Picking pears for Australia, by Daina Pocius and Ann Tündern-Smith

One quarter of male Baltic refugees from the First Transport were employed as fruit pickers in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley between January and March 1948.  The Commonwealth Employment Service’s District Office had arranged for them to assist in the fruit harvesting subject to certain conditions, including that they be employed in batches of at least five and that satisfactory board and accommodation had to be provided by the growers.  

 

The Goulburn Valley had only a small quantity of available labour which would have been totally inadequate to harvest the crop.  This would lead to the loss of thousands of pounds worth of fruit.  Most of the refugees, whose average age was 24 years, were employed in the Ardmona area for the harvesting of fresh fruit, canning fruit, and dried fruits.

 

Apricot picking had started early in January, before the Baltic refugees were made available.  The pear picking season was expected to start on 20 January.

 

On Wednesday and Thursday, 28-29 January 1948, 193 Baltic migrants arrived in Shepparton by special buses from the Bonegilla Migrant Camp.  The 193 number is that given by the Shepparton Advertiser newspaper on 30 January: it’s more optimistic than the 187 we found by examining all the “Bonegilla cards” for the Heintzelman group. 

The red dot in the west (right) of this Google map marks Ardmona; the Bonegilla Migrant Experience in the east (left) of this map has been developed from the former Bonegilla migrant camp: the modern trip from Bonegilla to Shepparton takes a little more than two hours so the remaining two and a quarter hours is the trip from Shepparton to Ardmona;
Click on the map for a larger version on another page

Source: Map data © Google

 

The Advertiser journalist wrote that the Goulburn Valley fruit growers were almost unanimous in agreeing that the new workers from the Displaced Persons camps were an “excellent type” and they were “well satisfied with the selection”. The refugees were to be distributed among 30 orchards in the Shepparton and Ardmona district.  Maybe plans had changed since destinations for the fruit pickers were recorded at Bonegilla, since they show only 16 employers.

 

The journalist advised that, at the end of the season, the new workers would be free to accept employment as permanent orchard hands if they so desired.  Wishful thinking!

 

The 16 orchards involved were those of :

 

Anton Lenne of Ardmona,  

 

AW & JF Fairley of Shepparton,

 

Bruce Simson of Ardmona,

 

Dundas Simson Pty Ltd, Ardmona,

 

E Fairley of Shepparton,

 

HE Pickworth of Ardmona,

 

H Hick of Grahamvale,

 

I Pyke of Ardmona,

 

J Nethersole & Sons of Ardmona,

 

JT Goe of Orrvale, 

 

RT Clements of Toolamba,

 

SF Cornish of Ardmona, 

 

TE Young of Ardmona,

 

Turnbull Bros of Ardmona,

 

VR McNab of Ardmona, and

 

W Young of Kelvin Orchards, Ardmona.

 

As for the minimum group size, the Advertiser mentions 3 and that was the number that the Bonegilla cards show going to JT Goe.  They were one Latvian and two Lithuanians, who we have to hope were already great friends.  At least they had German as a common language.

Picking pears,  possibly on the Grahamvale property of Mr H Hick

Source: Arvids Lejins collection

It seems that not all orchard owners were fair to the new workers.  According to the Communist Party’s Tribune newspaper, some were kept in isolated groups and were working a 48-hour week for the same pay as Australians receive for a 40-hour week.  Some of the Balts had thrown in their jobs and returned to Bonegilla early.  

 

Povilas Laurinavičius, who we met in the last blog entry, returned to Bonegilla after 2 weeks only with Anton Lenne of Ardmona.  We don’t know why he returned.  It could have been the hours expected to be worked 6 days a week.  Maybe the outdoor conditions in February heat did not suit him, give that he was 40 years old already.  If that was the reason, it wasn’t taken into account when he was sent a few days later to the Iron Knob mine in South Australia.  Antanas Jurevicius returned from Anton Lenne on the same day.  According to Antanas Bonegilla card, he had been married in the camp on 22 December, so he probably was keen to get back to his new bride.

