Vladas Mikelaitis (1925 –2006): 'A Good Bloke'

The tribute below was contributed to the Lithuanian-Australian newspaper, Mūsū Pastogė (Our Haven), by Rože Vaičiulevičius and published on 26.7.2006.  Its author is unknown, but I am happy to offer credit where credit is due if the author is found.

Vladas Mikelaitis was born in southwest Lithuania in the district of Šakiai on 12 July 1925. He was one of five children. His parents were Pranas and Ona Mikelaitis. His father was the village blacksmith. 

He attended Valakbudis Primary School and, as a youngster, worked on the farm. 

When WWII broke out, he worked in the cooperative shop as an assistant. when the Germans were retreating from the east in 1944, he was taken to East Prussia to dig trenches for the retreating soldiers. 

At the end of the war in 1945, he lived in the displaced persons camp in Oldenburg, in the Wehnen camp. 

On the 28th November 1947, he arrived in Australia on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman which transported the very first post-WWII refugee migrants to Australia. He was sent to the Australian Newsprint Mills in Maydena (Tasmania), where he worked on a 2-year compulsory contract.

Vladas Mikelaitis, front of Bonegilla card

Source: National Archives of Australia

In 1951 he was married to Kateryna Tscherkasky. He lived at Battery Point for a short time where his daughter, Ona, was born. He moved to Karanja in the Derwent Valley at the time Marytė was born. He lived there for 12 years. 

While living at Karanja, Vladas built a house in West Moonah. He was a weekend builder. For 2-3 years he would work all week in Maydena, then travel to Hobart every weekend to build the house. He then moved to West Moonah in 1966. 

Vladas was transferred from Maydena to Boyer in 1975 and worked in the warehouse there until his retirement in 1986. He then moved to Glenorchy where he spent the remainder of his life. 

The Maydena workers felled the eucalypts which were turned into newsprint in this mill
at Boyer, Tasmania

Source:  University of Tasmania

He travelled back to his homeland of Lithuania on 3 occasions to visit family. On the first 2 times he went on his own, the third time with Kateryna and together they also visited her homeland — the Ukraine. Vladas never forgot his family and kept contact regularly by phone and letters. 

Vladas was a very active member of the Lithuanian community. He was involved with the Lithuanian Sports club “Perkūnas” and was part of the organising committee of the 24th Australian Lithuanian sports carnival held in Hobart in 1973. In the 80’s, Vladas was part of a volunteer group who edited, produced and distributed a local publication called the “Baltic News”. 

He loved the Australian bush and the country life. He enjoyed fishing, rabbiting, going to the football, working in his vegetable garden and gathering with friends to socialise. He enjoyed his Aussie beer and in Karanja on a sunny day would sit under the shade of the trees in his beer garden watching his veggies grow. He also had a “smoke house” in Karanja where he would smoke eels that he had caught. 

Vladas owned a home movie camera. He recorded holidays and movies of his grandsons when they were growing up. He amused the children by playing the movies in reverse. He had 4 grandsons and spent time with them in the garage teaching them to use a hammer and nails. 

In his later years his failing eyesight restricted him in many things, but he still enjoyed AFL football. He would be seen sitting inches away from the TV screen. At half time he would slip out to the garage for a quick cigarette. 

Vladas Mikelaitis at a reunion for the 50th anniversary of arrival in Australia
Source:  Hobart Mercury, 2 December 1997

He was a man of simple wants and needs. He was hardworking, honest and a man of integrity. His Aussie mates knew him as a “Good Bloke” who enjoyed a beer, a good yarn, AFL football and, of course, he drove a Holden. Vladas embraced life and both cultures with open arms.

May he REST IN PEACE.

I thank Daina Pocius, Archivist at the Australian Lithuanian Archives in Adelaide, for bringing this tribute to our attention.

Notes:  1. Vladas became an Australian citizen on 20 August 1957 while living at Karanja.  Source: 'Certificates of Naturalization', Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 22 May 1958, p 1640, viewed 26 June 2023, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article240892247.  On the FindaGrave Website, a helpful volunteer (Tanya V) has recorded that he died on 14 June 2006, so less than one month away from his 81st birthday.

2.  Double-click on the images to see enlarged versions of them.

Helmi Liiver Samuels (1921-1971): Not wanted here? by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 11 May 2024.

