The Backhouse, Roebuck Sawmill at Megan, NSW, by Ann Tündern-Smith

WARNING:  Some nasty accidents are summarised below.  At least they are not fatal, like those about to be reported for Ebor Sawmills, to which other First Transporters were sent.

Seven from First Transport to Megan

Albinas Kutka, who became a user of sawn timber rather than a maker of it, was sent to work for sawmillers Backhouse, Roebuck of Megan, New South Wales, on 21 January 1948. He was one of 7 First Transport men with this assignation.

This Bonzle map has a vibrant pink square focussed on Megan, NSW
inland from Coffs Harbour

Source:  Bonzle

There was one other Lithuanian in the group, Juozas Bazys. The four Latvians were Stanislavs Berzins (his third job after fruit-picking for SP Cornish followed by one week as a labourer in the Bonegilla camp), Evalds Karamuts, Nikolaus Kucina and Edvards Snore. A single Estonian, Helmut Karp, possibly could converse with the others in some German and limited English.

Megan Railway Station on the Dorrigo Branch Line in 1954:
since the passenger service on the line did not close until 1957, our Baltic 7 are likely to have 
travelled from Sydney to Megan by train

Source:  Australian Railway Historical Society via Facebook

From Albinas’ story, we know that he and Juozas plus young Nikolaus Kucina were back at Bonegilla on 11 March 1948, little more than 6 weeks later. Either the physical nature of the work was too much for men who had been on reduced rations for much of the 1940s, up to boarding the Heintzelman, or they saw the machinery with which they were expected to work as too risky.

First Transport Lithuanians play basketball at Bonegilla --
note the ribs

Source:  Pix, 31 January 1948

Backhouse, Roebuck history

Their employer made its first appearance on the public record on 8 April 1941, when its registration was announced in the Sydney Sun newspaper, followed by the Daily Telegraph the next day.  The company was to trade as sawmillers and timber merchants. It had 4 directors, Wilfred Backhouse and three members of the Roebuck family.  It had a nominal capital of £2,500, the equivalent of $250,000 in 2024 according to the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Was the decision to name the company Backhouse, Roebuck an alphabetical one, or did Wilfred Backhouse put up the majority of the capital?

A Mill at Megan

Wilfred Backhouse made his next appearance in print in the Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate on 7 July 1944. This newspaper announced that “Messrs Backhouse and Roebuck Ltd, mill owners, of Sydney, have now bought the sawmill lately owned by Mr. Cockburn, and hope to restart this mill very soon. Mr. W Backhouse, general manager, of Sydney, recently spent a fortnight in the district and is expected to return any day.”

In May 1945, the newspaper announced that, “Mr. 'Bill' Backhouse, managing (sic) Backhouse, Roebuck Pty Ltd, will be taking a well-earned holiday commencing this Friday. Employees and friends (and they are many) wish 'Bill' a very pleasant holiday.”  This reads like Wilfred Backhouse had become a very accepted member of the local community in less than one year.

Wilfred William Backhouse, Managing Director

The New South Wales Government Gazette of 1 December 1950 carried a notice to the effect that Mr Wilfred William Backhouse of Dorrigo, NSW, had stated in a statutory declaration that he had lost his original certificate of title to 2000 £1 shares in the Backhouse, Roebuck Pty Ltd company.  So now we have Bill’s full name.

We also have evidence that he had contributed £2,000 when the company was set up. The notice states that Bill had shares numbered 1, 3 to 501 and 2901 to 4400, meaning that the company now had £4,400 in capital, some of which Bill might have put up after the company was set up. I’m wondering if W Backhouse put up close to the majority of the original capital and concluding that the evidence does not rule out the possibility.  He certainly could have had the largest shareholding.

Back to Wilfred William Backhouse.  The MyHeritage.com genealogy Website records that he was born in 1910 in Drummoyne, a Sydney suburb, to Joseph Wilfred Backhouse and Priscilla Way Ellis. A Commonwealth and State electoral roll for 1939 shows that he still lived in Drummoyne. By 12 March 1946, he was on the electoral roll for the State Division of Armidale and the Federal electorate of Cowper as a resident of Dorrigo.

On a personal note, Bill had married Minnie (or Mina) Davis Watson in Sydney in 1938. One family tree on Ancestry.com which includes Wilfred William born in 1910 says that he and Minnie had two children who were still living when the family historian was last on that page.  There also was a tragically early death, of a baby named Eric (like one of his Backhouse uncles) who died on 9 January 1946.  He was buried in Dorrigo Cemetery.  He was not given a headstone, which makes him impossible to find outside Ancestry (if you search for a child of Wilfred and Minnie Backhouse).

