Green is a common enough family name among English speakers. Its Slavic equivalents include Zelinski, Zelinsky, Zelenskii, Zelenskiy and so on. In recent years, the whole world has become familiar with a Ukrainian version, Zelinskyy. The Lithuanian equivalent is Žilinskas.
Onomasticians, people who study names, say that this is a toponym, a name derived from a place. The families which carry this name originated in a place which was known for its greenness.
There are over twenty people with the name Žilinskas who came to Australia from Germany after World War II, but only three who arrived on the First Transport. Later arrivals were family units but, in this instance, two men of that name were brothers.
Aleksandras Žilinskas
Aleksandras was named after his father and born on 17 June 1928 in Šiauliai. He was a farmer but recorded as a barber when in Germany. He had wanted to return to Lithuania if independent but indicated that he would migrate to Canada as second preference.
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| Aleksandras Zilinskas' ID photo from his Bonegilla card Source: National Archives of Australia |
Instead, he was part of the First Transport to Australia. He would have been only 15 when he left Lithuania, and no family is indicated in the records. Now aged only 19, he was sent to pick fruit at HE Pickworth’s orchard in the Goulbourn Valley as part of his two-year employment contract. Once the harvest was finished, he returned to Bonegilla on 1 April 1948 and was transferred to Tasmania a week later.
In Tasmania he worked at Goliath Portland cement company at Railton from 1948 to 1950.
It is reputed that Aleksandras was seeing two girls at one time, which caused some rivalry with the local lads. He was challenged to a fight, which he won. The local policeman needed to intervene when the local boys marched into camp seeking revenge.
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| That's Aleksandras, second from left, joining others for a smoke before a concert during his time in Railton; left is Endrius Jankus, on the right we have Kazys Vilutis and Vaclovas Kalytis Source: Collection of Endrius Jankus |
On another occasion Aleksandras wielded a toy pistol after an argument, hitting a local who had to have seven stitches in his head. Aleksandras pleaded guilty to assault and was fined £2, with 2/6 costs. Given the date when he was before the court, this incident probably occurred when Aleksandras worked for the Hydro Electric Commission in Tasmania’s Central Highlands from 1950 to 1951. Here he most likely helped build dams, power stations or accommodation.
He then worked at the Electrolytic Zinc Company at Rosebery from 1951 to 1955.
Aleksandras didn’t stay in Tasmania but moved to Brisbane. It was here he married Thelma Daphne Pike.
After 75 years in Australia, Aleksandras passed away on 1 November 2023, aged a respectable 95. His ashes are interrred in the Bribie Island Memorial Gardens, Woorim, Moreton Bay Region, Queensland.
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| Clearly no-one proofread this plaque for Aleksandras' birthplace before it was cast Source: Happy Graving on Find A Grave |
Juozas Žilinskas
Juozas Žilinskas was said to have been born in 1907 in the Lithuanian village of Jaunai, Kalvarija township, Marijampolė district, into a family of a wealthy farmers. According to his death certificate, his parents were George (probably Jurgis) and Marie (possibly Marija, née Cejinskas, which would be Cejinskaite in Lithuania).
He had five brothers and two sisters. One brother, Jurgis, also came to Australia on the General Stuart Heintzelman.
Juozas studied in Kybartai and Marijampolė. He later studied humanities in Kaunas and continued his studies at the universities of Rome and Paris. He taught at the Marijampolė gymnasium (senior high school) and was the director of the Kybartai gymnasium during the last years of Lithuania’s independence and the German occupation. In exile, he organised and directed the Lithuanian school in his DP camp. By this time, he could speak 8 languages.
He was 40 when he arrived in Australia, although it is suspected he was at least five years older. (The age of 40 had been specified as the maximum for those refugees lucky enough to be selected for the First Transport.)
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| Juozas Zilinskas' ID photograph from his Bonegilla card Source: National Archives of Australia |
He was sent to pick fruit at the HE Pickworth orchard on 28 January 1948, returning to the Bonegilla camp on 1 April after 2 months away. The camp administration then employed him as a kitchen hand for more than 3 months, from 6 April to 25 July.
Next, he was sent to Canberra on 3 August to work for the Department of Works and Housing. In practical terms, he was making bricks at the Canberra Brickworks. If he was released from the terms of his two-year employment-where-sent contract at the same time as most others, on 30 September 1949, this would have meant 13 months of more labour for the former senior high school principal.
