Zigmas Griganavičius (1927-2016): Another Who Left for America, by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

Zigmas Griganavicius’ Bonegilla card records that he was sent to Mount Gambier in South Australia, on 9 January 1948, to work with the State Department of Woods and Forests there. He was one of a group of at least 32 sent there.

He must have taken one look at Mount Gambier and the work expected, and turned around. He was back at the Bonegilla camp 6 days later, on 15 January.

There is nothing on his selection for Australia file to indicate why he might have found what was expected of him so difficult. He was young, having 5 months before turned only 20. The interviewers judge him suitable for heavy labour. At 5 feet 10 inches (1.8 metres) tall and weighing 180 pounds (82 kilos), according to his Bonegilla card, he should have been sturdy enough.

Zigmas Griganavičius photo from his Bonegilla card

Source:  Bonegilla Migrant Experience

He had 4 years of primary education only, so he was unlikely to be looking for a more skilled job — or so it seemed at the time.  Could he have decided to move away from a personal issue?

Six weeks later, another job was found for him. He was sent back to South Australia, to Mr RO Burgh of Clare, to pick fruit. The Clare name will be very well known to Australian wine drinkers, so he may have been helping with the grape harvest. At the time, but no longer, the Clare region also was a major producer of fruits for drying, such as apricots in addition to suitable grapes.

Clare must have been kinder to Zigmas than Mount Gambier, because his next job, according to a card kept by the Department of Immigration, Adelaide Office, was with the South Australian Railways (SAR) based in Clare.

At some stage in 1949 he was sent to Leigh Creek, 400 km north of Clare, to work as a tractor driver for another State instrumentality, the Electricity Trust of South Australia (ETSA). Leigh Creek was known for the mining of brown coal then used to generate the State’s electricity – in a State which now has generates three-quarters of its electricity from renewables, wind and solar.

The Department of Immigration card records that he was released from his “two year” contract to work where sent on the same date as most others from the First Transport, on 30 September 1949.

It also records that his personal file was sent to the Department’s Melbourne Office on 10 October 1950, indicating that Zigmas had moved there also.

We next come across Zigmas on the occasion of his marriage, on 7 April 1956, to Ramūnė Elena Barkutė. The wedding was celebrated in the church of St John the Evangelist in East Melbourne. As explained in this blog’s entry for Napoleonas Butkūnas, this church had been adopted by Melbourne’s Lithuanian community. The entry for Antanas Varapnickas points out that this may have been because a priest called Pranas Vaseris had moved there.

The Barkus family was well known to Melbourne’s Lithuanian residents since Liudas Barkus was actively involved in various committees of the time.

Zigmas became an Australian citizen on 11 December 1957, when living on Earl Street, in Melbourne’s inner southeast suburb of Windsor. Only one electoral roll with his details has been digitised by Ancestry. It’s a 1963 roll showing him now living on Clayton Road, Clayton, when this was a new, outer suburb of southeast Melbourne. He was working as a wood machinist. Ramune had become an Australian by then too and was working as a clerk, telling us that she was highly literate in English.

There’s only one digitised roll because two years later, the family left Australia for life in the United States. They departed on 18 June 1965. In its issue of 5 July 1965, Mūsų Pastogė reported that, in a letter written from a ship in Sydney Harbour, Zigmas and Ramunė regretted that they were not able to say goodbye to all of their family members due to the illness of their children. They were planning to start their American life with a stopover in Chicago.

Zigmas was born to Ona, previously Pukaitė, and her husband, Juozas Griganavičius, on 12 August 1927. He was born in the Riklikai village in the Ukmergė district. This was recorded on one of those American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) DP Registration Records that we are so fortunate to have still in the Arolsen Archives. His usual occupation was recorded as mokinys, Lithuanian for student. This makes sense when you consider that he was only 12 years old when Germany invaded neighbouring Poland to start World War II during his summer holidays from school.

Rasa has found an online database for notable residents of Anykščiai, a winter resort city about 100 km due north of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, if more by road. One of those notable people is an Albertas Griganavičius, whose parents happen to be Ona and Juozapas (the long from of Juozas). His brother Zigmas was born in 1927, like our Zigmas.

Albertas in described in an English translation as “Physician, civic activist, memoirist”. Later, the biography mentions that Albertas was a board member of the Lithuanian Neurosurgeons Society. Yes, a brain surgeon, if not a rocket scientist …

There were 5 children in this family altogether. The eldest, Petras (1923-2001) is described as a mechanical engineer and emigrant in Chicago. The next in age is Vytautas (1925-2008), who became a priest. Zigmas was the middle child. Next came Marija (b 1931), with the married name of Stalioraitienė, who became a medical professional. Albertas, born in 1934, died in 2015.

