We have learned already that Miervaldis Indriksons was killed by a workplace accident at Naracoorte, South Australia, while working as directed for the South Australian Railways (SAR).
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| Miervaldis Indriksons, ID photo from his Bonegilla card |
He was using a front end loader to fill in a dam at the railway station. The machine toppled over the edge of the dam and rolled several times. As the Border Chronicle put it, “capsized and somersaulted”. Miervaldis tried to jump clear, but caught his foot in the steering wheel. He was dragged into the dam and his back was broken.
Another newspaper report (in the Adelaide Advertiser) of the accident says that he was thrown clear, but then the machine rolled onto him.
He was taken to the local hospital but died less two hours after the accident, half an hour after reaching the hospital, from his internal injuries, on 15 September 1948. The report of the Australian interviewing panel in Germany has added to it, ‘Deceased, 11.30 am, 15/9/48’ – although the person who added the exact time did so more than 8 years later.
The coroner had decided that an inquest was unnecessary, perhaps because the cause of death was so obvious, no matter what the discrepancies in the details. These days, one is much more likely to be held in order to work out ways of such a horrible accident happening again. How about installing roll cages on all SAR earthmoving equipment or, better still, enclosed drivers’ cabins?
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| Miervaldis might have been driving a machine like this 1956 Ford tractor with front-end loader attachment and no protection for the driver Source: Tays Auctions |
Lutheran Pastor K Hartmann of Bordertown conducted the funeral the next day. The SAR arranged transport to allow his fellow countrymen to attend. The funeral also was attended by the Engineer in Charge of the broadening, EL Walpole, the man who was to speak to the Mount Gambier Rotary Club eight days later on what the broadening project involved (see previous entry).
His fellow countrymen must have been the ones who told the Border Chronicle reporter that Miervaldis had been the only surviving member of a family of eight, his parents, brothers, sisters and wife all having been killed during the War. There was believed to be a small son still alive in Europe.
Miervaldis had been born in Helsinki, Finland, on 16 January 1918. Finland had been part of Tsarist Russia, along with his family’s Latvian homeland, until declaring independence on 6 December 1917. Russia’s new Bolshevik Government recognised that independence on 31 December, only 16 days before Miervaldis was born into a time of great change.
His parents were the former Lavize Balodis and Mikelis Indreksons.
By the time he found himself in the American Zone of Germany after World War II, he was admitting to being married, with two dependents. At the time of being interviewed for possible resettlement in Australia, he was in a camp for Latvians in Lübeck, northern Germany.
His usual occupation was šoferis or chauffeur/driver and mehāniķis or mechanic. His level of education, according to the report of the Australian interviewing panel, was 6 years of elementary school. That interviewing panel recorded that he had 3 years of experience as a mechanic in Latvia.
His Bonegilla card has ‘None’ typed into the Next of Kin space: presumably the marriage had broken down since declared on 3 April 1946.
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