He remained in Canberra and found employment with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in its stores, where he worked until his death. He had a very good reputation in CSIRO due to his diligence and honesty.
One of Ann’s informants, Estonian Galja Mägi, had come to Australia on the General Stuart Heintzelman too, but on a later voyage which left Naples on 31 March 1949 and reached Melbourne on 20 April (which must have been a record time). She said that Juozas had been the first Baltic refugee to buy his own house in Canberra.
Galja Mägi and her 12-year-old son, Tõnu (later Tony) had lived with Mr and Mrs Zilinskas for the nine months before 20 December 1951, when they had been able to move into their own home. Mrs Mägi’s husband and Tony’s father, Johannes, had preceded them to Australia and was living in Canberra hostels for working men at the same time.
Galja learnt that Juozas was the eldest son in his family, so his father had wanted him to become a priest, as was a custom in those days. Try as he might, he could not commit himself to the priesthood. He nearly had a nervous breakdown over the matter. In the end, he was allowed to leave home and continue to study.
Galja said that Mrs Zilinskas, Wanda, had been a primary school teacher. She had been married before World War II to another teacher, but he had been killed by the Russians. She had fled to Germany with her sister and parents. Her father had died of typhus in one of the Displaced Persons camps. Juozas, who knew her before the War, located her and sponsored her entry to Australia.
Away from his home and work, in the Lithuanian community, Juozas could be seen everywhere and often. He did not neglect a single commemoration or community gathering. He was chairman of the very first committee for the Lithuanian Community in Canberra. From then on, he was on every committee and board.
When Juozas was a little bit over 50 years old, he developed a bad pain in his back. The doctor prescribed tablets for him and told him that he was not to go to work, or even drive, for three weeks. At the end of this time, he went back to the doctor, who wrote him a medical certificate for the period. Juozas took the certificate home and looked up the word the doctor had written for his condition in a medical dictionary. What he found there stopped him in his tracks. The dictionary said, “incurable”.
By this stage, he was having difficulty in reading. There was no nerve specialist in Canberra, only someone who came from Sydney once a month. He did not have anyone with him he could discuss his condition. He spent the evening quietly, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. That night, he did not sleep. We need to understand how much pain he might have been experiencing despite the treatment already received.
The next day he returned to work, in the stores at the CSIRO. The stores contained sodium cyanide among many other chemicals. That day, 5 April 1961, he was found deceased in a CSIRO storeroom about 1.40 pm. The Canberra Police were notified, and the body was taken to Canberra morgue where an autopsy was carried out.
At 2.30 pm, someone turned up at Wanda’s workplace to tell her that her husband was dead. He had poisoned himself in his storeroom and collapsed on the floor. Wanda was so devastated that for six months she could not return home. She spent this time boarding with other couples.
This news of his death shocked not only his wife, other relatives and friends, but the entire Lithuanian community of Canberra and, undoubtedly, the wider Lithuanian community.
Canberrans and Australians in general would have been shocked by the circumstances also – so much so that Juozas’ death and some others like it are the reason why Australia now has a Telephone Interpreter Service. Had it operated in 1961, Juozas might have had someone with the language and technical skills to connect him to a medical person with whom he could have discussed his situation, day or night.
Juozas was buried in Woden Cemetery, Phillip, Canberra. He was survived by Wanda, who lived another 36 years, until 1997. They had no children.
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| Wanda Zilinskas (left) with a First Transport arrival, Birute Tamulyte Gruzas Source: Collection of Birute Tamulyte Gruzas |
At the time of his death, Juozas and Wanda had moved from the original house in Ebden Street, Ainslie, up the hill to a home closer to his Black Mountain workplace, in Cockle Street, O’Connor. This very house was celebrated in a book prepared for Canberra’s centenary in 2013 by Tim Reeves and Alan Roberts, 100 Canberra Houses.
The authors wrote that the house had been built in 1960 by a Polish Displaced Person, who had cleared a rocky, hillside block himself and ordered a Women’s Weekly plan from a local department store. He also had built the whole house himself apart from the brickwork and stonework. Perhaps because of Juozas’ recent death, the first buyer was recorded as Wanda Zilinskas, who paid just over £5,000 for it.