The database finds nearly 8,000 words to say about Albertas, when translated into English, including a few about his family. That’s much more than we are going to devote to Zigmas here, but we are now not surprised if Zigmas reacted badly to finding that he was expected to spend the next 2 years chopping down trees.

Juozapas or Juozas was a farmer, manager of the Svirnai manor farm and chairman of the Kavarskas parish committee. The Web describes Svirnai manor as a historic estate in the Anykščiai District, first recorded in 1593. Its ownership fluctuated frequently between different families until the 19th century, when the Tanski family acquired it. They were aristocrats originally from the Mazovia region of Poland. From 1944, with the Soviet invasion, the estate belonged to the State, of course, and probably became a collective farm or part of one.

Ona was no mere housewife and mother, either. The biography of her youngest son describes her as an educator, civic activist, and a tretininkė, a Catholic layperson who followed a rule of life approved by the Church. In addition to such devotions as daily prayers and fasting, the life focusses heavily on charity, community service, and helping the poor.

The influence of his family on Zigmas might have made him much happier helping with a harvest, probably a frequent activity in Lithuania, than doing what was expected of him first in Australia.

Remembering that Petras was described as a mechanical engineer in Chicago, he may well have felt much more settled into his preferred profession than Zigmas felt while working as a wood machinist in Melbourne. Petras may have offered to help his brother find more satisfying work. While Ramūnė had family in Melbourne, Zigmas’ family in Chicago must have won the discussions.

In Albertas’ biography, Zigmas is described as a businessman in Chicago. He had moved to the Los Angeles district before he committed himself to becoming an American citizen on 17 September 1976.

The witnesses to his petition to naturalization swore that they had known him since 1971, indicating when he and his family might have left Chicago.

Various entries in Ancestry and Newspapers.com do not tell us much more about Zigmas than some changes of address. We do not know what business this “businessman” was conducting, or if he moved to another line of work.

There is confirmation of Ramune’s death on 20 February 2005, when she was only 68. She had been born in Lithuania in 1936, so was only 20 at the time of her marriage and 7 years younger than Zigmas. They had two sons, Victor and Edward in the English spelling, the children who were sick when the family sailed from Sydney Harbour. All of this is in an obituary published in the Los Angeles Times on 27 February 2005.

According to an entry on the Find A Grave Website, Zigmas died on Christmas Day in 2016, yet the photograph of the plaque for Ramune and Zigmas is blank where his details ought to be. The plaque tells us the Ramune preferred her middle name of Elena. There is no accessible evidence elsewhere in support of the death date for Zigmas. He was to be buried with her in the Laurel Cemetery, Murrieta, Riverside County, California.

The Griganavicius plaque in the Laurel Cemetery, with Zigmas' birth details only.

Source:  Find A Grave

If accurate, he had passed his 89th birthday at the time of his death. He had been lost to Australia, though, for more than 50 years.

SOURCES

‘AEF DP Registration Record, Griganavičius, Zigmas’ Folder DP1297, names from GRIGAL, ALBERT to GRYGIENCZA, Michal (2), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from G, DocID 67239918, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/67239918, accessed 5 October 2026.

Anykštėnų biografijų žinynas (Biographical Directory of People from Anykščiai, in Lithuanian) ‘Albertas Griganavičius’ https://www.anykstenai.lt/asmenys/asm_print.php?id=113, accessed 6 October 2026.

Australia, Electoral Rolls, 1903-1980, ‘Zigmas Griganavicius’ https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1207/records/91133150?tid=&pid=&queryId=31519525-0f15-4e34-8679-740afa5e3900&_phsrc=mmH97&_phstart=successSource, accessed 6 October 2026.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection, ‘Zigmas Griganavicius’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203643701, accessed 6 October 2026.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1958) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, ACT, 1 May, p 1362 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/240891896/25975951, accessed 5 October 2026.

Find A Grave, ‘Zigmas Griganavicius’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/174887914/zigmas-griganavicius, accessed 6 October 2026.

