Elena Kalvytė Augutis (1917-1996): ‘Special Circumstances’ by Rasa Ščevinsienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

We have just met Elena Augutis as the fellow Lithuanian who accompanied Bronislava (Bronė) Jutkutė (later Umbražiūnas-Amber) from the Bonegilla camp in northern Victoria to the Hotel Ainslie in Canberra. There we mentioned that Elena Augutis was said to have had ‘special circumstances’.  Here we look further at these and her life as a whole.

The only photograph we have of Elena, from her Bonegilla card, is so out of focus
that Ann has used a Web service, Unblurimage.ai, to improve it a little

Source of original:  National Archives of Australia

Pregnant Women

When the 839 First Transport passengers had yet another medical examination, at the Bonegilla camp, at least their third in the migration process, the examining doctor reported that, “Two of the women are pregnant”.  One of them was Ann’s mother, pregnant with Ann.  Since Ann read that sentence, she has taken a particular interest in the story of the other woman, Elena Kalyvte Augutiene.

We know from several sources that Elena Kalvyte had married Jonas Augutis in Germany in 1947, before she boarded the General Stuart Heintzelman.  Probably because she knew that all the Heintzelman passengers were supposed to be single, she appeared before the selection panel using her maiden name.

Jonas follows

Perhaps Jonas applied too, but was rejected for the First Transport. He was not accepted for resettlement in Australia until his application for the Tenth Transport, the Svalbard, which reached Melbourne on 29 June 1948, when his daughter was already one month old. Perhaps it was her imminent birth that finally got him on a ship to Australia. This ship had sailed from Bremerhaven before her birth, on 8 May 1948, but its 52 days (7½ weeks) sailing time was more typical of ships of that era than the fast Generals.  His brother, Juozas, 8 years younger than him, came also.

Jonas Augutis from his 1948 Bonegilla card

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Elena's early life

Elena Kalvyte, the mother of the new Australian, was born on 31 August 1917 in Berciškiai village, Šilute district, in Lithuania, to Jurgis Kalvis and the former Ona Kaulickaitė.  An American Expeditionary Force’s (AEF) Displaced Persons (DP) Registration form completed on 19 July 1945 gives her previous occupation as clerk, her languages spoken, in order of fluency, as German and Lithuanian and her last residence in Lithuania as the city of Pagėgiai.

It is worth noting that her religion is stated to be Evangelical, unlike the vast majority of Lithuanians.  Various writers using various sources suggest that around 85 per cent of the population in 1939 were Catholic – they probably would be excluding the more varied Vilnius region, still in Polish hands.

Elena left the Hotel Ainslie in Canberra on 10 or 11 February to return to the Bonegilla camp.  By this time she would have been more than five months pregnant.  Her pregnancy would have been visible and probably interfering with her work. Nonetheless, as far as officialdom was concerned, both Elena and Ann’s mother had signed a contract to work in Australia in jobs where they were needed for two years (even though the paper they signed said one year only).

Pregnant women work in farm households

The issue was solved, at least until childbirth and perhaps later, with help from the Lutheran Church.  Both women were sent from the Bonegilla camp to assist nearby farmer’s wives.  In the case of Elena Augutis, it was to a Mr and Mrs RG Molkentin in Jindera, New South Wales.

Jindera is only 25 Km northwest of the north side of Lake Hume; another 7 Km brings the driver to the Bonegilla camp.  Or the driver could take the better roads through Wodonga and Albury, then head a few kilometres northwest to Jindera.

Elena’s Bonegilla card records a baby girl’s birth on 23 May 1948 at the Albury District Hospital.

Jonas Augutis' story

We know a lot about the baby girl’s father from an obituary in the Lithuanian-Australian newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė, in 1983.

Former Lieutenant Jonas Augutis of the 6th Regiment of the Lithuanian Army was born on 21 September 1914, almost 3 years before his wife, in the Sadutiškis parish of Utena county. When he finished Utena senior high school, he entered Lithuania’s Military School, graduating with its 17th class to the rank of Junior Lieutenant and joining the 7th Regiment in Klaipėda. Later, he was transferred to the 6th Regiment and served in Pagėgiai, Elena’s last place of residence in Lithuania. In 1938, he was promoted to the rank of Senior Lieutenant.

