessed 5 April 2025.

Vaclavs Kozlovskis reaches Australia and stays in Perth, translated by Monika Kozlovskis with Janis Sakurovs

Updated 17 January 2025

INDIAN OCEAN, 22.11.47, Sat. Today my head felt quite heavy, it seems such lurching doesn’t do me much good. In the afternoon I received another two hundred cigarettes, no doubt the last issue on this ship — we have only five days left in which to lurch.

    

The front cover of Vaclavs's diary

Source:  Monika Kozlovskis

Late this evening I sat on A deck to watch an enjoyable Scout performance. The wireless segment was particularly entertaining. Onto the deck was carried a stretcher bearing a paper box with a megaphone on one end, and a DP hidden under it.

He lit a match and shoved it into the megaphone. There was a strong wind blowing so one after another the matches blew out, and finally he threw the whole box in, telling the diesel to light itself.

Soon cigarette smoke started blowing from the megaphone and the “wireless” began talking.

First there was news from Diepholz. The DPs had drunk all the home brew before they’d left and now there were requests for donations of cigarettes and food; the audience reacted with loud laughter.

The wireless news from Bremen was about the unusual goods train that had recently travelled from Diepholz to Bremen and strewn the way with Turkish cigarettes. It was later clarified that it had been a DP transport to Australia.

Then Stalin himself spoke: “Oh you stupid and rustic Soviet citizens, where are you running to?  After all things are very bad in Australia, you will have to work like slaves in the heat!  You will have to lug sacks of sand with the kangaroos, and the work will be divided as follows:  a kangaroo will fill the sacks with sand and you’ll have to carry them on your backs, behind the kangaroos!”

Of course, this raised a new gale of laughter, but the loudest laughter was earned by the last transmission, which began with the words: “Achtung, Achtung! Number thirty-nine report to the office immediately, I repeat — it is forbidden!”

This skit poked fun at life on this ship. On the Heintzelman there are one hundred and twenty doors through which passengers are not permitted to pass. It isn’t possible to remember them all, so an MP is stationed before each of the doors to check that the orders are carried out.

It is also forbidden to throw cigarette butts over the rails, otherwise the sea would become full of them. It’s forbidden to be on deck after ten, to take food out of the dining room, to be in our rooms between nine and eleven, and for men to be on the left side of deck C after six.

When one man, perplexed by all the prohibitions, went into the office to ask what actually is permitted on this ship, the office couldn’t answer him for they didn’t know themselves; and answered that the asking of such questions is prohibited.

Another man muddled his head over all the prohibitions so badly that he packed his suitcase and attempted to leap over the rails, but was stopped just in time; after that it was forbidden to muddle your head or to jump over the rails.

There was also a skit depicting four types of passengers - the MP, kitchen worker, painter and “summer resident” with a deckchair.*

The enjoyable show finished late in the evening. The sea is still unsettled, it’s deteriorated since yesterday, and a fierce wind is blowing. It abated for only a moment, then we renewed rolling with double strength, as we did before we reached Colombo. Tomorrow we should see some islands on our route to break the monotony.

INDIAN OCEAN, 23.11.47, Sun.   It seems that the Indian Ocean is never calm.  Today it resembles a monster again, moving its open jaws trying to upturn the ship.  No - it is more like a dear mother’s hand, continually caressing the sides of the ship as it glides along.

The weather is fine and sunny, with a cool wind blowing.  By lunchtime we had reached 11 deg 30’ south, this evening we will be halfway between Colombo and Fremantle, where we will disembark.  In the early evening, with a strong wind blowing, it became noticeably cooler — a sign that we’re now far south of the equator.  I’ve seen people walking around in long pants already.

Before bed I had a cold shower. A shower on board ship is really funny, you stand in a small cubicle and let water on yourself, while the cabin continually moves.**  

I went to bed with the sensation that the ship’s prow was again making circles in the air, just like when we were in Biscay.  I have been in my room since seven, therefore my head is a little heavy, but soon enough I will fall asleep and everything will be well again.

INDIAN OCEAN, 24.11.47, Mon.  By lunchtime we were 1262 nautical miles from Fremantle.  We won’t arrive until Friday morning, due to the strong headwind and unruly seas.