Los Angeles Times (2005) ‘Obituaries, Funeral Announcements, Griganavicius, Elana Ramune’ https://www.newspapers.com/image/192635355/?article=5299ff31-f626-457b-98cc-52114ee0ed77&focus=0.26300535,0.21829554,0.38208008,0.3228447&xid=3355, accessed 6 October 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (1956) ‘Nauja Lietuviska Seima’ (‘New Lithuanian Family’, in Lithuania) Sydney, NSW, 2 May, p4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/259365600, accessed 6 October 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (1965) ‘Kiek As Sužinojau!’ (‘As far as I know’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, NSW, 5 July, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1965/1965-07-05-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 6 October 2026.

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; 540, GRIGANAVICIUS Zigmas DOB 12 August 1927, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005777, accessed 6 October 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; GRIGANAVICIUS ZIGMAS, GRIGANAVICIUS Zigmas - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=7199430, accessed 6 October 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] 1947-1956; GRIGANAVICIUS ZIGMAS, GRIGANAVICIUS, Zigmas : Year of Birth - 1927 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 914, 1947-1949 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203643701, accessed 6 October 2026.

US, Naturalization Record Indexes, 1791-1992 (Indexed in World Archives Project) ‘Zigmas Griganavicius’ https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1629/records/7943978?tid=&pid=&queryId=a91a67c2-25b6-44ce-8707-e756664dff1a&_phsrc=bUj251&_phstart=successSource, accessed 6 October 2026.

Wikipedia ‘Leigh Creek, South Australia’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Creek,_South_Australia, accessed 5 October 2026.

Anton Warapnickas, formerly Antanas Varapnickas (1914-1995), by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 6 and 27 May 2026

Antanas in Germany

The Germans use the letter W to represent the sound we make when a V is used in Lithuanian and English.  Antanas, the Lithuanian equivalent of the English language Anthony, also is likely to be Anton in Germany.  Changing his name to make it easier for the Germans is the most likely explanation for the Lithuanian refugee, Antanas Varapnickas, arriving in Australia as Anton Warapnickas.

The Arolsen Archives is yet to digitise any German records for Anton Warapnickas or Antanas Varapnickas.  Likewise, the Australian Archives in yet to digitise Anton Warapnickas’ papers relating to his application to migrate to Australia and his selection interview.  This means that we do not know when or how Antanas or Anton arrived in Germany.

However, a Lithuanian language newspaper published in Germany, Mūsų kelias (Our Path), carried advertisements from Antanas in May 1946.  He then was looking for his brother Jonas and someone called Ona Šimonelytė.  He also enquired after his married sister, Ona Kikilenė, her husband, Zenonas Kikilas, and their children, Gyliai and Gylytė. At this time he was based in the German coastal city of Lübeck.

Antanas in Lithuania

We also know that he had married in Lithuania, to Judita Stonkutė.  Their marriage took place on 18 September 1938, when Antanas was 24, in the Seda parish church.  He had been born on 11 March 1914 in Grūstė village, Seda parish, Mažeikiai district, in Lithuania.  From the marriage record, we know that his mother’s name was Petronėlė Varapnickaitė (the name of an unmarried woman) and his father’s name was not stated.

The marriage record also tells us that his occupation, in Lithuanian, was darbininkas. This is the equivalent of labourer in the English language.

Anton Warapnickas from his Bonegilla card --

whatever was wrong with the eyelid on the right had been fixed by the photograph below

Source:  National Archives of Australia

His Bonegilla card confirmed that he had been the Antanas Varapnickas whose next of kin was a mother called Petronėlė Varapnickienė living in the Seda Grūstės village.  It might have been that a new Lithuanian arrival with good English and typing skills was helping the staff fill out the Bonegilla cards (someone like Viltis Salyte), in which case the married form of the family name (the one ending in -ienė) would have been assumed — and who was Anton to argue against this?

Antanas arrives in Australia

His Bonegilla card also advises us he had arrived in Australia on 28 November 1947 on the First Transport.  He then became one of the 26 men sent from the Bonegilla camp to help build the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme.  He left the camp on 14 January 1948, so he had spent roughly 5 weeks there.  For his sake, we hope that he was committed to attending the weekday English language classes.

He married fellow Lithuanian, Maria Pilelis, on 22 September 1951, in the church of St John the Evangelist, on Victoria Parade, a church which the Catholic Lithuanians then had adopted as their own.  When we look at a history of the Church (weblink below) we can see that this may have been because a Fr Pranas Vaseris had moved there.

It looks like Maria too modified her first name, perhaps in Germany, to suit the local orthography, as it usually is spelled Marija in Lithuania and Latvia.