After the Soviets occupied his country in 1940, he was transferred to the Vilnius garrison with his regiment. As Soviet officials judged him to be unreliable, he was soon arrested and imprisoned in Lukiškės prison in central Vilnius. After the German Army invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the prisoners were transferred to the Vilnius railway station to be taken to Russia. When the Germans bombed the railway station, several wagons were uncoupled, saving some of the prisoners, including Jonas.

During the German occupation of Lithuania in 1941-44, Jonas became the deputy governor of Utena County. On Lithuanian Independence Day, 16 February 1944, General Plechavičius made a radio appeal to the nation for volunteers to fight Soviet-backed partisans. Some 19,500 men responded to the appeal. Amongst them was Jonas, who was sent to fight the partisans in southeastern Lithuania.

When the Germans tried to transform the squad into SS units, Plechavičius resisted, was arrested and sent to the Salaspils concentration camp. His battalion was disbanded with Jonas being sent to Germany and assigned to an aviation unit. When the War ended, Jonas found himself in the American zone of Germany. He lived in a Displaced Persons camp, served in an American labour company and met Elena Kalvaitė.

Jonas goes to Canberra

Finally selected for resettlement in Australia and housed initially in the Bonegilla camp, it is likely that Jonas was able to reunite with Elena and meet his daughter. Two days after his 34th birthday, he was off to Canberra to work for the Department of the Interior, probably as a labourer. Let us hope that his wife and daughter were able to travel with him or join him soon after.

The Department of the Interior was responsible then for all official aspects of life in Canberra, as well as a wide range of other activities, including elections, meteorology, surveying and lands. The range is so wide that it is impossible to tell what Jonas was tasked to do. We know from his obituary that he joined Australia’s Bureau of Statistics after completing his employment contract and stayed there until his retirement in 1979, aged 65, the then compulsory maximum age of employment. (Ann notes that she was working across the road from the Bureau, in the Department of Immigration from 1977, and may well have crossed his path in the local shopping mall.)

In the early 1950s, the couple and their small daughter were living at 3 Ross Street, a short thoroughfare in suburban O’Connor. Given their circumstances, it may well have been built by the Government to rent. The address was confirmed by the Commonwealth Government when a notice of grant of citizenship to the couple was published in the gazette in December 1959.

Jonas appears before a magistrate

When Jonas came the before Canberra Court in June 1955, charged with both assaulting a policeman in the execution of his duty and drink-driving, at least one reporter for both the Queanbeyan Age and Canberra Times chose to describe him incorrectly as resident on the longer, more prominent, Queanbeyan address of Ross Road.

Jonas made counter allegations of having been assaulted by the police after his arrest. Elena gave evidence in support of her husband, one of the occasions when we have a record of the marriage having occurred in 1947.

Police evidence included Augutis having lost his driving licence once before, in November the previous year, while being fined £20 for drink driving. He had applied successfully to have the licence restored on 16 February. This, therefore, was the second occasion in less than a year when he had been found driving erratically when under the influence of alcohol. Still, he only was fined, £35 on the drink driving charge and £20 for assaulting the policeman. He was given 3 months to pay the total of £55, a hefty amount when you consider that its buying power then was equivalent to more than $2,300 in 2024.

Drinking too much alcohol is also on record for a number of the men from the General Stuart Heintzelman. Considering what they, as well as Jonas Augutis, had gone through during World War II, it is no surprise that they were using this approach to deal with what then was seen as, “Forget the past, look to the future”. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (now commonly PTSD) was not recognised until 1980, when it entered the American Psychiatric Association‘s third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) as a result of the behaviour of Vietnam War veterans.

Jonas’ occupation at the time of his 1955 court appearance was still ‘labourer’.

Elena and Jonas' daughter

Elena and Jonas’ daughter started appearing in the local press, the Canberra Times, in September 1958. She attended Turner Primary School and had placed in the Junior High Jump competition at the School’s first athletics carnival. She also won a place in what the School called its Junior Championship. In the following year’s athletics carnival, she also placed in the 75 yards (69 metres) race for 11-year-old girls. 