Helmi Liiver was born in the small village of Kotsama, Viljandi county, in the centre of Estonia on 13 March 1921. She died in South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 12 March 1971 – just one day before her 50th birthday.  She was one of the 30 Estonian-born women selected to join the first party of refugees from WWII travelling to Australia on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman.

Helmi Liiver's photo from her Bonegilla card

Source:  National Archives of Australia

When former NSW Premier, Jack or JT Lang, was expelled from the NSW Branch of the Labor Party in 1943, he started his own Australian Labor Party (Non-Communist) and represented it in the lower house of the Federal Parliament from 1946 to 1949. As a former Premier, his views would have been newsworthy anyhow, but the House of Representatives gave them even more status when he claimed that Australians were being displaced in their own land, thanks to the Chifley Labor Government bringing in Displaced Persons. In April 1949, he obtained much publicity for his claim that the Government was bringing in Communists among the displaced persons.

Helmi Liiver had her answer published in the Smith’s Weekly issue of 7 May 1949. She wrote, “In view of your recent articles on the lives of Displaced Persons, I feel that yours is the only newspaper that is prepared to publish honest facts and that you are a friend to whom I may submit a protest against the statements of Mr Lang.

“May I introduce myself as a girl born in Estonia in 1921 during the period in which my country was freed from bondage with the help from Great Britain and other Scandinavian States.

“I suggest that it would be educational for Mr Lang to obtain a book recording the history of our country and he will then appreciate our economic recovery, progress, and development. The facts will prove that our standard of democracy and education is equal to the best in the world.

“We have a prior history of domination by foreign powers and practical experience of what Communism means; hence the reason why we are new Australians.

“My father served with the Imperial Russian Army fighting Japan in the Far East and later again in Europe in World War I. On the collapse of the Russian Army he immediately joined the Estonian Army to push the Russians back from our country. Revenge, they say, is sweet. Definitely so with the Russians, who, on occupying our country, arrested my father and sent him to Siberia and I pray that in the meanwhile the Creator has seen fit to take him to Heaven.

“Has Mr Lang a daughter? If so, will he compare her life with mine?

“I am an only child and my parents were farmers and owners of freehold land and I was regarded as a woman of substance. I arrived in this country with a small suitcase and no money. I was fortunate enough to be given immediate employment at the camp, but it was three weeks before I received pay and felt that I could buy a chocolate.

“Since being in this country I have developed a skill at dressmaking and now have a reasonable wardrobe and the best part of £100 in the bank.

“Believe me, Mr Editor, the going has been hard, but we are of the spirit and type that are not quitters or second-rate people.”

Helmi’s Bonegilla card shows that she started working for the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) in the Bonegilla camp on 15 December 1947. Smith’s Weekly said that Helmi was writing to them from the Bonegilla CES, indicating that she still was working there in April 1949. She was one of the 33 women who had been selected in Germany to work as a typist in Australia.

The front of Helmi Liiver's Bonegilla card

Source:  National Archives of Australia

As for the “best part of £100” she had saved in less than 2 years, the Reserve Bank’s inflation calculator says that in 2022 it was worth more than $6,300: what a saver!

By the time she was advertising her application for Australian citizenship in two daily newspapers, with full residential address, as then required by law, she had moved to Melbourne. According to her citizenship application, she had left Bonegilla in May 1949 and lived for one year in Mentone, which was then probably on the fringe of urban Melbourne. She moved nearer to central Melbourne, at 427 Chapel Street in South Yarra in May 1950.

A certificate of naturalization was granted to her in Prahran, Melbourne, on 26 January 1954, Australia Day.

Helmi is at the far right of this group of Estonian women waiting for their train to Bonegilla to move off from Port Melbourne on 9 December 1947:  her height of 178 or 180 cm visible

Source: Melbourn Sun, 10 December 1947, via Põder collection, Estonian Archives, Sydney

At the other end of the train journey, Helmi (nearest camera) and Helgi Nirk
(white sunglass frames) leave the train together at Bonegilla

Source:  Collection of Helgi Nirk, now in the Estonian Archives, Sydney

At some stage her path crossed that of one Sidney Ernest Samuels, known as “Sammy”. He had been a colonel in the Australian Army but gave his occupation as engineer when he married Helmi on 19 December 1962. He was 28 years older than Helmi, and this was his second marriage. His first wife, Elise Maria Schrey, had died only 24 days before this marriage.

