Bronė Jutkutė lived a long life, during which she became an orchid grower with the husband she married in Australia. There was turmoil in the middle of it, though, after the Soviet Union invaded her homeland in mid-June 1940, probably until she found her feet in Sydney.
Bronė was already 28 years old when the first of 3 invasions of her homeland occurred in 1940, having been born on 7 February 1912. She was born in Mažeikiai, Žemaitija or Samagotia, a city in northwestern Lithuania, on the Venta River, to Jonas and Ona Jutkus. Ona’s maiden name was Žotkevičiūtė.
From biographies we have published of fellow Samogitians, those of Bronius Šaparas and three men with the Smilgevičius family name, we know that these lowlanders are seen as different in personality and culture by other Lithuanians.
The Arolsen Archives have not digitised any records yet for anyone with the Jutkutė or Jutkus surname. The record of Bronė’s interview with the Australian selection team in Germany, in a file held by the National Archives of Australia, says that she had received the usual 4 years of primary school education. She had attended an agricultural school for an additional 2 years. She was not married, a prerequisite for selection on the First Transport.
There is no information at all on her previous employment although, now aged 35, she probably had been in the Lithuanian and German workforces for 20 or more years.
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| Bronė Jutkute, from her Bonegilla card Source: National Archives of Australia |
Brone’s Bonegilla card notes that she was sent to the Hotel Ainslie in Canberra on 22 December 1947. She was expected to work there as a cleaner and a maker of beds, known at the time as a “housemaid”. Her agricultural training and possible work experience in that sector counted for nothing in Australia’s then strongly sex-stratified workforce.
The building once called the Hotel Ainslie still exists at the bottom of a major natural landmark, Mount Ainslie, near the Australian War Memorial. Wikipedia contributors record that “the building now occupied by the (Mercure) hotel was built between 1926-27 (meaning it will be 100 years old next year or the year after) as one of eight hostels designed to provide accommodation for public servants in preparation (for) relocating the Parliament from Melbourne to the new national capital. Following the adverse impact of the Great Depression in 1932, a liquor license was granted to building lessee, Ernest Spendlove. The building was renovated and shortly thereafter re-opened as a public hotel.“
Wikipedia further records that Spendlove sold the hotel in 1950, so he was still the employer when Bronė arrived, together with another Lithuanian woman, Elena Augutis. There were 3 women from the First Transport already working at the Hotel. They were Latvian Birute Pabrants and Maria (Mika) Pimbers, and Estonian Hilda Ramjalg. All were 29 or more years old, except for Mika, who was only 19.
Bronė and Elena had left Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre for the Hotel Ainslie on 22 December 1947. Since Canberra still does not have easy access by train, they may not have arrived until 24 December. The Hotel would have been mostly shut down for Christmas Day, although we presume that some guests stayed and would have expected to be fed, in a festive fashion. Let us hope that the 5 Baltic women were given the time and support to have a celebration on the day also.
With one exception, they probably stayed at the Hotel Ainslie for another Christmas but, like most of the other First Transport refugees, were free to find their own employment after 30 September 1949. (The one exception was Elena Augutis, whose Bonegilla card outlines her special circumstances. We will have more about her later.)
In July 1954, Bronė, using the full form of her first name, Bronislava, placed the advertisements of her intention to apply for Australian citizenship in the two newspapers then required under the Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1948-1953. The National Library’s Trove digitisation service has made available one of them, from Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. It records her as then residing at 35 Francis Street, East Sydney. This is only 100 metres from the Central Business District’s Hyde Park, in an area now designated Darlinghurst. Still at that address, she became an Australian citizen on 20 April 1956.
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| 35 Francis Street, East Sydney, now 41 Yurong Street, Darlinghurst and very renovated Source: Google Street View |
In June 1957, her name appeared in a list published in the New South Wales Government's Gazette, of people who were owed money by Dunlop Rubber Australia Limited. Bronė must have been working in one of Dunlop's factories and left without collecting the £3/18/7 she was due for her work. The Reserve Bank of Australia says that this amount had the buying power of $152 in 2024, one-sixth of the wage that would be paid now to a similar worker. (The minimum wage in mid-2024 for a 38-hour week was $915.90)
Nikita Khrushchev had delivered his speech criticising Stalin two months earlier, in a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Communist Party control of people’s lives in the Soviet Union started to loosen up after that. So we find that Elena Staigvilienė from Telšiai is looking for Bronė Jutkutė, daughter of Jonas, born in March 1912, left Lithuania in 1944, in the 17 October 1957 edition of Europos Lietuvis (European Lithuanian). Any attempt like that to contact someone who had left would have led earlier to experiencing life in the colder parts of Siberia.