In another crossing paths moment, the sports ground used by the Turner School is across the street from where another First Transport arrival, Valeria Mets, was living. She probably was at work, though, when her friend’s daughter was competing successfully.

Citizenship

Elena and Jonas received Australian citizenship at the same ceremony on 17 June 1959. They were with 54 other recipients, all of whom were given bibles either from the British and Foreign Bible Society or the Roman Catholic Church in Canberra. They would have been an excellent source of reading practice for English language development so long as they were much later versions than the 1611 King James Version still in common use at that time.

Jonas is recorded on his passenger list as Roman Catholic, while we know already that Elena identified as a Protestant. Which version of the bible they accepted, how they reconciled their religious differences or if they even bothered, are unknowns.

What is known is that Elena, newly back in Canberra with a baby, had help from nuns who were associated with Canberra's St Christopher's Cathedral.

Now that Elena and Jonas were Australian citizens, they were required to be on the electoral roll and to vote in elections. Electoral rolls for the period 1961-77 show them still living at Ross Street, with Elena’s occupation shown as cleaner and Jonas (recorded as John) shown as a machine-operator.

Elena, Jonas, their daughter and the Bureau of Statistics

Since John or Jonas spent his life working for the Bureau of Statistics, it is possible that the machine he was operating was a computer.

The citizenship ceremony was shortly after Elena was photographed with someone probably well known to her from some months together in early 1948, identified in the Canberra Times as Miss A Molkentin. They were said to be among visitors at the opening on 26 May of an exhibition of statistical equipment by the Bureau of Census and Statistics, then co-located with the Treasury in Parkes. We would not be surprised if they were staff gathered around for the purpose of a publicity photo, meaning that both Elena and Miss Molketin were employed by the Bureau, now the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).  (We will add the photograph if we can find a version which is not mostly black.)

At that stage, the Bureau was conducting complete censuses of the Australian population every 7 years. A very useful one for our purposes had been conducted in June 1947, just 5 months before the First Transport arrived. The 1954 census included most of the Eastern European refugees, still known as former Displaced Persons or New Australians. The next was to occur in 1961. However, the Bureau may well have been employing temporary staff, likely to have been female, to prepare punch card records of surveys, for example.

Ann has been told that their daughter also was a good musician. The Canberra Times of 12 July 1962 records her passing the Grade IV examination of the Australian Musical Examination Board, a hint that her parents had been able to afford a piano at home for some time. The next year she passed the 5th Grade examination. In 1965, she passed the 6th Grade examination.

The 1 June 1967 issue of the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette announced her appointment to the Commonwealth Public Service as a Clerk in what then was called the Third Division. She followed her parents into what then was called the Statistician’s Branch of the Department of the Treasury.

This was the first step on the ladder of a public service career and it looks like a step which she might have taken as soon as she finished high school at the end of the previous year. If she wanted further education, the Commonwealth Public Service provided time off for classes and other support.

Her promotion into the position of a Clerk Class 2/3 in the Public Finance and Taxation Section of the Statistician’s Branch was confirmed on 14 January 1971.

The daughter’s Canberra friends were told of her marriage in Canada in June 1976 by an advertisement in the Canberra Times 4 days after the event. We have no idea if there was sufficient money for her parents to fly from Canberra to attend.

A marriage and new life in Canada should have led to a resignation in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, but the search engine for the National Library of Australia’s Trove digitisation service has been unable to find one. Nor can Trove find appointments to the ABS for either John/Jonas or Elena. It is highly likely that they were temporary employees only, able to be left without employment when the Bureau did not need them. This would explain why Elena was prepared to give her occupation as ‘cleaner’.

The parents move; Jonas dies

By the 1980 electoral roll, Elena had moved to a new address, Dexter Street in the Canberra suburb of Cook, but had no occupation, while John was living still at the Ross Street address. It is quite possible that this is a record of John not get around to updating his residence before that electoral roll was finalised. (Newer electoral rolls are not available to the public for privacy reasons, which was not an issue in the 1970s and earlier.)