After dinner the ship’s command began tying down everything that wasn’t screwed down, apparently expecting a storm.  Gradually the wind strengthened, and the waves became mountainous.   I stood on the middle deck and watched the heaving seas again.  For a moment a deep valley would appear before us, then into it crashed a mass of water, splashing up foam, and an enormous mountain rose in place of the valley.

It became quite cool so I went below to put on long trousers and a woollen coat.  A film was to be shown on A deck at seven — I took a place there, although I doubted whether it would be shown under such conditions.  A huge wind shook the screen, fine raindrops fell from the sky, and it looked as if it was going to pour.

My doubts were well founded — the film screening was moved to the dining room.   The small room filled quickly, and the film began.  I’ve never watched a film like this before — the whole room shook, the screen swayed up and down, while the audience staggered and clung to the posts and to each other.  It was a wonder that the film’s actors themselves didn’t start vomiting.

After the film, soaked in perspiration, I went on deck.  A storm raged, and a strong wind hampered my progress.  Fine, refreshing rain drops hit my face.  Cooler now, I disappeared into my cabin, for it was time for bed.

INDIAN OCEAN, 26.11.47, Wed.   This afternoon the storm rose again, to thoroughly shake us up one last time.  This evening, for the first time since my army days, after an interval of many years, I joined a card game to play aciti.

I won three hands in rapid succession, but by the end of the game I had only three packets of cigarettes remaining from my original ten.  I’ve now had enough of this sport to last me a long time.

INDIAN OCEAN, 27.11.47, Thurs.  Our last day on the Heintzelman has arrived, with only 201 nautical miles to Fremantle.   Tonight at 10:20 we reached our destination, the west coast of our new home.

How will our lives unfold in our new land?  Such questions each asks himself, but seeks answers in vain, for only the future will tell.  The latest news is that tomorrow we will disembark for several days in Fremantle, then sail to the transition camp on another vessel.

SWANBOURNE, 28.11.47.   I leaped out of bed at five-thirty, for breakfast was at six.  On deck afterwards I saw the ship was anchored at the roadstead.

A little beyond that was a light brown, sunlit country — this is Australia, my new home. Once I’d only seen pictures of it on cards, now it’s in front of my eyes, almost a stone’s throw away.  In the middle of the coastline is a small bay with houses dotted along the shore — Fremantle harbour, our disembarkation point.

Medical officers boarded the ship and checked us for scabies, and I soon noticed the difference between the quick and decisive Americans and the slow English.***  The ship raised anchor and slid slowly into the small harbour, joining several others already tied up at the posts.

On the shore was gathered a large crowd of local people, watching the Heintzelman as she was pulled slowly to the shore and fastened.  I didn’t see any natives amongst them. The steps were lowered, down them went the captain and the medical officers, and up them came the reporters.  Our baggage had been placed at the prow, and now the cranes went into action, lifting it all out.

A ticket for the larger luggage

Source:  Collection of Reina Peedo Roosvald

Gradually our own disembarkation began, starting with numbers 1 to 41.   I rested on my familiar bed one last time until my number was announced, and then went onto C deck.  At exactly midday I took my first step on Australian soil.

Carefully spaced, the new arrivals leave the Heintzelman in Fremantle

Source:  Collection of Vaclavs Kozlovskis

We passed through a brief check, then stood waiting our turn for the autobus.  It came soon enough, swaying on its old-fashioned springs, with extremely old-fashioned wheels.  At ten past twelve our ride through the town began and I gazed at the countryside of my new home with interest.

Trees and plants I’ve never seen before slid past my eyes in a colourful line, and the houses are quite different to those I’m used to seeing in Europe.   Palms grow along the sides of the streets, the yellow colour of the sand jumbles with the varied colours of the houses, and over them all beams the warm southern sun.

After a ten-minute drive we reached Swanbourne camp.   Inside the flimsy tin barracks are pleasant rooms and soft beds with white sheets, and bathrooms with hot and cold water, all of which added to my happy frame of mind.  Straight away we were shown to our rooms, and those who had arrived before us were already eating lunch.