Megan Mill History, and Accidents

The older the sawmill, the more risky its design and machinery to its workers. The mill which Backhouse, Roebuck purchased from Mr JS Cockburn was bought by this gentleman from a Mr H Milne. The Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate first mentioned Milne as the owner of a sawmill at Megan in January 1933.

The Megan sawmill appears not to have been recorded photographically, then digitised, so here is a nearby stand-in, Allan Taylor's Mill, captioned as being at coastal Coffs Harbour,
taken in 1950 -- but press advertising shows that this sawmill actually was at Woolgoolga,
25 Km north of Coffs
(Note the absence of walls, typical of Australian sawmills, and,
is that a fire in the middle of the photo?)

Source:  Coffs Collections, Courtesy of the City of Coffs Harbour

After purchase, Cockburn was said by the local press in May 1939 to have “thoroughly” renovated it and brought it up to date. “New boilers and planers (were) installed”.  If this was not just what we now call “spin”, the sawmill was less than 9 years away from its modernisation when the Heintzelman 7 arrived.

Given that the press would be very interested in reporting accidents, it is good to know that none were reported after their arrival until one occurred on 3 April 1951.  But it was nasty: an employee lost the first two joints of his right index finger on his right hand.   At this time, we do not know if any of the original 7 were still with Backhouse, Roebuck.

On 1 May 1952, a mill employee became jammed between two logs but escaped serious injuries, receiving “severe bruising to both thighs, chest and shock”. A doctor and ambulance were called. The injured man was taken to the Dorrigo hospital for observation.

There had been at least three accidents earlier.  The local paper reported in May 1946 that a worker received a fractured left leg and suffered slight shock when his leg became jammed between two flitches of a log at Backhouse, Roebuck's Megan mill.  An ambulance took him to the Dorrigo Hospital where he was admitted.  Only three weeks previously, he had suffered a crushed right foot when it was caught between two rollers of the log carriage on the frame saw at the same workplace.  Was he back at work already because there was no such thing as paid sick leave?

A flitch of a log, by the way, is a longitudinal section cut from a log, especially an unedged slab with bark still on its edges.

A few months later, a worker had a piece of steel lodge in his right eye at the same workplace.  The local paper reported in September 1946 that he was recovering under specialist treatment in a Sydney hospital.  “It is expected the sight of the eye will be saved” does not tell us about the quality of that sight afterwards.

Six months later, the company was in the local courthouse, appearing before the Police Magistrate on a charge of not keeping all dangerous parts of machinery securely fenced.   The equipment in question was a circular saw.  Although a lawyer was engaged to defend the company, it was fined £20.  It also had to pay court costs 10/- and £2/2- witnesses' expenses.   The Reserve Bank says that the total of £22/12/-, with inflation, was the equivalent of $1,880 in 2024.

In July 1947, another employer suffered a fractured pelvis when logs rolled on him while working at the Megan mill.  On the day of the accident he had driven into the timber yard with a load of logs on a truck.  On knocking out the chock to unload, the logs rolled and one caught him on the leg and another on the back before he had time to get clear.  He managed to get out of the way of a third log and saved himself from further injury.  He too was admitted to the Dorrigo Hospital after first aid and an ambulance ride.

On 25 March 1949, when presumably 4 Heintzelman passengers continued to work for Backhouse, Roebuck, the company hosted a banquet to celebrate the opening of a new mill in Dorrigo.  Employees were among the 30 or so attending, but no women, not even wives, were mentioned in the newspaper report.

“Mr Backhouse said his firm was tackling the problem of accommodation for its employees.”  The official who opened the new sawmill, the State’s Deputy Director of Building Materials (then important enough to have its own Minister) referred to cottages which the company was building for its employees.  Six self-contained cottages had been erected already and the firm was planning more.

We have to hope that the company was including its Baltic employees in its accommodation provisions.   Four months later, the local paper noted that the company had sought Council permission to build single men’s quarters and a workshop.  That was only 42 days before the end of the contracts to work as assigned by the Commonwealth Employment Service.

From information provided in his 1983 death notice, we can deduce that Bill Backhouse stayed in northern NSW and, probably, Dorrigo until retirement.  The retirement is likely to have occurred in the 1970s and his death also was in the period during which Australian copyright laws do not permit digitising of printed material without explicit permission.