The family’s next appearance in the press was in April 1983, when Jonas died aged 68. The advertisement indicated that Elena and “John” had 2 granddaughters in Canada. It also tells us that Jonas’ brother, Juozas, who came to Australia with him in June 1948, had left for the United States. There, another Augutis brother, Mikas had settled.

An older Jonas Augutis in the photograph accompanying his obituary

Source: Mūsų Pastogė 

The advertisement also said that Jonas had died “after a long illness”, often code for cancer. Whether it was cancer or not, Elena probably had devoted herself to care for him throughout, maybe even into his last days.

Jonas’ obituary in Mūsų Pastogė described him as being of an open nature, a keen reader of books, interested in Lithuanian and general history, and someone who subscribed extensively to the Lithuanian press. He was cremated at the Norwood Park Crematorium on April 21 1983. His farewell included a speech on behalf of the Lithuanian returned servicemen’s organisation, Ramovė.

The family donates

Public thanks appeared in a Lithuanian publication for a donation from the Augutis family in 1990, a very generous $100 from Elena.  She had donated it to the Independent Lithuania Foundation in Canberra.  This was only months after Lithuania had announced its independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990.

The Augutis name previously appeared on a list of donors in 1951, for 10 shillings to the National Fund. The purpose of this fund was assumed known to readers. Ten shillings, the equivalent of $1 in decimal currency, may appear small but was the largest amount a number of donors were giving and corresponds in buying power with more than $25 in 2024.

Elena's last years

In another possible moment of paths crossing, Elena lived in the same suburb as Ann in her later years. They may well have been at the local shops at the same time.

Elena joined Jonas in Norwood Park with a plaque on the same rock after her death on 6 October 1996 aged 79, in Morling Lodge, Canberra’s first aged care home. She did not receive an obituary. We are doing the best that we can here.

Augutis plaques, Norwood Park
Source:  CAMCF on Find a Grave

SOURCES

‘AEF DP Registration Record’ (Kalvyte, Elena) Folder DP1750, names from KALVITE, ELLA to KAMBROWSKA, Ruth, 3.1.1 Registration and Care of DPs inside and outside of Camps, ITS, Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/67568764?s=elena%20kalvyte&t=2738679&p=0, accessed 7 November 2025.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card Lookup, ‘Kalvyte, Elena’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203640622, accessed 8 November 2025.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card Lookup, ‘Augutis, Jonas’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203678465, accessed 8 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1955) ‘Assault Allegation Denied By Canberra Police’ Canberra, 17 June, p 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91200919, accessed 9 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1955) ‘Claims Constable Kicked And Punched Him’ Canberra, 17 June, p 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91201156, accessed 9 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1955) ‘Wife Tells Court Of Husband's Injuries’ Canberra, 22 June, p 5 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91203754, accessed 7 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1955) ‘Magistrate Rejects Allegations Against Canberra Constable’ Canberra, 28 June, p 6 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91204078, accessed 9 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1958) ‘Isaacs House Wins In Turner School Sports’ Canberra, 23 September, p 13 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/103121705, accessed 9 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1959) ‘Electronic computer demonstrated’ Canberra, 27 May, p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/114842319, accessed 7 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1959) ‘56 Migrants Enter Full Citizenship’ Canberra, 18 June, p 8 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/114844678, accessed 7 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1959) ‘Stonehaven Wins Turner School Athletics Trophy’ 21 September, p 9 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/103101338, accessed 7 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1962) ‘What People Are Doing, Pupils Pass Music Test’ Canberra, 12 July, p5 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131726767/14513046, accessed 9 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1963) ‘Music Study Passes To 24’ Canberra, 24 October, p 4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/104284561, accessed 9 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1965) 'Music examination results' Canberra, 22 March, p 19 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131762530, accessed 5 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1976) ‘Marriages’ Canberra, 16 June, p 22 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131823361, accessed 7 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1983) ‘Deaths’, Canberra, 19 April, p 15 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/116379793, accessed 7 November 2025.