Anton Lenne: photograph provided by Marg Spowart to the
Lost Mooroopna Facebook page

Source: Facebook   

Eleven had returned already before these two, the first 6 on 11 February, so after 12 days only at the most working in their new industry.  Five had been working for J Nethersole and Sons, Ardmona, and one for Mrs I Pyke.

Fruit pickers' lunch break, possibly on the Grahamvale property of Mr H Hick
Source: Arvids Lejins collection

A small number of the fruit pickers could not cope with their new-found freedom.  Jonas Razvidauskas appeared before the Shepparton Court on 16 February charged with assault, after he had attacked 3 policemen in the Shepparton Police Station and broken the glasses of one.  He was yet another First Transport man who had had too much to drink, having bought a bottle of wine and consumed it all, after which he could not remember anything.

 

He was said to have torn his own clothes to shreds and to be appearing in clothes borrowed from another prisoner.  He was fined £2 on each of the assault charges and ordered to pay £2 to replace the broken glasses.  This was a total of £8, likely to be more than he was earning each week.  He was one of the employees of Turnbull Brothers of Ardmona, and was one of those sent on to Goliath Portland Cement in Railton, Tasmania afterwards.

 

The Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial newspaper reported an outline only of Razvidauskas’ behaviour in the Police Station but the local newspaper, the Shepparton Advertiser, went into considerable front page detail about the aggression and damage.  

 

It reported also that 2 more of the men appeared before the Court.  Another Lithuanian, Jonas Rauba, was convicted and discharged on a charge of being drunk and disorderly.  An Estonian, Kaljo Murre, faced the same charge and received the same sentence.  Murre claimed that this was the first time he had drunk beer and it would be the last time.  These may well have been “famous last words”.

 

The Bonegilla camp was meant to be dry, although Ann has heard of smuggling and alcohol being allowed for special occasions, like Christmas celebrations and weddings.  If the fruit growers were paying their men a fortnight in arrears, which has been the custom in Australia for a long time, then they would have had their first pay just before the 14-15 February weekend.  It’s now wonder then that 3 were found in public places to have overindulged.  No doubt more drinking went on that weekend in private.

 

Easter 1948 ran from Good Friday on March 26 to Easter Sunday on March 28.  The day before Easter started, the Shepparton paper ran a paragraph headed, Balts on Move (see below).

Source: Shepparton Advertiser, 28 March 1948

 

As for the “itchy feet”, another 23 had returned to Bonegilla before Easter, making 36 in all, but more than 80 per cent were still on the job.  

 

The bulk of the Baltic fruit pickers returned to the Bonegilla camp between 31 March and 7 April, 114 of them.  Another 38 returned on 10 April, leaving one stalwart behind.

 

Borisas Dainutis did not get back to the Bonegilla camp until 5 May, so he seems to have spent nearly another 4 weeks with Messrs Turnbull Brothers of Ardmona.  As he was sent then to the Dookie Agricultural College in Victoria, perhaps he was displaying a great interest in agriculture despite having been selected in Germany has a potential builder’s labourer.  Let’s see what we find when we explore his life story soon.

A Turnbull Brothers fruit box saved by Cartonographer (Sean Rafferty)

Source:  https://ehive.com/collections/5682/objects/939087/turnbull-brothers-orchards

 

On the day that Borisas returned, another rural newspaper, the Riverine Herald, ran an article headed “Balts Appreciated”.  Based on interviews with fruit growers, the Herald estimated that the fruit pickers had saved the Goulburn Valley the loss of thousands of pounds worth of fruit.  “Proof of success of the scheme … (was that) the fruitgrowers (sic) were already voicing their wishes to participate in allocations of migrants next season”.

The fruit growers had not been happy with the front page publicity achieved by Razvidauskas, Kauba and Murre.  The Herald said that, “Expressing disappointment that adverse publicity had been afforded the very small minority of the men who had clashed with the law during their sojourn in Tatura and Ardmona district, … the men were excellent types on the whole and proved themselves highly adaptable to a variety of work.”