Fortunately, a dedicated volunteer of the Ryerson team has recorded that the death notice said that “William Wilfred” Backhouse, who died in Coffs Harbour, was “late of Scotts Head” and previously of Dorrigo.  His death occurred when Bill Backhouse was 73 years old, with the notice appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald of 17 September 1983.   Scotts Head is a coastal village 50 Km south of where the road to the coast from Dorrigo meets the coastal highway, perfect for a quiet retirement.

Both he and his wife, Minnie or Mina, opted for cremation rather than burial, and maybe the scattering of their ashes, as the cremation is recorded by Lismore Memorial Gardens, run by the local council, but there are no plaques or gravestones.

We noted in relation to Albinas Kutka’s story that Megan “sounded more like a girl’s name than a place name to a modern Australian”.  The word can, in fact, be a family name, said to be of Irish origin and a variant of McGahan or McGann.  But using feminine first names for place names has a history in Australia which starts with South Australia’s State capital, Adelaide, named in honour of the wife of King William IV of the United Kingdom.

Other place names shared by women and often named in their honour include the State of Victoria, Alexandra in Victoria, Lucinda in Queensland, Katherine in the Northern Territory, Clare in South Australia (also a family name), Augusta in Western Australia, Lowanna (near Megan).  And a list of places which incorporate women’s names, such at Port Augusta in South Australia or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory is too long to continue.  You get the idea.  Megan, whether inspired by someone’s first or last name, is not unusual.

Sources

Ancestry.com ‘Wilfred William Backhouse’ https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/118913545/person/170181311907/facts, accessed 18 October 2025.

Ancestry.com ‘Megan Family History’ https://www.ancestry.com.au/last-name-meaning/megan, accessed 18 October 2025.

Daily Telegraph (1941) ‘Company Registration’ Sydney, 9 April, p 19 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/247564451, accessed 16 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1933) 'Personal’, Dorrigo, NSW, 27 January, p 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172010179, accessed 19 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1933) 'Renovations to Megan Sawmill’, Dorrigo, NSW, 19 May, p 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/171865243, accessed 19 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1944) 'Megan’, Dorrigo, NSW, 7 July, p 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173128829, accessed 18 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1945) ‘Megan’, 18 May, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173131848, accessed 18 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1946) ‘Mill Accident at Megan’, Dorrigo, NSW, 3 May, p 1, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/173133028, accessed 18 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1946) 'Personal', Dorrigo, NSW, 6 September, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173133146, accessed 18 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1947) 'Police Court', Dorrigo, NSW, 14 March, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173134886, viewed 25 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1947), ‘Hospital Patients’, Dorrigo, NSW, 11 July, p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/173135622, accessed 18 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1949), ‘New Mill Opened', Dorrigo, NSW, 1 April, p 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/173140593, accessed 19 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1949), ‘New Mill Banquet', Dorrigo, NSW, 1 April, p 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/173140580, accessed 19 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1951) 'Personal Pars', Dorrigo, NSW, 6 April, p 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173019601, accessed 18 October 2025.

Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate (1952) 'Accident at Local Mill', Dorrigo, NSW, 2 May, p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/178027651, accessed 19 October 2025.

Government Gazette of New South Wales (1950) 'Backhouse, Roebuck Pty Limited' Sydney, 1 December, p 3556 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/220070773, accessed 19 October 2025.

Lismore Memorial Gardens, ‘Register Name Search, Lismore Lawn Cemetery and Memorial Gardens Register’ https://lccforms.lismore.nsw.gov.au/apps/crem/search.asp, accessed 18 October 2025.

MyHeritage.com ('Wilfred William Backhouse') https://www.myheritage.com/research?s=OYYV6B34FUAGCQUMOUB3XYMY7SQ2LUY&formId=master&formMode=1&useTranslation=1&exactSearch=&p=1&action=query&view_mode=card&qname=Name+fn.Wilfred%2F3William+fnmo.1+ln.Backhouse+lnmsrs.false&qevents-event1=Event+et.birth+ey.1910&qevents-any/1event_1=Event+et.any+ep.drummoyne%2C%2F3nsw+epmo.similar&qevents=List, accessed 19 October 2025.

Reserve Bank of Australia ‘Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator’ https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html, accessed 18 October 2025.

Ryerson Index https://ryersonindex.org/search.php, accessed 18 October 2025.

Sun (1941) ‘Company Registration’ Sydney, 8 April, p 19 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/231207122, accessed 16 October 2025.

Wikipedia, Dorrigo railway line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorrigo_railway_line accessed 25 October 2025.