Canberra Times (1983) ‘Funerals’, Canberra, 20 April, p 32 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article116380111, accessed 9 November 2025.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1959) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, 3 September, p 3112 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/240886578, accessed 7 November 2025.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1967) ‘Appointments, Retirements And Dismissals’, Canberra, 1 June, p 2733, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/241040405, accessed 9 November 2025.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1971) ‘Confirmation Of Provisional Promotions’, Canberra, 14 January, p 360 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article241066570 accessed 9 November 2025.

Find a Grave, ‘Elena Augutis’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/180994456/elena-augutis, accessed 7 November 2025.

Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (1951) ‘Maza kolonija, bet daug aukoja!‘ (‘Small Colony, But a Lot of Sacrifice’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, 19 December, p 6 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article259360432, accessed 7 November 2025.

Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (1990) ‘Canberroje‘ (‘In Canberra’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, 8 October, p 8 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1990/1990-10-08-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 8 November 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Queensland Branch; J25, Case files, annual single number series with or without 'Q' [Queensland] or 'QB' [Queensland Brisbane] or 'CLF' [Client Files] prefix, 1946-; 1953/4102, SVALBARD - nominal passenger roll - departed Bremerhaven, Germany 8 May 1948, 1948-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=1629089, accessed 8 November 2025.

Queanbeyan Age (1955) 'Q’beyan Man on Assault Charge', Queanbeyan, NSW, 17 June, p 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article270636187, accessed 5 November 2025.

Queanbeyan Age (1955) ‘Police Cleared of Assault Charge', Queanbeyan, NSW, 28 June, p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/270646241, accessed 9 November 2025.

Reserve Bank of Australia, Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html, accessed 7 November 2025.

VB (1983) ‘Mirusieji, A A Jonas Augutis’, (‘The Dead, In Memoriam Jonas Augutis’, in Lithuanian) Mūsų Pastogė, Sydney, 9 May, p 4 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1983/1983-05-09-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 7 November 2025.

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Napoleonas Butkūnas (1907-1983), Patriot, Photographer, Philanthropist, by Daina Pocius and Rasa Ščevinskienė with Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 22 September 2025.

Napoleonas Butkūnas certainly and rightly believed in the future of Lithuania.

Early Life

He was born on 22 January 1907, a native of Telšiai, from a family of wealthy farmers. It was large family, as My Heritage genealogists list 5 brothers and 3 sisters.

He had only one year of primary school, but this was followed by three years of private tutoring. He graduated from Plungė Gymnasium (senior high school) in 1928, so at the age of 21.

He entered Lithuania's military school and graduated with the rank of Lieutenant, before being promoted to Senior Lieutenant. The graduation probably was in 1930. After the 1934 coup d'état, he left the Army and work briefly as a civil servant.

Napoleonas Butkūnas in military uniform

Source:  MyHeritage

The coup was an attempt by supporters of the former Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras to overthrow the government of President Antanas Smetona.

Napoleonas was not happy working as a civil servant, so he enrolled to study at the Klaipėda Trade Institute, from which he graduated in 1938. He would have been a contemporary of Algirdas Undzenas at the Institute, although 6 years older.

An older Napoleonas Butkūnas

Source:  Australian Lithuanian Archive

With a World War Coming

Those 3 years of tertiary education mean that, like Algirdas, he was one of the most educated Lithuanians to later find themselves in Australia. Unlike Algirdas, he had not leapt directly into management but instead took on the role of bookkeeper in a textile factory.

He again served in the Lithuanian Army, perhaps as a reservist, from 1938 to 1941, meaning that he maintained his role during the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940-41.

His selection papers for Australia have an interesting variation on the usual ‘forcibly evacuated by the Germans’. They say that he was ‘shanghaied in the street by the Germans’. They also say that he had worked in farming and as a labourer, possibly with the German forces or once he parted from them in Germany.

Napoleonas's date of arrival in Germany is noted as a very precise 25 July 1944 on his application for Australian citizenship.  This was around 3 months before the last Lithuanians could flee their homeland as the Soviet forces invaded it a second time.

After the War

When the War ended, he lived in a DP camp in Memingen. Later, finding his brother Vaclovas Butkevičius and his family in Oldenburg in the British Zone, he stayed with them and taught for 2 years in that camp’s Lithuanian school. (The family name of Butkūnas which Napoleonas was using at the time and later is a shortening of their name, Butkevičius. He had changed his name in 1939.)