Helmi gave her occupation as accountant. This was a favoured career for bright women and men among the First Transporters, like working in information technology is today. Both have the advantage of not needing a full range of English language skills for success.

Their marriage was to last less than a decade. Sammy died first, of coronary artery disease with myocardial scarring, on 20 February 1971 aged 77. The death may well have been sudden, since a coroner’s inquiry into it was held on 29 March 1971.

By then Helmi was dead too, having died 20 days later on 12 March from systemic lupus erythematosus, the most common type of lupus. Given that, even now, it takes an average of 6 years for diagnosis from when the patient first notices their symptoms, Helmi may well have been ill for all 8 years of the marriage.

I was told that Helmi had been a friend of Helgi Nirk when they were still in Estonia. They were born two years apart and grew up in different counties. Helgi studied agricultural science at Tartu University. Helmi had studied architecture, possibly at the Tallinn Institute of Technology, now the Tallinn Technical University.

I think it more likely that they met in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. Despite the slight age difference, they had much in common given that both were the only children of farmers of some wealth. The two of them shared a room in the Bonegilla camp until Helgi was sent to Melbourne’s Austin Hospital to train as a nurse.

As you can see above, Helmi nominated Helgi as her closest relative, her “cousin”, on her Bonegilla card. She gave Helgi’s address as Austin Hospital, Melbourne, so this must have been added after Helgi left Bonegilla on 3 January 1948. Helgi did not reciprocate though, having “Nil” next of kin on her card.*

Helmi was a good friend across nationality lines. It was she who recommended that Lithuanian Viltas Salyte, later Kruzas, be employed by the CES in Bonegilla after she had left already for Canberra on 22 December 1947. Three weeks later, Viltis was asked to return to Bonegilla and stayed there until April 1949. I hope to have more about her on this blog soon.

I’ve been told also that, after Helmi’s death, Sammy’s family visited their Moorabbin home to remove and discard everything that Helmi had owned. The way it was put to me made the destruction sound like a case of intolerance of someone from another country, another culture.

Now that I’ve looked at Sammy’s death certificate, I can see another explanation. He had 3 children from his first marriage. The middle child, his only son, was the same age as Helmi. The son had a sister who was 4 years older and another sister who was 2 years younger. The destruction, if it occurred, could well have been caused by their distaste of having a woman of their own age take the place of their mother and so soon after her death.

There is another possible cause of the antipathy. The Samuels’ marriage certificate shows them living at the same address. While this probably is the norm now, it certainly would have raised eyebrows 60 years ago. And they may well have been living together while Sammy’s first wife was alive, compounding the children's distress.

Indeed, someone has written beside the name, Helmi Samuels, on the marriage certificate, 'Deed Poll'.  In other words, she married Sammy as Helmi Samuels, not Helmi Liiver.  This tends to confirm the idea that they had been living together for some time before the marriage, long enough for Helmi to change her name legally.

It was a sad end for the former Helmi Liiver.

FOOTNOTE

* Geni.com calculates that the relationship between the two is that Helmi was Helgi Nirk's second cousin twice removed's husband's niece's husband's first cousin.

SOURCES

‘Advertising’, The Age (Melbourne) 2 February 1953, p 11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article206118801, accessed 22 May 2023.

‘A New Australian Replies to Lang’, Smith's Weekly (Sydney),7 May 1949, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article235982182, accessed 26 May 2023.

‘Australians Becoming the Displaced Persons — Mr. Lang’, Border Morning Mail (Albury,) 6 November 1948, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article263793577, accessed 26 May 2023.

Fitzgerald, Hilja, personal communication, 10 March 2001.

‘Lang's Charge on Reds as Migrants’, The Sun (Sydney), 18 April 1949, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article231069599, accessed 22 May 2023.

Lupus Foundation of America, 'Lupus facts and statistics', https://www.lupus.org/resources/lupus-facts-and-statistics, accessed 26 May 2023.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A434, Correspondence files, Class 3 (Non British European Migrants); 1949/3/7658 ATTACHMENT, SS General Heintzelman [Nominal Roll].

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A435, Class 4 correspondence files relating to naturalisation; 1949/4/760, Liiver, Helmi — born 13 March 1921 — Estonian.