Albinas Kutka (1908-1992), Master Builder and Benefactor, by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 4 October 2025.

Most of the Displaced Persons from the First Transport sent to South Australia to work stayed there, even after their obligation to work where directed finished on 30 September 1949. Albinas Kutka was different: he moved to Sydney. From the suburb of Canterbury he moved to Bankstown, a suburb with its own airport for light aviation. Undeterred by the noise, he moved even closer to Bankstown Airport, in Condell Park.

Albinas was able to get recognition from the authorities as a master builder. Together with fellow Lithuanian, Vytautas Mickevičius, he was responsible for the construction of a Lithuanian retirement village in the far south of Sydney, Engadine. Rather than being adjacent to an airport, this location is adjacent to Royal National Park, Australia’s first, and only the second in the world after Yellowstone in the USA.

In old age, Albinas sold the Condell Park home and moved into one of his own buildings in the Lithuanian retirement home in Engadine.

Albinas' youth

He had been born on 9 April 1908 in the village of Lukniai, near Vyzuonos in the Utena district. He was one of 6 children, 4 boys and 2 girls, born to farmers Kazimieras Kutka and Agota Kutkienė, whose maiden name was Macionytė.

Albinas lived all of his youth on the family farm until called away for military service at the age of 21. He earned the rank of junior sergeant. Eight years later, in 1937, he again was drafted into the army to refresh his training. He continued to work on the farm until the beginning of World War II. When the Soviet entered Lithuania for the second time, in 1944, he retreated to Germany.

Albinas Kutka's ID photo on his Bonegilla card

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Albinas in Germany

The Arolsen Archives hold 4 documents naming Albinas, 3 of which understate his age by exactly 10 years. What can be gleaned from them is that he was in Munich between 13 August 1945 and 6 February 1946, during which his occupation was Waldarbeiter, forest worker or woodcutter or, in American, lumberjack. He also lived for a while in a town called Vilsbiburg, which is just under 90 Km northeast of Munich, and Stade, a city in Lower Saxony in northern Germany, at the opposite end of his country of refuge.

His American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) Displaced Person’s registration record was filled out on 23 August 1945, but the place where it was completed is blank (unless P.A.P.Cl. 124 still can be decoded*). Another date on this form is of interest though, because its month and year suggest that 10 August 1944 was the date that he reached Germany, that is, almost one year before he was recorded in Munich. Given that its Arolsen Archives’ DeepLink number is just one more than the form which states that he is in Stade, this city may well be where he was registered as a Displaced Person.

The AEF recorded his preferred occupation not as farmer, like his father, but Tischler, German for carpenter.  Possibly he had done a lot of building on his parents' farm.

It is possible that he moved from Stade to the Munich district to get as far away as possible from the Soviet occupiers of eastern Germany and his homeland. He reported for interview by the first Australian migration selection team at the Buchholtz DP camp, though, in the centre of western Germany. 

He impressed the team enough to be included in the First Transport, departing Bremerhaven on 30 October 1947.  At 39 years, he was one of the older passengers.

Albinas and the Sawmill

Albinas’ first job in Australia was in Backhouse, Roebuck Pty. Ltd., The Bonegilla card records this company as being located in a placed called Megan, which sounds more like a girl’s name than a place name to a modern Australian. It really does exist, though, as a community hall and the remains of a railway station, inland of Coff’s Harbour in New South Wales.

The nearest town to Megan is Dorrigo, the headquarters of Backhouse, Roebuck according to a search of digitised newspapers on the National Library of Australia’s Trove Website. The company owned sawmills. 

Albinas left the Bonegilla camp for one of them in 21 January 1948, in a group of 7 men. He was back at the Bonegilla migrant centre on 11March 1948 together with another Lithuanian member of the group, Juozas Bazys, and a Latvian member of the group who was 16-20 years younger than the Lithuanians, Nikolaus Kucina.

Assuming that it took at least a couple of days to travel from Bonegilla by bus or car to Albury, then by train to Sydney, then to Megan if the station was operative in 1948, Albinas, Juozas and Nikolaus had put up with the conditions offered by Backhouse, Roebuck for less than 7 weeks. It was not the type of working with wood that Albinas preferred.

Albinas to Iron Knob

All 3 were sent off to Iron Knob, in South Australia, on 16 March, together with a fourth man who also had given up a career as a sawmill hand. The fourth man was a Latvian, Peteris Mesters, who had been sent to Northern Timbers, Pty Ltd, of Johnson’s Creek, New South Wales. Not surprisingly, Google Maps now can find 10 localities of this name in NSW, only 2 of which are in Sydney. Two certainly are northern, being on the border with Queensland.