In May 1962, there was another search, this time from someone who was looking for both Bronė and her sister, Elena Staigvilienė. Now we know why Elena was looking for Bronė 4 years earlier. The second searcher knew that Bronė had lived in Hanau while in Germany and thought that it was likely that she now was Mrs. Šopienė (having married a Mr Sopis). This advertisement was in the Australian-Lithuanian newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven).
Bronė had not married Mr Sopis, while our National Archives records suggest that the only man of that name to enter Australia came much later than what was called officially the IRO Mass Scheme (1947-54). Instead, a November 1961 issue of Tėviškės Aidai (Echoes of the Homeland) tells us that she had become the life partner of one Juozapas Renaška. We know about this because Tėviškės Aidai reports that Juozapas (Joseph in English) had collapsed and died of a heart attack on 30 October, after a hard day’s work. He was only 36 years old at the time. Bronė was just a few months away from her 50th birthday.
Her partner was known to have a congenital heart valve disorder, but doctors still said that he should live easily to be 60. He had not complained of illness or any ailments. He was buried on All Souls' Day, 2 November, at the Rookwood Lithuanian Cemetery. He was not a public man, but a circle of friends and compatriots attended a mournful service and accompanied him and Bronė to the cemetery.
By 1963, Bronė had joined her life to that of Teofilis Umbražiūnas, whose last name is probably a misspelling of Ambražiūnas. Since both were too complicated for most Australians, the couple started to use Amber as well.
This time it seems to have been a marriage, since Teofilis’ sports club, Kovas, with whom he played volleyball, recorded the union in the 14 April 1963 issue of Mūsų Pastogė. Rasa's translation of its notice is, “Longtime club member Teofilis Umbražiūnas and Bronė Jutkutė, who have created a Lithuanian family, are wished much success in their future lives by Sydney Lithuanian Sports Club Kovas". By this time, Bronė was 51 years old.
There appears to be no mention of Teofilis in the Lithuanian-language press before the marriage, especially not that he was an orchid grower, so the two are likely to have taken this up together afterwards. For example, Tėviškės Aidai reported in July 1976 that, at a concert by the Daina choir, the conductor, the accompanist and the singers of duets were presented with bouquets of orchids by the owners of an orchid garden, Bronė and Teofilis Ambražiūnai-Amber.
In 1981, a team of Lithuanian sportspeople was preparing to travel to Chicago for competition. The organisers had many ideas for raising funds for uniforms, fares and overseas expenses. One of them was to establish a group of supporters who had donated at least 100 dollars to the cause. Before the team left, the “centurion” supporters would be awarded a special departure badge, their names would be published and they would be presented at a farewell ball. The first centurion was a former good volleyball player for Kovas, a native of Vilnius, Teofilis Ambražiūnas, who owned an orchid business with his wife.
There are too many other public records of generous donations from Bronė and Teofilis to mention them all here, so the orchid business seems to have been a very profitable one.
Indeed, it may have been so profitable that they decided in 1994 not only to retire, but to retire back to their Lithuanian homeland together. They settled into the city of Klaipėda.
Teofilis died of a heart attack on 24 September 1997. As he was born on 12 November 1922, he was nearly 75 years old, a good age at that time (a little higher than the NSW median of 74.3 years) for a man who had spent more than 40 years of his life in NSW -- but some of it in the privations of World War II.
Teofilis was, however, 10 years younger than his wife, who was now 85 years old. Bronė lasted another 5 to 6 years, dying sometime in 2003 according to the headstone on their grave. They are buried in the Lėbartai cemetery in Klaipėda, together with another person, Konstancija, who is probably Teofilis’ mother.
Surprisingly, while Konstancija bears the married woman’s version of the Umbražiūnas family name, both Bronė and Teofilis have been buried under the Australianised name, Amber.
Bronė rests in peace now in her country of birth, after a life that saw happiness and beauty, as well as upheaval and sadness.
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| Brone's gravestone Source: Cemety |
SOURCES
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Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1956) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, 20 September, p 2862 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232988815/25126342, accessed 30 October 2025.
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