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; 765, LIIVER Helmi DOB 13 March 1921.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A12508, Personal Statement and Declaration by alien passengers entering Australia (Forms A42); 18/180, LIIVER Helmi born 13 March 1921; nationality Estonian; travelled per USAT GENERAL HEINTZELMAN arriving in Fremantle.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla]; LIIVER, Helmi : Year of Birth - 1921 : Nationality - ESTONIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 1134.

‘Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator’, Reserve Bank of Australia, https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html accessed 24 May 2023.

Victorian Government, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, ‘Certificate of Marriage, Sidney Ernest Samuels and Helmi Samuels’, 19 December 1962, Certificate 1678/62.

Victorian Government, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Deaths in the State of Victoria, ‘Helmi Samuels’, 12 March 1971, Certificate 5673/71.

Victorian Government, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Deaths in the State of Victoria, ‘Sidney Ernest Samuels, 20 February 1971’, Certificate 7135/71.

Povilas Niaura (1919-2006): A Settled Settler, by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 2 January 2024. 

Povilas Niaura recovered enough from the terrors of the war in Lithuania and Germany to settle happily in Tasmania. Sent to work at Goliath Portland Cement Co Ltd in Railton, he stayed with the company for the remainder of his working days. The company lent him and other workers a brick-making machine to build their own homes, so clearly the company was one which looked after its employees when they were loyal in return.

Povilas reached Railton on 28 April 1948 with 19 others from the First Transport, the General Stuart Heintzelman, exactly 5 months after reaching Australia. The group contained 13 Lithuanians, 4 Latvians and 3 Estonians. They had been sent to Victoria to pick fruit first.

The addition of these 20 men to the workforce of the main local industry was so important that the town put on a gala welcome for them.

Povilas Niaura in 1947, aged 26

Source:  NAA, A2571, Niaura, Povilas

Goliath Portland Cement is the reason for the continued existence of the town of Railton, although this also is a service centre for the surrounding agricultural and forestry community. It is only 23 Km south of the city of Devonport, on Tasmania’s north coast. Goliath took over the smaller Tasmanian Cement Pty Ltd in 1928, leading to Railton’s prosperity.

The new arrivals were accommodated in what Ramunas Tarvydas calls ‘the single men’s camp’. He adds, ‘At first the accommodation was shared, but soon the company built new huts for all the men. The huts had timber framing and were clad in their own “fibro” sheets. Inside was a folding iron bed, mattress and a couple of blankets. The company gave the men timber to make their own furniture, but no tools; eventually they relented on that point.’

Sixteen of the 17 Latvians and Lithuanians are in this photo,
perhaps taken by the seventeenth;
Povilas is the tallest man standing on the right

Source: Tarvydas, From Amber Coast ...

Tarvydas continues, ‘At first most of the Balts worked either in the factory or in the quarry, where the pay was five shillings per week more but the work harder. One of the more hazardous jobs, in hindsight, was making the asbestos-cement products, although [researching in the mid-1990s] no Balt seems to have suffered any long-term effects.’

The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) has said that, ‘Goliath made everything from asbestos sheeting to a giant asbestos fairy penguin in its factory from 1947 to 1986’. Tarvydas adds that the company made ‘corrugated roofing, guttering, fascias, vats, etc.’

In the Railton district, Povilas met Margaret Jean, married and had two children, Stephen and Denise. Their cemetery plaques indicate that grandchildren too. Until 1948, the Niaura family name was not to be found in Tasmania. Now there are 8 adults in the family as well as great grandchildren.

Povilas, or Paul, the English equivalent of his Lithuanian name, worked for Goliath Cement for 36 years. He retired in 1984 at the age of 65. Despite attending English language lessons in the Bonegilla Camp and perhaps trying again with the lessons broadcast by the ABC, he never managed to read and write the language. 

This lack of fluent English limited his rise to more senior positions in the Company, but it did not stop it from trusting him to be sent to installation jobs.  They were a great improvement on his initial task, operating a jack hammer in the limestone quarry.

The most memorable of the roofing jobs was on a grandstand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in preparation for the 1956 Olympic Games.  There were times when he was away for weeks at a time, more often away than he was at home.

Son Stephen now has spent nearly as long with Goliath Cement as his father did. Stephen has clocked up 32 years. He now is a control room operator for the company, supervising from mining the limestone to the end products. His younger sister works with the Tasmanian Government-owned company which runs the ferries to and from Devenport in Tasmania, across Bass Strait to Geelong in Victoria.