Just before WWII, Iron Knob had been described as the largest known deposit of high-grade iron ore in the world. Broken Hill Pty Ltd – but now simply BHP – had commenced mining in the area in 1900.

The group of Lithuanians working at Iron Knob understood the importance of having a newspaper in their own language. They organised a collection to support the creation of Australijos lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian). The newspaper thanked them as its first sponsors on 12 September 1948. Albinas had donated ₤1 of the total of £8/5/- given by 10 Lithuanians.

Working together surely brought the Lithuanians there closer together. Even after they left Iron Knob, they kept in touch. For instance, 3 of them advertised on 23 May 1949 in the newspaper Australijos lietuvis that their friend Jonas Puslys, together with Olga Vainoryte, had created a Lithuanian family, so they congratulated them and wish them a sunny life. The three were Rasa’s grandfather, Adomas, and Albinas Kutka as well as Petras Juodka. By May 1949 they were not no longer working together, because Adomas for one was living already in Adelaide.

Jonas Puslys had not gone with the others to Iron Knob though. He started his working like in Australia as a fruit-picker, then had been sent to Australian Newsprint Mills’ Boyer plant in Tasmania. It looks like the connection between these four is earlier than work in Australia. None of them were in the Scouts, so perhaps it goes back to the same camp in Germany or the same locality in Lithuania.

It also looks like these men, along with Povilas Laurinavičius, had discovered the Australian postal system, and it was working for them. Actually, buying stamps and posting letters was sure to have been one of the “Australian way of life” topics covered in the Bonegilla camp English language classes.

Albinas to Adelaide

An Alien Registration record card for Albinas shows that he was released from his contract to work as directed in Australia on 30 September 1949, along with most of the others who came on the First Transport. His next place of employment was the Pier Hotel in Glenelg, suburban Adelaide, alongside Povilas Laurinavičius. Then it was off to 3 Robert Street, Canterbury, New South Wales, an address reported to the Department of Immigration on 27 June 1951.

Albinas to Sydney

Why did Albinas not stay in Adelaide like most of the others sent to South Australia to work out their contract? Another Kutka, Antanas, came to Australia from Germany on the Protea, arriving on 30 September 1948. He was sent to Sydney’s Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board to work. From the information available to us, we cannot tell if they were related but, since both were born in the Utena district, we cannot dismiss this possibility either.

If they were related and communicating with each other, then perhaps from Antanas' description of life in Sydney, Albinas thought he would do better there than in Adelaide.

We know already that he moved from the initial Canterbury address to Bankstown, a suburb with its own airport for light aviation. Undeterred by the noise, he moved to a home even closer to Bankstown Airport, in Condell Park.

On 3 December 1953, the Mūsų pastogė (Our Haven) newspaper reported that Albinas was in his second year of successful house construction in Bankstown. The reporter added (in Lithuanian, of course) “His example shows what can be achieved with determination and initiative.”

Ten months later, in October 1954, he was hit by a car while riding his bicycle. Mūsų pastogė wrote (in Lithuanian) “His face was injured, his head was cut open, and his bicycle was smashed. After spending several days in the hospital, Alb. Kutka returned home.”

Albinas acquired Australian citizenship on 22 June 1967. His address at the time, 47 Cragg Street, Condell Park, shows that he now owned his own home, probably built or updated with his own hands.

Sydney's Lithuanian Retirement Village

Ona Baužienė started campaigning for land on which to build a Lithuanian retirement village when she became the chairwoman of the Sydney Lithuanian Women’s Social Services Association in 1967. We have just met through her recollections 30 years later of meeting the First Transport Lithuanians in the Bonegilla camp.

Her committee started an intensive program of fundraising through catering for community events, raffles and the like. In 1970, the Association was granted land at Engadine on a permanent basis on condition that it be solely used for housing the elderly.

Work on the first two buildings started in 1975 after signing a contract with the builders Albinas Kutka and Vytautas Mickevičius.  A community centre finished in 1978 was financed entirely by the Association’s fundraising plus donations. It included a kitchen, dining room and library.  The remaining 17 residential buildings, for up to two residents each, were completed in 1981, thanks this time to funding from the NSW Government as well as the Association’s efforts.

Albinas (extreme left) and Vytautas Mickevičius help to celebrate the 
completion of the buildings

The topping-out wreath and 2 village buildings, 1981

Source:  Mūsų Pastogė

The official opening was on 19 August 1984. The builders, Albinas and Vytautas, brought their topping-out wreath to the opening.