In the dining room were tables clad in white cloths, the food was put onto plates for us, and again we had to accustom ourselves to dealing with an array of eating utensils.  One man found this a little more difficult.   He poured a glassful from the sauce bottle on the table in front of him and took a sip, thinking it was wine, but the taste woke the man from his dream and the glass was replaced unemptied.****

After the long soldier, prisoner and exile years I’ve become an emigrant, once more a worthwhile person in the eyes of myself and others.

I took a shower, planning to rest afterwards on my bed, but when I went outside for another look around, I met the lanky one, who ruined my good intentions — and instead of resting we walked into Fremantle.*****

The shop windows are full of various goods with the prices attached, and they can be bought without a ration card.  The prices are fairly low, all I need now is money, and then I could live well.  

The flora is very prolific, even though all the trees are more like large bushes. The birds sing, although very little, the flowers don’t have much of a scent, and some plants have crosswise leaves, as I read in Germany somewhere.

I’ll have to get used to the unfamiliar left-side traffic, for several times I almost collided with people walking the other way, and when I cross the road I don’t know which way to look to avoid being run over by a car. Our drivers will find it difficult when they come to a corner, and suddenly have to drive on the left side, as does a train.

Tired, we returned to the camp just in time for dinner. Again I washed off the marks the gumboots had made on my feet, and finally crawled into bed.

FOOTNOTE

*  Ann Tündern-Smith knows from talking to a number of the passengers that all were allocated tasks on board, just as the previous US Army passengers would have been kept from boredom and mischief by helping to operate the ship.  Therefore, some of the DP passengers were allocated to MP (Military Police) roles, others helped in the "kitchen" (galleys on board), bakery or, like Vaclavs, the coolroom and, naturally, everyone tried to spend time in a deckchair when the sailing was smooth.  As for the painters, this task certainly was used to punish anyone who had broken badly the ship's rules being parodied, such as those caught mixing with the opposite sex after hours.

** A DP from a later Heintzelman voyage explained to Ann that, unlike many ships at the time, the General Squier class had been built to provide freshwater showers, not showers with seawater.

*** As reported by the Immigration official in "General Stuart Heintzelman Passengers Reach Australia: the Official Report", the Medical Officer and any assistants were checking for a lot more than scabies.

**** Elmar Saarepere's recollection of the first meal is also in "General Stuart Heintzelman Passengers Reach Australia: the Official Report".

***** The Swanbourne Army barracks, where more than half (441) of the passengers were accommodated, are in a coastal suburb of Perth some 11 kilometres north of the Fremantle shops.  Google Maps estimates that this is a two and a half hour walk, meaning that the men would have spent five hours altogether walking.  Vaclavs probably would have reported the walk in more detail if it was this long.  The nearest shops to the Swanbourne barracks are 1.6 kilometres away on Claremont Crescent, Swanbourne, so this is more likely to have been the destination.

Povilas Deimantas (1917-2009): A Peterborough Balt, by John Mannion

Born in Lithuania, Povilas Deimantas was already 30 years old when he boarded the General Stuart Heintzelman for the longest trip of his lifetime, from Germany to Australia. 

Povilas (Paul) Deimantas in 1947,
ID photo from his Bonegilla card
Source:  National Archives of Australia

He was a subject of the newspaper reports I told you about in my first blog entry.

He recalls that after several weeks at the Bangham camp, 18 were selected to transfer in the South Australian Railways (SAR) system to Peterborough, midway between Adelaide and Broken Hill. He had no bloody idea where Peterborough was! 

Those selected had a good grasp of the English language and were largely self-motivated with the prospect of becoming engine drivers in 'loco' or as station staff in 'traffic'. Paul explained to me that these were the fortunate ones and that he planned to become ‘a big man’ in the railways! 

Back to the Balts: when Deimantas disembarked from the Heintzelman at Fremantle in November 1947, his first impression of Australia was one of disappointment — it was so ugly! The first things he noticed were the dry yellow grass and the dead trees — nothing like Lithuania (which was green and densely forested) — the public drinking and the Italian migrants. 

He didn't find Bonegilla in north-east Victoria much better — he disliked the intense summer heat as well as peeling potatoes, which he had to do in the camp for two weeks. 