This was much to the builder’s satisfaction. However, it also was the home where Wanda could not stay for 6 months after her husband died.
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| 2001 watercolour by an unknown artist of the house in which the Juozas and Wanda Zilinskas were living at the time of Juozas' death. Source: Reeves and Roberts, 100 Canberra Houses |
Jurgis Žilinskas
Juozas Žilinskas’ brother Jurgis, was born in 1910, also in the village of Jaunai, Kalvarija township, Marijampole district.
Jurgis finished his studies at the Marijampolė school and the Technical School in Kaunas, from which he graduated as a mechanic.
After the War, he lived in the Hanau displaced persons camp in Germany. The record of his interview with the Australian selection panel records him as one of those to have been “forcibly evacuated by the Germans”.
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| Jurgis Zilinskas' photograph from his selection documents Source: National Archives of Australia |
He arrived in Australia on the First Transport in 1947. Like his brother, he left the Bonegilla camp on 28 January 1948 to pick fruit at the HE Pickford orchard. Together they returned to Bonegilla on 1 April, and together they worked as kitchen hands in the camp for 6 weeks until 25 July 1948. Then, together yet again, they set out for Canberra to labour at the Brickworks.
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| Jurgis is on the far right of the row of 11 Bonegilla camp employees with a 12th in front Who are the others? Who took the photograph? Was it the versatile Gunars Berzarrins? Source: this copy from the Collection of Galina Vasins Karciauskas; also in the Australian Lithuanian Archives |
Like his brother, he was one of the first Lithuanians to settle in Canberra. He also was one of the first to buy a house and he provided assistance to many Lithuanians. He was a supporter of the Canberra Lithuanian Club, of which he served as President in 1954, and participated in many Lithuanian gatherings.
Here he met and married Bronė Rubikaitė. She had arrived in the middle of 1948 on the Svalbard, the Fifth Transport, and been sent from the Bonegilla camp to work as a domestic in the Cooma Hospital in southern New South Wales. As Cooma is some 90 road minutes from Canberra and there was a train service at that time, perhaps she was in Canberra to mix with more fellow Lithuanians.
Jurgis was a passionate chess player, known locally as by the translation into English of his first name, George. Ann has counted 20 reports of his chess competition results in the Canberra Times, so suggests to any readers interested in the detail that they search the National Library’s Trove digitisation service themselves.
In late 1949, he was one of 8 Lithuanians who participated in a New Australians versus the Canberra Chess Club tournament, along with 2 Latvians, a Hungarian, and Estonian geologist Professor AA Öpik. The New Australians won resoundingly, which probably led to invitations to join the Canberra players, as George played for them later.
He was Canberra’s champion player in 1951.
Ann has been told that Jurgis was “a bit of a gambler”. He probably gambled with his health because, aged 63, he died suddenly of a heart attack on 3 August 1973 aged 63. He had been working at the Canberra Brickworks for 25 years at the time of his death although, according to his death certificate, he had rise to the skilled occupation of bricklayer.
His funeral took place at St Christophers Cathedral before the cortège left for the Woden Cemetery. He was buried near his brother Juozas, who had died 8 years earlier.
Neither of them lived to see the freedom of the Motherland, for which both had yearned.
Bronė was buried besides her husband on 5 June 1996, having died one month earlier. Her mental health must have deteriorated badly in the twenty and more years after her husband’s death. Ann has been told that she used to wander around the local shops talking to herself. Another informant has told of how she was scammed by 2 men who made use of her vulnerable state. As this is Jurgis’ story, the details of his wife’s life are better shared by someone focussed on those who came on the Second Transport.
Bronė also told this informant that she had nothing to do with Juozas or his wife as they did not like her. Juozas’ wife, Wanda, who died after Brone, on 21 July 1997, is not buried with the others. She chose cremation, so her ashes are stored in the Sister Kenny Wall at Canberra’s Norwood Crematorium.
CITE THIS AS Pocius, Daina and Tündern-Smith, Ann (2025) Želinskas three https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2025/08/zilinskas-three.html.
Sources
Advocate (1951) ‘Toy Pistol with a Wallop’, Burnie, Tas, 25 May, page 9 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69286430, accessed 16 August 2025.
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Australian Capital Territory Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages 1961, Death certificate: Jouzas Zilinskas, Canberra, certified copy held by Ann Tündern-Smith.
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