War separated Napoleonas from his wife, Marija, and daughter, Liucija, both of whom remained in Lithuania. Despite this great loss, Napoleonas remained outgoing and involved himself in many cultural pursuits in Australia.

Marija Butkūniene, Napoleonas' wife

Source: MyHeritage

and their daughter, Liucija Butkūnaitė, later Pečkienė 

Source:  My Heritage

He described himself as a widower during the selection process for resettlement in Australia. He arrived on the First Transport, on 28 November 1947. At the age of 40, he was among the oldest passengers.

Later, when he applied for Australian citizenship in 1954, he changed his marital status from  separated, which he then crossed out, to married.  Here was a loyal husband.

Life in Australia

His level of English at the time of the selection interview, probably in September or early October 1947, was described as ‘slight – learning’.  However, when the Lithuanians assembled in the Diepholz camp one week prior to departure from Bremerhaven on the Heintzelman, in late October, he was elected the interpreter for their committee headed by Jonas Motiejūnas and Povilas Baltutis.  

Moreover, Genovaitė Kazokas, in her 2003 book, Lithuanian Artists in Australia, having interviewed Napoleonas, reported that one of the subjects he taught in the Oldenburg camp was English.  It seems that the Australian interviewers got the strength of his English wrong.  If they asked him directly about it, perhaps he was being modest.

As he stayed in the Bonegilla camp until 29 January 1948, more than 7 weeks, he had the opportunity to improve his fluency by attending classes every weekday, and chatting with the Australian staff.

With one-quarter of the men, he was sent initially to pick fruit in northern Victoria. In his case, his employers were AW and JF Fairley of Shepparton. After more than two months of this, he returned to the Bonegilla camp on 7 April. He stayed for another two weeks, with the possibility of more English language classes.

Next, he was sent to work at Goliath Portland Cement company in Railton, Tasmania, on 22 April.

His cancelled Alien Registration Certificate, held by the National Archives of Australia in Melbourne, shows his first address as being in Melbourne as of 19 August 1949. That was more than one month before the date, 30 September 1949, on which he would have been released from his ‘two-year’ work contract. It has been recorded without further comment.

Active Lithuanian in Melbourne

In Melbourne, he worked initially as a storeman and became an active member of the diaspora community. By the time he applied for citizenship in May 1954, he was a self-employed professional photographer.

For a long time, he was the only photographer of Lithuanian events. He advertised in the Lithuanian press that, ‘Those important occasions such as weddings, name days, christenings, house warmings, need to be imortalised in photographs, so when you return to Lithuania you have something to show your relatives’.

Napoleonas Butkūnas, photographer, advertisement 

Source:  Australijos Lietuvis

He became a long-time contributor to and distributor of the Melbourne press. He worked for some time for the printing house of Teviskės Aidai, the Melbourne-based Lithuanian Catholic newspaper.

For more than 20 years, Napoleonas ran a bookshop in the hall adjacent to the church adopted by the Lithuanians, that of St John the Evangelist on Victoria Parade, East Melbourne. He distributed thousands of Lithuanian publications, hundreds of plaques and Lithuanian signs.  He supported Lithuanian activities and the parish with the profits from these sales.

When Lithuanian organisations were being established, Napoleonas was active everywhere. He was a founding member of the Melbourne Lithuanian Club, held various positions in the board of Kariau Ramové (the Lithuanian branch of Australia’s Returned Services League) and was briefly its chairman. He was also a frequent member of the Australian Lithuanian Community National Council, as well as the founder of the Blaivininkų Draugia (Temperance Society) and an active member of the Christian Democrats club.

In her book on Australian Lithuanians, Luda Popenhagen pinned down one of his many committees as that which founded Melbourne’s Lithuanian Club, registered with the Government in 1957. Another committee has been pinned down in the photograph below.

We think that Napoleonas is seated at the right of the front row in this photograph
of a Melbourne Lithuanian community committee

Source:  Australian Lithuanian Archive

As a journalist, he wrote articles on various topics. As an artist, he used to paint in oils and donate his paintings to raffles organised by Lithuanian groups.

