We have noted several times already in this blog that there was a shortage of buildings, especially homes, for those returning from overseas after World War I, let alone newly arriving Displaced Persons. We suggested that this was due to the men who would’ve been building being otherwise engaged during the period of the War.
I’m reading Stuart McIntyre’s book on Australia’s Boldest Experiment, subtitled War and reconstruction in the 1940s. In it, Stuart pointed out that the housing situation before World War II already could have been described as a dire.
I’d rather quote Stuart than try to summarise his careful arguments and his supporting detail. Here we go, from pages 175–78.
“There was mounting concern during the later 1930s with conditions in the inner suburbs and the State governments of New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria all commissioned inquiries. All painted a grim picture of neglect and decay.
“The most substantial, the 1937 report of Victoria’s Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board, described ‘congested areas' of inner Melbourne with as many as 49 dwellings an acre crowded into narrow laneways, ‘blighted areas’ where terraces were cheek by jowl with noxious industries, and ‘decadent areas’ where larger houses that had fallen into disrepair were divided by plywood or hessian partitions into sub-lets.”
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| Little Oxford Street, Collingwood, Melbourne, beautifully photographed by F. Oswald Barnett about 1935: Note the tiny size of the nearest home (Stuart Macintyre says that Barnett was the driving force behind the slum abolition movement in Melbourne) |
[At a density of “49 dwellings an acre”, each dwelling occupied, on average, about 83 m² of land. However, on those inner-Melbourne laneways, many dwellings might have been tiny 19th century cottages or terraces built wall-to-wall, on very narrow allotments (sometimes only 3–5 metres wide), sharing laneways, yards, privies, and other facilities. Some cottages may have stood on only 40–70 m² of land, while the remainder was taken up by the lanes, tiny yards, and shared spaces. Modern housing developments would allow at least 10 times that amount of land for each home, including the garden separating it from its neighbours, although apartment blocks are different.]
“The (Victorian) Board’s external inspection of residences within an 8-kilometre radius of the city centre led to an internal examination of 6390 residences. It found that great majority had no kitchen, a third had no bathroom, and a quarter had neither gas nor electricity. They were disfigured by leaking roofs, unsound floors and defective drainage, poor ventilation, damp, and subject to rat and vermin infestation. Half were judged unfit for habitation without repair, the other half incapable of reclamation.
“New South Wales and South Australia reached similar conclusions and each created an authority with powers to remove slums and build affordable housing. These new dwellings had barely made a dent in the backlog when the onset of the Pacific War brought civilian construction to a standstill.
“… most (slum) residents would respond if removed from their blighted environment and decanted into new, improved accommodation under appropriate supervision. But this could not happen unless the government made good the failure of the housing industry. There was a shortage of houses because construction had come to halt during the Depression, and an insufficiency of rental accommodation at prices those on low incomes could afford. The solution lay in public housing built more efficiently to proper standards and let at subsidised rents.
“The Commonwealth used a variety of war controls on land sales, mortgage borrowing, building permits and materials to prevent house building and restrict renovations to minor repairs. Recruitment and manpower regulations attenuated the construction workforce: 28751 dwellings were built in 1941, just 3548 in 1942.
“By then the housing deficiency was estimated to be 150,000, and the tightening of rent controls in December 1941 added to the strain. It was most acute in the metropolitan areas and in country towns where munitions production was undertaken in vast new plants employing thousands of workers who swamped the rental market. A War Workers Housing Trust erected hostels and temporary ‘wartime cottages’ but many had to make do in sheds, garages, caravans and other makeshift accommodation.”
Another study directed by a University of Melbourne economist looked at the conditions in wartime housing. The investigators were mostly young women with Arts degrees who, between September 1941 and January 1943, interviewed one in 30 of all Melbourne households. They collected data on the dwelling, family structure, employment and income. They found that “that a quarter of the kitchens had no water supply and half lacked a hot-water service. Fewer than one in 10 had a refrigerator; about half used ice-chests and the remainder relied on daily purchases of perishables. The survey also revealed a marked disparity between the crowding and lack of amenities in suburbs such as Collingwood, where incomes were low and the overwhelming majority were tenants, and the more spacious homes across the Yarra in Hawthorn and Kew, where ownership was more common and facilities more advanced.”
The same economist then conducted a closer analysis of Melbourne’s “western suburbs, where the war had a marked effect. In addition to Williamstown’s naval dockyard and Newport’s railway workshop, the Sunshine Harvester agricultural implement works and a steel mill, tyre factory and various engineering works in Footscray, all working at full capacity, there were ordnance, ammunitions and explosives factories with more than 20,000 hands. The number employed in secondary industry grew from 23,000 in 1938-39 to over 53,000 in1941-42.
“Earnings also increased: the average household income was 9 pounds 5 shillings by the beginning of 1943 — but then a quarter of all households included relatives or boarders. Because of rent control, the average weekly cost of a four-room house in the area was low, just over 18 shillings — if you could find one vacant.