One of the 6 grandchildren, Jason is a Pilates instructor and graphic designer, originally a hairdresser. Another, Bradley, is a former carpenter who is now regional manager of Fairbrother, a commercial and industrial construction, joinery and facilities management company operating in Tasmania and regional Victoria. The others are, respectively, James, another carpenter, Danielle, a school teacher, Katrina, a real estate agent and Rachel, a nurse. All contribute significantly to their local communities, to Tasmania and to Australia.

Paul was born to a farming family in Anykščiai, Lithuania, on 4 September 1919. His mother died when he was young so his father remarried. Along with Elžbieta (Elizabeth), his one full sister, he found himself living with something like 6 step-sisters and step-brothers.

Growing up on a farm, his skills were utilised by the Germans when they occupied Lithuania between the summers of 1941 and 1944. He was nearing 25 years old when the Soviet forces started their return. His oldest step-sister told him that he should run or else he would be shot by the Soviets. He took this advice. Like others exposed to a year of Communism under the Soviet rule in 1940-41, he would have wanted to get out. He could, as his food-production abilities would have led to the Germans to want to take him on their retreat.

He loved the farming life, so saved before marriage to buy 5 acres in Railton, where he built his house with Goliath’s brick-making machine. At first he rented out the house while continuing to live in the single men’s quarters. After he and Margaret Jean met and married, the 5 acres provided a semi-rural home for them and the two children.

The house that Paul built
with cement bricks courtesy of Goliath Portland Cement and its brick-making machine

Source: Stephen Niaura

The family had its own dairy cow and geese. Paul loved his geese. Regardless, they would be fattened and sold for the Christmas feasting of others. Every so often, the surplus milk could be churned into butter, which could be bartered for groceries at the local store. Paul’s son, Stephen, still keeps geese on the Railton land.

Stephen Niaura's geese

Source:  Stephen Niaura

The barn that Paul built to store feed for his animals on the 5 acres

Source: Stephen Niaura

Paul's cowshed, with the bail for milking the house cow on the left;
now a home for chickens

Source: Stephen Niaura

After the children were born, Paul still had enough money to buy 50 acres at Sunnyside, less than 10 minutes’ drive southeast of Railton. He raised beef cattle there, with help from Stephen when he was old enough.

Paul became an Australian citizen in August 1959.

When Lithuania’s impending independence became obvious again from the late 1980s, Paul wished that he could go back to see his remaining family. The question of cost arose, so he was urged to sell the 50 acres to raise the money. Having done this, however reluctantly, he spent some weeks in his homeland.

Before he returned to Australia, the family gathered to tell him that part of the land which had been restored to them by the Lithuanian Government was his. He assured them that he was handing it back to them to use as they saw fit.

Denise and her daughter have also been able to spend time in Lithuania visiting relatives. Neither had learnt much of Paul’s language from him, but they stayed with a great nephew of Paul’s, a Lithuanian who spoke English, having visited the United States and United Kingdom.

The house Paul built in Railton is still in the family though the 5 acres decreased when some had to be sold to pay for the cost of connecting to the town’s new sewerage system.

Paul Niaura in December 1997, at a reunion of Tasmanian 'First Swallows',
the name Lithuanian passengers from the First Transport gave themselves

Source: Hobart Mercury, 2 December 1997

If Paul had developed any signs of mesothelioma from his work with asbestos, it would have cut short what became an extremely long life. He was 87 years old when he died on 18 November 2006. He was buried in the Mersey Vale Memorial Park in Quoiba, a southern suburb of Devonport.

Grave Marker for Paul Niaura

Source: FindAGrave.com

Paul’s early plans to buy land for farming led to Aussie drinking mates christening him ‘Cocky’. The School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at the Australian National University thinks that this nickname arose in the 1870s, as an abbreviation of cockatoo farmer. Back then, it was a disparaging term for small-scale farmers, probably because of a habit of using a small area of land for a short time and then moving on, like cockatoos feeding.

‘Cocky’ stuck with Paul to his memorial plaque. This features his geese, though, looking especially pampered, rather than cockatoos. The Cocky nickname has transferred to his son Stephen, who initially was ‘Cocky Junior’.

Margaret Jean lies besides him. She was only 73 years old when she died less than 3 years after him. This means that there was a 16-year age gap when she married the tall (5 feet 10 inches or 178 cm on one form and 6 feet 1 inch or 185 on another) and handsome foreigner in the 1950s.