Genovaitė Kazokas wrote that art was Napoleonas' favourite subject in high school. She added that, “His oil paintings show a sense of composition and competent brushwork. His themes are Australian landscapes rendered realistically and with conventional perspective …”

A landscape in oils by Butkūnas

Source: Kazokas' thesis Vol II

What of Lithuania’s future?  This was the type of question that Napoleon raised in conversations. ‘It is important that the Lithuanian consciousness of the diaspora lasts as long as possible, so that there are close and sincere relations between the homeland and the diaspora’, he wrote.

Napoleonas' Legacy

On 13 March 1983 at the age of 76, Napoleonas died in a Melbourne hospital. The funeral service was held at St. John's Catholic Church in East Melbourne, which had become the Lithuanian parish church. The Lithuanian choir, men's choir and a soloist, his nephew, Jurgis Rubas, sang. From the Church, a long convoy of cars escorted the casket to the Fawkner Cemetery, and from there a crowd of about 80 returned to the Melbourne Lithuanian Club for the wake.

Napoleonas bequeathed $30,000 to the Australian Lithuanian Fund. It was about half of his estate and, at that time, the biggest contribution to the Fund. It had been created through donations to develop and nurture Lithuanian cultural activities institutions around Australia. Napoleonas had said in his will, ‘Use my savings for the Lithuanian cause according to your wisdom’.

The Reserve Bank of Australia estimates that the $30,000 in 1983 would have had a buying power equivalent to nearly $118,000 in 2024. The interest it would have earned since 1983 could be taken into account too, although clearly some of the money has been spent on worthwhile projects – from the interest earned, rather than Napoleonas’ capital.

Also, in the immediate aftermath of his death, 16 people and organisations had donated a total of $125 to the Fund in his memory. The Reserve Bank estimation of the modern buying power of this amount is $490.

Discovering Australia

We know that he also cared about his new homeland, Australia, as he became a naturalised Australian citizen on 26 September 1955.

His niece, Dana Baltutienė wrote about him in the Mūsų Pastogė issue of 12 March 1984.

“My memories of my uncle Napoleon from the time in Lithuania are rather vague. I was still too young. I got to know my uncle more closely in the German camp in Oldenburg, where he then taught at a school for Lithuanian fugitives and deportees. Our family lived in a neighbouring camp, and Napoleonas visited us often.

“My uncle and I came to Australia in 1947.* He was sent to Tasmania for contract work, leaving my parents in northern Victoria. In 1951, uncle bought a house in Melbourne, in the suburb of St Kilda. At first, my parents also took shelter under that roof.

“At that time, the Lithuanians of Melbourne had already started organising community life, and our family actively got involved. Uncle, of course, had become a member of the family. We went everywhere together to dances, plays, to church on Sundays.

“When he bought a car, a new period of traveling around Victoria began in my life. Whenever my uncle was able to get away from work and I from school, we would travel together. During five years of living together in St Kilda we drove across Victoria. We travelled very simply, without any amenities. When the evening came, uncle would park the car away from the road, tie his own a hammock between two eucalyptus trees and sleep. I, meanwhile, made my bed in the bushes. As soon as the sun came up, we continued our journey. Uncle was never looking for conveniences.

“Later, after I got married, he bought a tent and a spirit stove. He extended his travels even to northern Australia. After returning, he shared his impressions with us, showing photos and slides from the trip.

“Uncle was a friendly person, a bright face in Melbourne's Lithuanian community. He lived a modest and simple life. He neither smoked nor drank nor ate meat. He had loved books since he was young, and as he got older, he became even more attached to them.

“He often wrote about various topics in our press. He nurtured the Esperanto language, submitted essays to their publications.

“After falling ill with arthritis in his legs, he returned to his youthful hobby of painting. His drawings, dominated by nature, Australian eucalyptus trees and the sun, decorate the rooms of his wife, daughter and grandson in Lithuania.”