Albinas the Benefactor

Mūsų pastogė advised in April 1982 that Albinas Kutka, a well-known Lithuanian builder recognized by the Australians as a "master builder", had become seriously ill recently and has been hospitalized for a major operation. The patient was recovering rapidly and hoped to return to his home in Bankstown soon. Albinas Kutka was known to local Lithuanians as a generous supporter of the Lithuanian cause.

The words “Albinas Kutka was known to local Lithuanians as a generous supporter” were very accurate, because he had been donating unreservedly to many Lithuanian activities. Messages and thanks from the newspapers can confirm this. Here are some examples.

• Mūsų Pastogė, 12 May 1980: student A. Binkevičius received $200, of which $100 was donated by builder Albinas Kutka.
• Tėviškės aidai, 21 November 1981: “The always quiet and sincere Lithuanian, Albinas Kutka", sent a donation of $100 to the Daina Choir.
• Tėviškės aidai, 20 March 1986: On the occasion of February 16 (Lithuania’s Independence Day) compatriots in Sydney and the surrounding area supported Lithuania’s freedom struggle with their sincere donations. Albinas Kutka’s donation $50 was the largest individual amount received.
• Mūsų Pastogė, 25 October 1988: A. Kutka donated $100 for the trip of Lithuanian dissident, Professor Vytautas Skuodis. Again, this was the largest individual donation.

  

  The photo which accompanied Albinas' obituary
  

  Source:  Mūsų Pastogė

Albinas' Last Years

Albinas was already in his mid-70s when the village was opened.  He sold his own house and settled into a unit he had built himself. Since Albinas was single, it was more stimulating for him to live there among Lithuanian acquaintances. In his last four years of his life, his health deteriorated. Doctors recognised his condition as difficult to treat. In the end, he received care in a nearby Calvary (Catholic) nursing home.

Albinas Kutka died on 13 September 1992, and was buried in Catholic Section of the Rookwood cemetery. During his final illness, Albinas was cared for by his neighbour and friend Vincas Kondrackas and his wife. They also took care of the funeral arrangements.

FOOTNOTE:  Perhaps P.A.P.Cl. 124 can be decoded.  Recently I happened upon a list of DP Camps by Team No on the <dpcamps.org> Website.  While it doesn't explain P.A.P.Cl., it does say that Team 124 was located in München, that is, Munich, where other evidence places Albinas also.

SOURCES

‘A.E.F. D.P. Registration Record, Albinas Kutka’, 3.1.1 Registration and Care of DPs inside and outside of Camps, DocID: 67941909, ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/67941909?s=Kutka&t=2739669&p=0, accessed 21 September 2025.

Australijos Lietuvis, (Australian Lithuanian) (1948) ‘Pirmieji Mūsų Rėmėjai’ (‘Our First Sponsors’, in Lithuanian) https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/280321942, accessed 21 September 2025.

Australian Cemetery Index, ‘Kutka’, https://austcemindex.com/?family_name=kutka, accessed 21 September 2025.

'Australian Lithuanian History, Australian Lithuanian newspaper’ https://salithohistory.blogspot.com/2008/12/, accessed 21 September 2025.

Bonegilla Identity Card Lookup, ‘Albinas Kutka’, https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203624970, accessed 21 September 2025.

‘CM/1 264719, Family name, Kutka, Citizenship, Lith’, 3.1.1 Registration and Care of DPs inside and outside of Camps, DocID: 67941908, ITS Digital Archive, Arolsen Archives, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/67941908, accessed 21 September 2025.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1967) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, 2 June, p 5863 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/241018768, accessed 21 September 2025.

Dainos Choro Valdyba (Daina Choir Board) (1981) ‘Sydnėjuje, Dainos Chore‘ (‘In Sydney, Daina Choir’ in Lithuanian) Tėviškės Aidai, (The Echoes of Homeland) Melbourne, 21 November, p 8 https://spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1981/1981-11-21-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 21 September 2025.

Elektroninio archyvo informacinė Sistema (Electronic Archive Information System, in Lithuanian with some English) ‘Utenos dekanato bažnyčių gimimo metrikų knyga’ (‘Birth register book of churches in the Utena deanery’, in Lithuanian ) (1908, Vyzuonos church, page 113, baptism record number 51, Albinas Kutka) https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/share/?manifest=https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/view/267507212/276386482/lt/iiif/manifest&lang=lt&page=113, accessed 21 September 2025.

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