Grave marker for Margaret Niaura

Source: FindAGrave.com

I thank Stephen and Denise Niaura for their assistance with this biography.

Sources

Australian Broadcasting Commission, ‘New factory owner managing asbestos tragedy’, ABC News, 8-12 May 2010, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-05-08/new-factory-owner-managing-asbestos-tragedy/427088, accessed 21 January 2023.

‘Certificates of Naturalization’, Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 26 November 1959, p 4167, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article240887808, accessed through Trove, 20 March 2023.

'Fairbrother', https://www.fairbrother.com.au/, accessed 2 January 2024.

'Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms, C', School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, https://slll.cass.anu.edu.au/centres/andc/meanings-origins/c#:~:text=Cocky, accessed 2 April 2023.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; NIAURA, Povilas : Year of Birth - 1919 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 795, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203689468, accessed 2 April 2023.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Tasmanian Branch; P1184, Registration papers for non-British migrants, lexicographical series, 1949 - circa 1966; Niaura P, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=1777815, accessed 2 April 2023.

Niaura, Denise, personal communications, March 2023.

Niaura, Stephen, personal communications, February-March 2023 and January 2024.

‘Paul “Cocky” Niaura’, Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/234461136/paul-niaura/photo, accessed 2 January 2024.

‘People whose last name is NIAURA’, LocateFamily.com, https://www.locatefamily.com/N/NIA/NIAURA-1.html, accessed 21 January 2023.

‘Railton: Quiet country town south of Devonport’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 2004, https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/railton-20040208-gdkqow.html, accessed 21 January 2023.

Rimon, Wendy, ‘Goliath Cement’ in The Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/G/Goliath%20Cement.htm, accessed 21 January 2023.

Tarvydas, Ramunas, From Amber Coast to Apple Isle: Fifty Years of Baltic Immigrants in Tasmania 1948-1998, Baltic Semicentennial Commemoration Activities Organising Committee, Hobart, pp 46-8.

Whitfield, Meg, ‘Railton firie recognised for more than 30 years service’, The Advocate, (Burnie, Tasmania), 25 May 2021. Also https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/7266622/railton-firie-recognised-for-more-than-30-years-service/?cs=3674, accessed 26 February 2023.

Wikipedia, ‘Lithuania Independence Restoration Day’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuania_Independence_Restoration_Day, accessed 27 February 2023.

Viktoras Kuciauskas (1929-2008): Not All Stayed, by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 5 December 2023.

A small number of the First Transporters moved to third countries after their initial settlement in Australia.  Broadly, their reasons for leaving were reunion with family who had settled successfully elsewhere or being able to practise their professions when this was denied to them without "retraining" in Australia.

One who left was Viktoras Kuciauskas.  He stayed in Australia long enough to obtain citizenship here in 1953.  He was the only recipient of citizenship at his ceremony in Burnie, Tasmania, on 17 July, but the event was seen as so important that he had to listen politely to at least 6 speeches.  He was surrounded by around 20 very important people, according to the local newspaper.

In 1954, the Burnie Advocate newspaper carried a photograph of him as the radiographer in charge of a mobile X-ray unit (part of the then national campaign against tuberculosis).  A short article in the local Lithuanian newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė, reports that he was deputy chairman of the Lithuanian community in Hobart in early 1956 as well as the rapporteur for its audit committee.  

Victor Kuciauskas as radiographer in charge of a mobile Xray unit
in Burnie, Tasmania, October 1954

Source: Burnie Advocate, 20 October 1954

Yet only one year later, he was entering the United States via Canada, to reside there for the rest of his life.  

Born in Marijampolė County on 8 April 1929, he was only 18 when he arrived in Australia.  This age makes it unlikely that he had qualified as a radiographer already, but perhaps he had undertaken some relevant studies which made qualifying here easier.  His Bonegilla card records his English as 'fair':  it must have quickly become good enough for him to complete technical studies successfully maybe less than 5 years later.

Bonegilla card for Viktoras Kuciauskas

Source:  NAA

The Bonegilla card shows that he stayed in the camp until 28 January 1948, so he had nearly 2 months there to attend English classes and improve his language skills.  On 28 January, he and others were sent to HE Pickworth in Ardmona in Victoria to pick fruit.  He spent more than 2 months there, returning to the camp at the end of the fruit-picking on 1 March.  Only 4 days later, on 5 March, he was part of a group sent as labourers to the Electrolytic Zinc Company in Rosebery, Tasmania.