In Conclusion

To be buying his own house in 1951, maybe less than 4 years after arrival in Australia, is amazing. Someone who did not drink alcohol, smoke or eat meat, however, would have had much lower living expenses than someone who did.

The photograph of Napoleonas used with his Teviškės Aidai obituary

Source:  Teviškės Aidai

Thanks to that large donation from his estate, Napoleonas’ legacy lives on in literature as well as his art. For instance, one of the first steps after Lithuanian freedom from Soviet control in 1991 was the publication of an anthology called Po Pietų Kryžium or Under the Southern Cross.

Money from the Australian Lithuanian Fund, including from Napoleonas’ estate, was used to print this anthology in Lithuania, at a price much less than the cost of preparing and printing a book in Australia. This was organised through the efforts of Napoleonas’ niece, Dana Baltutienė, now chairing the Lithuanian Cultural Council. When the anthology became available to Australian purchasers in 1991, it was possible to offer it for sale at only $10 a copy, a price of about $23 in 2024. Of course, it also had offered business to a newly independent Lithuanian printing house and its employees.

Footnote

* Her uncle certainly came to Australia in 1947, but Dana was hazy about her own date of arrival. A Bonegilla camp identity card has Danuta Butkevicius arriving on the Svalbard, which reached Australia on 28 June 1949. Although Dana was already 11 years old, the signature on the card is V. Butkevicius or her father, Vaclovas, who came with his wife and Danuta on the same voyage. Also on that voyage was another Butkevicius, Jonas. If he was related, there were now 3 brothers in Australia. And, for there to be a nephew with a different family name, at least one of his sisters probably reached Australia too.

CITE THIS AS:  Pocius, D, Ščevinskienė, R and Tündern-Smith, A (2025) 'Napoleonas Butkunas (1907-1983), Patriot, Photographer, Philanthropist'

Sources

Australijos Lietuvis [The Australian Lithuanian] (1951) ['Advertising'] Melbourne, 29 October, page 14 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/280320837, accessed 8 September 2025.

Baltrukonienė, Alisa (1983) ‘Mirusieji, Anapilin Iškeliavo Napoleonas Butkūas’, ‘The Dead, Napoleonas Butkūnas has set off for Anapilis’ Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] Sydney, 4 April, p 2 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1983/1983-04-04-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf accessed 13 March 2025.

Baltrukonienė, Alisa (1991) ‘”Po Pietų Kryžium”’ [‘”Under the Southern Cross”’] Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] Sydney, 15 April, p 7 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1991/1991-04-15-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf accessed 11 March 2025.

Butkevičiūtė-Baltutienė, Dana (1984) ‘Dėdė Napoleoną Prisimenant’ [‘Remembering Uncle Napoleonas’] Mūsų Pastogė [Our Haven] Sydney, 12 March, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1984/1984-03-12-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf accessed 12 March 2025.

Find a Grave, 'Napoleonas Butkunas' https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212474059/napoleonas-butkunas accessed 9 September 2025.

Kazokas, Genovaitė Elena (1992) ‘Lithuanian Artists in Australia 1950-1990, Volume II’, Hobart, University of Tasmania, thesis. https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/Lithuanian_artists_in_Australia_1950-1990_Vols_I_and_II/23205632/1, accessed 8 September 2025.

Kazokas, Genovaitė (2003) Lithuanian Artists in Australia, 1950-1990 Melbourne, Europe-Australia Institute, pp 187-8.

My Heritage, 'Napoleonas Butkūnas(Butkevičius)' https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-1-OYYV6P5EABRTJ4FB3EB2WUN4XXQXZKY-1-16/napoleonas-butk%C5%ABnasbutkevi%C4%8Dius-in-myheritage-family-trees, accessed 11 September 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A446, Correspondence files, annual single number series with block allocations, 1926-; 1955/3672, Application for Naturalisation - BUTKUNAS Napoleonas born 22 January 1907, 1954-1955; recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=8838788, accessed 10 September 2025.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla],1947- 1956; BUTKEVICIUS DANUTA, BUTKEVICIUS, Danuta : Year of Birth - 1938 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - SVALBARD : Number - [UNKNOWN], 1949-1949 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203671692 accessed 8 September 2025.

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