Maria and Stepas

She had arrived with Stepas Pilelis, 11 months older than her, on the Amarapoora.  This ship reached Fremantle in Western Australia on 22 July 1949.  Sad to say, Stepas was dead just over a year later, at the age of only 49.  An unsourced newspaper clipping on one of his files said that he was a tuberculosis patient who had hung himself from a tree, leaving a letter of explanation behind.  (The National Library’s Trove service reveals that the relevant newspaper was the West Australian.)

Stepas’ tuberculosis would not have been detected until Australia despite the careful checking for possible tuberculosis among all potential immigrants, which continues to this day.

Stepas was a Lithuanian born in Latvia.   We can tell Stepas' ethnicity from his first name, as it is not Stefans in the Latvian style.

We know from a Tėviškės aidai obituary for Marija that her brother, Juozas Narušis, had a Lithuanian name. From this we deduce that Marija too was from a Lithuanian family and we know already that she was a widow before her second marriage to Anton or Antanas.

Anton and Maria become citizens

Together Anton and Maria advertised their intention to apply for Australian citizenship in the required 2 newspapers in August 1954.  They received this citizenship on 25 November 1955, when living on Bardsley Street, Sunshine, a northwest Melbourne suburb.

A Melbourne Department of Immigration file containing Anton's old Alien Registration Certificates, no longer required by a citizen of course, shows that in August 1954 he was working as a Builder's Labourer in Melbourne for the State Electricity Commission.  This would have been his employer also on the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme.

Antanas Varapnickas was another friend of Rasa's grandfather, Adomas Ivanauskas:
here, Adomas (standing, left) has his hand on Antanas' shoulder (standing, right);
others in the photograph include Adomas' friend Beryl (front left) and, possibly, 
Marija Varapnickas (second from left)

Source:  Private collection

The earliest available digitised electoral roll on the Ancestry Website, for 1963, shows Anton working as a labourer while Maria had found employment as a weaver.  She may have been working for a factory in the Sunshine area manufacturing fabrics – or perhaps at home, weaving folk fabrics for members of the Lithuanian community.  Their situation remained the same in electoral rolls for 1967 to 1972.

Moving to Daylesford

At some stage they sought the rural life, moving to Daylesford, a spa town 114 Km northwest of central Melbourne.  Perhaps they thought that living here was more like living in Lithuania than Sunshine had been.

Their move to Daylesford occurred before one of two joint Commonwealth-State electoral 1977 rolls for Bendigo were compiled.  The compilation date for the digitised one possibly is 22 April 1977.  Anton still was working as a labourer, while “Mary”, now 67 years old, had moved to home duties.  This means that her previous work as a weaver was likely to have been in a factory.

On the 1980 roll, Anton had modified his occupation to builder’s labourer and they were at a different Daylesford address, suggesting that they were renting rather than buying.  From the Ancestry digitising we cannot tell the date on which the roll was compiled, but Anton had reached eligibility for the age pension on his 65th birthday, 11 March 1979.  The roll makes it look like Anton preferred to continue working for builders to retirement.

Deaths

It was in Daylesford that Marija died on 13 January 1993 at the age of 82.  The Tėviškės aidai obituary records that she had been seriously ill for 26 years, a statement that suggests cancer as the cause of death. In Lithuanian, the obituary continued, “Deeply saddened are her husband, Antanas Varapnickas, sister Mercelė Matulionienė, sister Magdė Rimušaitienė in Berlin (and) brother Juozas Narušis, who endured 26 years of suffering in Siberia and lives in Lithuania”.

Anton or Antanas followed nearly 3 years later, on 19 September 1995. Both had spent their last days in the Daylesford Hospital. Antanas was 81 when he passed, a good age.

Although Anton Warapnickas never had changed his name back to its Lithuanian spelling, Tėviškės aidai used the Lithuanian version in its brief obituary.

This notes that he was buried with Marija in the Daylesford Cemetery. It adds, “We have no further information about the deceased.”

Why Anton Came to Australia

May this blog entry put on record that he was one of the 727 men thought young, fit, sturdy and alert enough to be chosen for inclusion in the first post-WWII party of refugees from Germany to Australia – a social experiment testing whether or not the Australian people were ready for migration from Europe so soon after the War’s end. The experiment was an immediate success and a resounding one too, in that it started the culturally diverse migration program Australia still has today.

The headstone on the Warapnickas grave in the Daylesford Cemetery

Courtesy Daylesford & District Historical Society

CITE THIS AS:  Ščevinskienė, Rasa and Tündern-Smith, Ann (2026) 'Anton Warapnickas, formerly Antanas Varapnickas (1914-1995) https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2026/04/anton-warapnickas-formerly-antanas-varacknickas.html.