There was a sting near the tail of the report:  “It was further claimed that while some instances of difficulties in handling the Balts had been reported, on the average, where reasonable conditions were provided for them, good service had been given.”

What did these fruit growers expect from young men who had just endured 5 or more years of war, sometimes right in the middle of it, digging trenches between the opposing German and Russian sides?  All had been living on restricted rations until they boarded the Heintzelman and therefore were not at their healthiest.  There should be no need to mention also that some of them were more highly educated than most of those making a career of fruit growing and so might have regarded fruit picking as yet another obstacle on the path to a more satisfying future.

SOURCES 

National Archive of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] (1947-56); https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/SeriesDetail.aspx?series_no=A2571 accessed 17 May 2025 ("Bonegilla cards").

 

National Archive of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] (1947-56); LAURINAVICIUS POVILAS, LAURINAVICIUS, Povilas : Year of Birth - 1908 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GENERAL HEINTZELMAN : Number – 571 (1947-48) https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203619595 accessed 17 May 2025.

 

Riverine Herald (1948) 'Balts Appreciated', Echuca, Moama, 5 May, p 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article116540389 accessed 13 June 2025.

 

Shepparton Advertiser (1947) 'Baltic Migrants For The Fruit Harvest, Most Will Work at Ardmona', 12 December, p 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173900200 accessed 13 June 2025.

 

Shepparton Advertiser (1948) 'Labor Problem for Fruit Harvest' 6 January, p 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article169556903 accessed 2 June 2025 accessed 2 June 2025.

 

Shepparton Advertiser (1948) 'Baltic Migrants Arrive' 30 January, p 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article169557378 accessed 2 June 2025.

 

Shepparton Advertiser (1948) ‘Balt Fights Three Police’ 17 February p 1 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/169557746 accessed 17 June 2025.

 

Shepparton Advertiser (1948) ‘Balts on Move’ 25 March, p1, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/169558516 accessed 17 June 2025.

 

Sun News-Pictorial (1948) 'Wild After Wine, Balt Fined', Melbourne, 17 February, p 10 , http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article279326226 accessed 2 June 2025.

 

Tribune (1948) 'Balts Work 48 Hrs. For 40 Hrs. Pay', Sydney, 14 April, p 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article208109382 accessed 13 June 2025.

 

 

 

 

 

  

Helmuts Oskars Upe (1926-2018): Sheet Metal Worker by Ann Tündern-Smith

Helmuts Upe was easier to track down than many other First Transport arrivals because he was married to a cousin of a Dutch-born friend of mine.  We spent a couple of September afternoons in 2003 talking in his Gooseberry Hill home in the Perth hills.  A summary of what he told me then follows.

Helmuts Oskars Upe's photograph from his selection papers for entry to Australia

Source:  NAA, A11772, 313

He was born in Riga, Latvia, on 6 February 1926. When he was only 8 years old, his mother was one of several people drowned in a motorboat accident.  Helmut missed his mother deeply.  “A father is useful but a mother is necessary”, he said.

One winter’s night, the boat in which his mother was travelling hit a snag in the river and passengers were thrown overboard. Helmut’s mother could not swim and would have been wearing heavy clothing because of the weather. The cold water would not have allowed her to survive for long. 

Helmut was a keen reader but used to daydream through mathematics classes. When he reached high-school age, his teachers said that he should give up thought of further education. 

While the Soviet Army was invading Latvia for the first time, in 1940, he was already working behind the counter in a hardware shop. Given his now obvious intelligence, it is difficult to say how he would have earned his income had he been able to stay in Latvia.

Even at the still tender age of 14 in 1940, Helmut was politically aware and an active nationalist. He was a member of a group which resisted both the Soviet invasion and the ensuing German occupation. 