At Bangham on the Wolseley to Mount Gambier railway line, the 62 workers slept in tents and water was in short supply.  At Peterborough, the men first lived in tents and later Nissen huts and other 'prefab' buildings which were relocated from Loveday Internment [WWII] Camp in the Riverland. 

Then a migrant hostel was built on Telford Avenue adjacent the railway workshops and ‘loco’.  Initially designed to house only single men, in the 1950s with the influx of German and Polish migrants, families were admitted.  Up to 200 people at as time lived at there.  The hostel operated on and off  from 1948 until 1972. 

Peterborough migrant hostel in 1952, in its quiet location next to the railway yards;
the still-standing Nissen hut is on the left of the buildings

Source:  John Mannion collection

In 1975 the hostel was demolished and removed by tender. Very little is known of who bought it and where the buildings went. Now the only remaining building left on the site is a Nissen hut that served as a recreation room. 

Despite only staying at Peterborough for four years, Povilas and his colleagues are still remembered by many in Peterborough for their manners, behaviour and appearance, particularly by the young girls of the 1950s. By now, Povilas would have been using the English form of his name, Paul. 

Paul Deimantas (centre) and friends
at the Peterborough Town Hall about 1949

Source:  John Mannion Collection

Although there was general acceptance, life was often difficult for these and other new Australians at Peterborough or other locations within the Peterborough Division of the SAR. At times they had to put up with some racial discrimination, the most common being called a 'Bloody Balt' or told to 'Speak English you bastard'. 

However, it is surprising that despite the influx of over 300 European migrants into a country town where Australians had heard virtually no foreign languages on their streets, there was little prejudice. This is attributed to the fact that Peterborough was a working class town with a very transient population. 

There was some fear of these 'strangers’ however, particularly among the youngsters. A 15-year-old girl who moved from Marree to Peterborough for schooling and lived with her grandparents in 1950 recalls that although she had been exposed to Afghans and Aborigines, she did not know what to make of the 'Balts' with their long pushed-back hair. She would not go near them, convinced they ‘would take me away’. 

Another girl who grew up at Peterborough during the ‘Balt’ era relates how they would not even leave the pegs on the line in case the ‘Balts’ stole them. 

It has been said that friendships were difficult to establish at Peterborough, as ‘you didn't know where your mate might be next week’. This did not detract from some firm friendships however, with quite a few long-term railway families staying in the town. 

Paul relates a story about the time at Bangham when the ganger phoned the railway storeman at Mt Gambier for a bag of fish-plate bolts to be sent up, only to be told ‘You've already got 60 bloody Balts up there, isn't that enough?’ 

Learning English was not always easy: from whom were they supposed to learn English? Was it the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, the English or Australians? The other difficulty in learning English was that they were often put to work in track maintenance gangs with a number of their own countrymen, thus making it easier to communicate with each other, but not the ganger in charge. 

However, those who wanted to ‘get on' watched, listened, asked questions, carried notebooks and learned. Paul was curious as to what a ‘water bag’ was — he had heard of a water tank and water bottle, but could not picture a ‘bag of water’. 

A canvas water bag from about 1950,
Collection of the Kiewa Valley Historical Society

Source:  Victorian Collections

A young migrant railway worker heads for the Peterborough hostel with
 a) a tucker box at the left and b) a water bag on the right

Source:  Harry Piers/John Mannion collection

The other thing was the dust. Paul felt that it took him five years to get used to the heat, dust and flies. 

After shifting to Mile End in 1952, Paul met and married his Australian-born wife June. He clearly was more than acceptable to at least one Australian now.

Paul died on 13 November 2009, at the respectable age of 92, having been born on 6 October 1917.  June, having been born in Adelaide on 25 November 1931, died on 29 July 2018, also at a respectable age, 86.  They have been buried together in the Dudley Park Cemetery, Adelaide.

SOURCES

Dudley Park Cemetery Search Records, https://search.dudleyparkcemetery.com.au/ accessed 17 March 2024.

National Archives of Australia,National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] 1947–1956; DREIMANTAS [sic], Povilas : Year of Birth - 1919 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 911, 1947–1948, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203662951

Victorian Collections, From the Collection of the Kiewa Valley Historical Society, Bag Canvas Water Circa 1950, https://victoriancollections.net.au/items/507df2be2162ef014495f50f