SOURCES

Ancestry, ‘Australia, Electoral Rolls, 1903-1980 for Anton Warapnickas’ [1963] https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1207/images/33112_202632__151-00315?rc=&queryId=a21ba650-ff59-47ae-8859-f0a92b1cb248&usePUB=true&_phsrc=caR321&_phstart=successSource&pId=80213119, accessed 10 April 2026.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card Lookup, ‘Anton Warapnizkas’ (sic) https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203910028, accessed 9 April 2026.

Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, St Patrick’s Cathedral, ‘Saint John the Evangelist East Melbourne’ https://www.cam1.org.au/cathedral/en-au/History/Saint-John-the-Evangelist-East-Melbourne, accessed 26 September 2025.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1955) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ [Maria Warapnickas’ naturalization] Canberra, ACT, 26 April, p 1154 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232877677/25099499, accessed 10 April 2026.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1955) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ [Anton Warapnickas’ naturalization] Canberra, ACT, 10 May, p 1303 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232877677/25099499, accessed 10 April 2026.

Metrikai.lt [Search for a marriage certificate for Varapnickas, Location = Seda, County = Mažeikiai, Parish/village = Seda RKB] https://www.metrikai.lt/?F6=Sedos%20RKB&title=Varapnickas, accessed 10 April 2026.

Mūsų kelias (Our path) (1946) ‘Mes ieškome savųjų‘ (‘We are looking for relatives’, in Lithuanian) Dillingen, Germany, 23 May, p 7 https://spauda2.org/dp/dpspaudinys_musu_kelias/archive/1946-nr20-MUSU-KELIAS.pdf, accessed 9 April 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A7109, "Dead" card index of Registered Aliens, 1948-1951; PILELIS, Stepas: Year of Birth - 1910: Place of Birth - LATVIA: Travelled per - AMARAPOORA: Certificate No – 95035, 1948-1951 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=205653436, accessed 10 April 2026.

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Immigration, Victorian Branch; B78, Alien registration documents, 1948-1965; 1955/WARAPNICKAS M, WARAPNICKAS [nee PILELIS] Maria - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per Amarapoora 22 July 1949, 1949-1955 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4165043, accessed 27 May 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Western Australian Branch; K1331, Alien registration documents, alphabetical series, 1948-1965; 1950/PILELIS S, PILELIS Stepas - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per Amarapoora 22 July 1949, 1949-1949, recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=3102072, accessed 10 April 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; WARAPNIZKAS (sic) ANTON, WARAPNIZKAS (sic), Anton : Year of Birth - 1913 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 826, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203910028, accessed 10 April 2026.

Sunshine Advocate (1954) ‘Public Notices’ Sunshine, Vic, 15 August, p 12 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/74772914?searchTerm=Warapnickas, accessed 9 April 2026.

Tėviškės aidai (1993) ‘A † A Marija Varapnickienė ‘ (‘RIP Marija Varapnickiene’, in Lithuanian) Melbourne, Vic, 2 February, p 7 https://spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1993/1993-02-02-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 10 April 2026.

Tėviškės aidai (1995) ‘Iš mūsų parapijų, Melbournas‘ (‘From Our Parishes, Melbourne’, in Lithuanian), Melbourne, Vic, 3 October, p 7 https://spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1995/1995-10-03-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 10 April 2026.

West Australian (1950) ‘Migrant Found Dead’ Perth, WA, 9 August, p 11 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47879465, accessed 10 April 2026.

Wikipedia, 'Daylesford, Victoria' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylesford,_Victoria, accessed 10 April 2026.

Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme, by Ann Tündern-Smith

Bonegilla "peninsula" and Hume Reservoir

If you look at an old map of north-eastern Victoria, one drawn before construction of the Hume Weir (now the Hume Dam) on the Murray River started in 1919, you can see that the Bonegilla area resembles a peninsula. It has rivers on 3 sides rather than seas. The Mitta Mitta River was its eastern boundary, the Murray River flowed across the north, and the Kiewa River bounded its western side.

The shaded area is the Bonegilla run in 1869, 
between the Kiewa, Murray and Mitta Mitta Rivers
Source:  Bonegilla's Beginnings, redrawn from Owen's Atlas

One arm of the former Hume Reservoir, renamed Lake Hume, has flooded what was the course of the Mitta Mitta some 15 kilometres past its former confluence with the Murray. It forms the part of the Lake where Bonegilla camp residents used to walk and swim, when they did not travel further to the Murray below the Weir.