“These suburbs had not been included in the earlier Board inquiry and their housing stock differed from that of the inner suburbs: it consisted overwhelmingly of single-storey, detached residences, most of four or five rooms. While … only 5 per cent (were seen as) uninhabitable, a fifth had no sink or running water in the kitchen, half lacked a refrigerator or ice-chest, half again had no hot water in the bathroom and a tiny minority provided an internal toilet. With no possibility of remedying these deficiencies and a shortage of such basic materials as paint, most householders did what maintenance they could and saved for future improvements.”
Inner northern Melbourne was where our First Transport passengers were looking for accommodation as soon as they left employment where it was provided. We’ve looked at several who lived and worked in those western suburbs, which is why I’ve used a quote from Stuart Macintyre to describe the conditions that they still might have found in 1949 and into the early 1950s.
I have quoted from Stuart because I had not been factoring in the impact of the 1930s Depression on housing construction in Australia, nor Federal WWII controls on building activity, let alone realising the lack of amenities that we now take for granted in the housing that did exist.
I think that Stuart concentrated on studies of housing in Melbourne because that was where he lived and taught. He has noted already that the findings of the investigations were similar in Sydney and Adelaide.
Stuart was a professor of history at the University of Melbourne, who retired from that position in 2013 and died in 2021. One reason why I am reading his book on Australia’s Boldest Experiment is because Stuart and I were contemporaries at the University of Melbourne in our student days. I remember him well from our joint activities for the Amnesty International groups at that university. The other reason should be obvious to followers of this blog: it is about Australia in the 1940s, about the Australia into which our First Transport passengers found themselves entering in the hope of new lives.
It is quite possible that those living on Baltic farms before World War II lived in conditions similar to those described in 1937-1943 Melbourne, probably without running water, certainly without hot water services, without refrigeration and with external toilets. Since the DP camps often were in military barracks or similar communal accommodation, at least they might have had running water and internal toilets. But, reader, do not for one moment think that their initial accommodation after Bonegilla was roughly like you live today.
Another person in my life relevant to this story was George Kiddle. George was one of the 3-man team who interviewed the Displaced Persons who had heard, in September-October 1947, about the possibility of moving from post-War Germany to Australia. He also was the head, during 1978-81, of the Department of Immigration branch where I was working. Mind you, it was only on his last day at work that I realised that he was one of the 3 responsible for selecting my mother, and so responsible for my birth as an Australian.
I think it was George who told me something along the lines of building worker numbers in Australia being so short of what was required that anyone who had helped erect a shed on the family farm was a candidate for Australia.
The selection team did their best and succeeded in choosing 75 men who they regarded as suitable to work as Builder’s Labourers in Australia. Additionally, as noted in the case of Aleksander Nõmm, there were others with suitable experience who were described as Labourers instead.
At a guess, only 2 of the 75 were sent to work as Builder’s Labourers. Albinas Navickas and Jonas Strankauskas were allocated to the Department of Works and Housing, Woomera, SA, after a sawmill in Navickas’ case and fruit-picking plus casual labouring at Bonegilla for Strankauskas. We have been told elsewhere though that Albinas worked as a Linesman and Strankauskas was put onto joinery after initial labouring. The initial labouring just might have been supporting builders at Woomera.
I’m fairly sure that the 4 selected as Builder's Labourers but sent to brick-making companies were more likely to be employed in stacking bricks than building new houses from them. We know for sure that this was the case for 2 of the 5 sent to the Canberra Brickworks, but note that none of them were selected as Builder’s Labourers.
Mismatch? Yes! I think that what may have happened is that the Commonwealth Employment Service staff in the Bonegilla camp operated on a “first come, first served” basis in distributing the new arrivals to employers looking for labour, and the foresters, timber mills and brick manufacturers got in ahead of the builders.
Part of my purpose in running this blog is to look at the extent to which individuals were able to continue their careers in the context of what were then well known labour and staff shortages in various industries and occupations.
Right now, I can nominate only 3 Estonians, Nikolai Müristaja, Helgi Nirk and Ernst Kesa, and one Lithuanian, Kazimieras Balkauskas, as finding work in Australia which fitted well with their previous interests and training. Then there were some others, like Endrius Jankus, Albinas Kutka and Edvins Baulis, who trained in Australia and ran their own businesses. Most found an employer they liked and laboured for them – or went from employer to employer if they were less lucky.
MORE:
Australian Department of Home Affairs (2009) Oral History — George Kiddle https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&channel=entpr&q=%22george+kiddle%22#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7f244f7e,vid:RI1Y3qYqkN8,st:0, accessed 28 June 2026.
Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne (2021) ‘Vale Professor Stuart Macintyre AO’ https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/news/past-news/vale-professor-stuart-macintyre-ao, accessed 27 June 2026.
Macintyre, Stuart (2015) Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and reconstruction in the 1940s. Sydney, New South Publishing.