He and fellow younger members would play ball games against a high wall, say that of the local church, while the older resistance members were meeting nearby. They stayed on duty, despite the taunts of other youngsters, because they knew that they had to warn their colleagues if the meeting was likely to be discovered.

Given Helmut’s activism, it is not surprising that the likely return of the Soviet Army in September 1944, when he was already 18 years old, saw him travelling westwards. After he got to Danzig on a German ship, he joined the German Army. 

He was in Austria when World War II ended in May 1945. Arrest by the Americans and nine months as a Prisoner of War in the Bad Kreutznach camp followed.

The conditions here without any shelter were so poor, particularly when it was wet, that thousands died. 

Early on, he had to wear the same boots and socks for two weeks without changing. When he and others were finally able to take their socks off, the soles of their feet came off too. They had to move about on their hands and knees for a couple more weeks until new skin grew and hardened.

He passed himself off as a German to ensure that he did not join other Latvians being forcibly repatriated to the now Soviet Latvia immediately after the War. 

Later on he found out that, in his absence, he had been sentenced by a Soviet court to 10 years of hard labour for his resistance activities. Such a sentence might well have been accompanied by 25 years of exile, if the Estonian experience is any guide.

When he and a friend, Peter, were released from the POW camp, they started a wandering life, knocking on doors to ask for food and work. They found that the Germans were always kind to them, sharing the little food that they had. 

One door belonged to a man who had been a general in the German Army. He looked after them first until their health improved and they could do some work in return.

On his application to migrate to Australia, the wandering life was described as '1 year, farm labourer'.  This was after '2 years, merchant' in Latvia'.

At one of the German homes in Worms, in the Rhineland, they met another Latvian.  She recommended that they try one of the camps which were being set up for Displaced Persons. 

This was the name now being applied to the refugees from communism, who could not be called 'refugees' as the Soviet Union was one of the Allied victors in Germany. Helmut and Peter made their way north to one of these camps.

Life there was better, but boring. There was nothing much for them to do during the day. 

Somehow they seized upon the idea of joining the French Foreign Legion and travelled westward to the French Zone of Occupied Germany. They were recruited and started training. It did not take them long to realise that they had made a big mistake.

On parade, they were being asked to swear an oath of loyalty to France. Helmut asked to be excused to go to the toilet. Given permission, he jumped a fence, headed for the nearby railway station and found a train about to leave. 

Peter was with him. It did not matter where the train was going. This was just as well, since the train took them to Switzerland.

So it was over the border, back to Worms and, finally, back to the camp whose boredom they had escaped for a while. One day, somebody told them that there was a notice in the camp office about Australia recruiting migrants. Put me down, Helmut said casually.

In one of the holding camps before he left for Australia, Helmut saw the Chips Rafferty film, The Overlanders. This gave its viewers the impression that Australia was a vast desert. Wondering what he had let himself in for, Helmut was greatly relieved when the film’s action moved to Brisbane. 

As he had no scars or tattoos, he had no trouble passing the medical examination for Australia as well as the interview. 

He noticed on the General Heintzelman that something had gone wrong with the thorough selection processes as there were at least four passengers who could not speak any of the Baltic languages. One of them was one of the men who was sent back. 

What he did not notice was that there were also 114 women on the ship.

Helmut remembers that the men on the ship had Turkish cigarettes which had become mouldy. As they were the same length as American cigarettes, the men took American cigarettes out of their packets and replaced them with the Turkish cigarettes. They used the packets with the substituted cigarettes to pay for goods traded by Arabs who came out to the ship in the Suez Canal. 

It is hard to say who had the last laugh from this deal, as the men found that the brandy bottles which they pulled up in return were filled with tea.

As the Heintzelman sailed, its officers were suggesting that the men among the passengers should volunteer for jobs for the voyage, as they would get letters of commendation at the end. Helmut did not volunteer, as he believed that letters from the crew of the Heintzelman would carry no weight once they were in Australia.

When the Heintzelman berthed in Perth, Helmut remembers local people throwing small buckets of ice-cream up to the passengers. 