Lake Hume is surrounded by red dots in this clip from Google Maps,
with Bonegilla about halfway down its western side

Source:  Google Maps

Mitta Mitta River

Major engineering works have affected further the two Murray River tributaries which form the Bonegilla “peninsula”. Near the source of the Mitta Mitta at Mount Bogong, 200 kilometres upstream from the Hume Dam, the Dartmouth Dam with Australia’s tallest dam wall at 180 metres impounds the Mitta Mitta, the Dart, and other rivers and creeks. Like Lake Hume, its main purposes are irrigation and hydro-electric power. The rockfill embankment was built between 1973 and 1979.

Kiewa River

We are mostly interest in a third engineering project, the hydro-electric scheme on the Kiewa River. That’s because 26 of the First Transport men were sent there for their first employment in Australia, on 14 January 1948.   

Their cards say, "SEC, Kiewa, Vic".  Given that the town of Bogong had been established as the base for construction of the Kiewa Scheme, it’s very likely that the men were sent there, to the Kiewa Scheme rather than the town of Kiewa. 

The Kiewa town is only 18 kilometres south of the Bonegilla camp by road. Bogong is another 80 kilometres south.  It might have been an unsealed road in 1948-49, but the men still would have been two hours at most away from their initial home in Australia.

They all should have been notified before 30 September 1949 that they were not contracted from after that date to work in Australia.  Romas Ragauskas' citizenship file shows that he stayed in the Bogong town until a date in October 1949.   He then moved to Eildon, closer to Melbourne, for what he probably thought was an even better job.

The Kiewa Hydro-electric Scheme as envisaged in 1948 by the State Electricity Commission

Source:  SECV via Wikipedia

First Transport to Kiewa Scheme

The 26 men sent to the Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme on 14 January 1948 were

Lithuanians	Latvians
Antanaitis, Jonas	Auzans, Mikelis
Gulbinas, Valentinas	Draska, Stanislav
Jovarauskas, Jonas	Jansons, Ansis Alfreds
Lesniauskas, Vaclovas	Kajons, Peteris
Malzinkas, Vincas	Karklins, Alfreds
Ragauskas, Romas-Karolis	Koks, Hugo
Raudonikas, Petras	Kolesnikovs, Janis
Vaicius, Pranas	Krumins, Arvids
Valasinavicius, Petras	Muske, Janis Andrejs
Vaskelis, Stasys	Ozolins, Eduards
Venckus, Petras	Skuja, Janis
Warapnizkas, Anton*
Zabiela, Benediktas	Estonians
	Kull, Heino
	Saad, Ilmar

In the previous blog entry on Romas Ragauskas, we noted that the Victorian Government’s instrumentality, the State Electricity Commission, had recommended in 1937 that a scheme first proposed in 1911 should proceed. World War II then took away much of the workforce, but building parts of the Scheme continued. The arrival of more labour in January 1948 would have been welcomed.

Economic conditions in the 1950s meant that the Scheme never was completed as envisaged. The politics of the 1990s meant that the Scheme now is in private hands. It probably is an awareness of climate change and the role hydro-electricity can play in its mitigation that means the Scheme had been expanding in recent years.

If I come across a description of working conditions on the Kiewa Scheme in the late 1940s, I'll share it here. And any of the First Transport workmen who, like Romas Ragauskas, get a biography of their own will also have a hyperlink in the table above.

Footnotes: *It looks like this Lithuanian has Germanised his name but not yet changed back. A Lithuanian is more likely to recognise Antanas Varapnickas.

** Another Blogspot user has an interesting summary of the history of the Hume Dam at https://echuca-murraymouthkayakjourney.blogspot.com/2014/01/hume-dam-to-echuca-about-hume.html. Eleven years ago, Peter Phillips was doing a PhD on River Murray flooding, so he's a good source! I trust that the PhD has been completed successfully now.

Sources

Owen, W (1869) Atlas of Australia including pastoral runs of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria Melbourne, H Bolton.

Tündern-Smith, Ann (2014) Bonegilla's Beginnings, Wagga Wagga, NSW; Triple D Books (p 14).

Wikipedia, 'Mitta Mitta River' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitta_Mitta_River, accessed 14 October 2025.

Wikipedia, 'Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiewa_Hydroelectric_Scheme, accessed 14 October 2025.

Wikipedia, 'Kiewa River', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiewa_River#:~:text=The%20Kiewa%20River%20is%20also,wher%2Dra%2C%20meaning%20water, accessed 14 October 2025