The passage across the Great Australian Bight in the Kanimbla was very rough. Few people turned up in the dining room for meals. 

One of Helmut’s friends returned from a meal to report that the ship was serving mushrooms in white sauce. Helmut quickly developed an appetite which overcame his queasiness. 

At the mess table he found, however, that the “mushrooms” were in fact tripe, which he had never eaten before and has not eaten since.

He does not remember mutton on the Kanimbla but it was on the menu in the Bonegilla Camp. He refused to eat it there, and still cannot eat lamb.

Helmut remembers Bonegilla Camp as a time of dreadful food. For example, the residents received only one slice of bread a day. 

The residents believed that the cooks were stealing the food to sell it. They used to walk to the local shop to buy extra food with the five shillings per week which they were paid.

The attitude of the commandant of the Bonegilla camp was, “If you don’t like the food here, go back to where you came from”.  The Bonegilla and Kanimbla experiences contrasted with the good food on the Heintzelman.

Some of the residents used to slip out of Bonegilla to work for neighbouring farmers. Helmut knew three or four others who did this, for fifteen shillings a day, three times their weekly income at the camp.

Helmuts Oskars 'John' Upe at 21, on his Bonegilla card

Source:  NAA, A2571, UPE HELMUTS

Helmut’s first job outside Bonegilla was fruit-picking at Shepparton. He felt well treated on this job. He was fed by his employer as well as being paid £8 per week.

Once he started working, the Germanic forename Helmuts was changed to John for Australians.

He and around twenty others were sent to Tasmania next, to work for the Goliath Cement factory at Railton, near Devonport. He was paid only £5 each week, from which he had to buy his own food.

Helmuts Upe (l) with Ojars Vinklers (r) captured by a street photographer --
they worked together at Railton, Tasmania, so perhaps this was in nearby
Launceston or Devonport

Source:  Helmuts Upe collection

He left Goliath Cement and Tasmania as soon as his two years’ contract was up.  He moved to Melbourne where he was recruited by the Cyclone company and started in sheet metal work. 

He married another Latvian.  They had one son, a journalist who commenced his professional training with a cadetship in Ballarat.  He is married, with two daughters.

Helmut and his wife ran a milk bar together in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe for a while.  This proved more and more stressful, leading to the break up of Helmut’s first marriage. It was at this point that Helmut moved to Perth, in 1966.

He returned to sheet metal work and was involved in major projects, such as the kitchens of the Parmelia Hotel and various hospitals. 

His childhood indifference to mathematics was replaced by skilled awareness of the need to translate architects’ drawing exactly into three-dimensional stainless steel. He was so good at this that he remained in employment one year beyond the then normal retiring age of 65. 

He even taught himself how to use the company’s new computer for his work. 

One day his boss came to him to tell him that he had to leave because the company’s insurers were refusing to cover him any more.  This refusal on the grounds of age may well be against the law now.

Helmut visited Latvia twice after its second independence, in 1992 and 1995. While life for the residents was obviously still difficult, Helmut felt much more at home there than he had in Australia. 

Indeed, he would have returned to Latvia to live if it were not for his wife and son in Australia. 

He enjoyed an active retirement, looking after his own large garden on the summit of one of the hills surrounding Perth and those of many neighbours.

Death came on 9 September 2018, while in the care of a Perth nursing  home, at the advanced age of 92.

SOURCES

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Immigration, Central Office; A11772, Migrant Selection Documents for Displaced Persons who travelled to Australia per General Stuart Heintzelman departing Bremerhaven 30 October 1947, 1947-1947; 313, UPE Helmuts Oskars DOB 6 February 1926, 1947-1947.

National Archives of Australia:  Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571,Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956;UPE HELMUTS, Upe, Helmuts: Year of Birth - 1906 [sic]: Nationality - LATVIAN: Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN: Number - 709, 1947-1948.

Upe, Helmuts (2003) Personal communications, 3 and 7 September.