Viktoras Kuciauskas is third from the left in the front row in this photograph
taken at the burial of Aleksandras Vasilauskas in Albury's Pioneer Cemetery, 5 January 1948

Source: Collection of Endrius Jankus

Rosebery was the site of the Electrolytic Zinc Company's mine.  Mining is skilled work, so it is unlikely that the group of recent arrivals sent from Bonegilla were employed to do that.  The general labouring that they probably did still would have been very hard work, especially for young men who had been not particularly well fed during their 3 years in Germany.  Viktoras and the others would have been very relieved when notified in September 1949 that they were no longer required to work in Australia.  They had been free to leave their employers at any time so long as they sought the assistance of the Commonwealth Employment Service to find 'other work as directed', but the 2 years of employment in Australia often got interpreted as 2 years with only one employer.

Records digitised by Ancestry.com show that Viktoras travelled to the United States in 1955. He was on the RMS Orion, an Orient Line ship which berthed in San Francisco on 18 April 1955. By this time, his father was living in the US, in New York, while his mother was somewhat closer to San Francisco, in Omaha, Nebraska. His daughter, Victoria Siliunas, has advised that while visiting his mother, he went on a blind date with the woman who was to become his wife. 

His application for US citizenship shows that he arrived in the US again on 7 February 1957. This time, he had travelled from Sydney to Vancouver on another Orient Line ship, the SS Oronsay. His date of arrival in Vancouver is not yet public, but he reached Honolulu en route on 30 July 1956. 

Modern cruise ships take 9 to 13 days to travel from Honolulu to Vancouver, so Viktoras probably arrived in Vancouver before the end of August 1956. Between September and January 1957, did he stay in Vancouver with his sister, Stase, or did he drop into the US on visits to the special new woman in his life? If those records have been kept, they are not yet public. 

Less than one year after his second arrival, on 25 January 1958, he married Regina Parulis (Parulyte in Lithuanian), who had been born in Tauragė, Lithuania. By the time of the citizenship application they had a son, born in December 1959, and were to have another child, their daughter Victoria.

Based on decades of prior experience as a country of mass immigration, the US naturalization application form provided for applicants to change their name at this point in their lives.  Viktoras made use of this opportunity:  henceforward, he wished to be known as Victor Kucas.  

Victor's occupation is recorded as 'X-ray' on the application form.  An obituary written by a friend since school days, Edvardas Šulaitis, says that Victor obtained an additional nuclear medicine technician's qualification in the US.  Victor became the head radiographer in the Frank Cuneo Memorial Hospital, Chicago, for the more than 30 years that this hospital operated from 1957.

Ancestry.com has collected some information about Victor Kucas' life in the United States, mainly in the form of addresses from 1996 onwards.  They reveal that he was living in Lockport, Illinois, a city some 50 Km southwest of Chicago.

More is revealed in the Šulaitis obituary, published in Draugas, a Chicago-based newspaper which has been the only Lithuanian-language daily published outside Lithuania.  Having been a scout in childhood, Victor led the Lithuanian scout troop Lituanicas in Chicago and, during 1960-1963, was a member of the Council of the Lithuanian Scouts Union.  He edited the children's magazine, Eglutė, during 1994-2003, and for six years edited the Pasaulio lietuvio magazine.  He was active in a number of other organisations.

Edvardas Šulaitis described his friend as 'hard-working, calm-mannered' and added that 'Viktor remained in my memory as a quiet but accomplished person who paid tribute not only to his family, but also to the entire Lithuanian community.'

A portrait of Victor in later life on display at his funeral

Source:  Draugas

Sadly, Victor's life had ended in 7 months of pain after an accident in his home in December 2007.  He died on 17 July 2008, aged 79 years old, but he did live long enough to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary earlier that year.  His ashes were buried in a Chicago cemetery under the names of both Kuciauskas and Kucas.

Victor Kucas is buried with his father and wife in the St Casimir Catholic Cemetery,
Chicago, Illinois

Source:  FindaGrave

His wife, Regina, born on 24 January 1929, died 7 years later on 9 December 2015, aged 86.  She is buried with Victor.

The original burial in this plot would have been that of Pranas Kuciauskas, Victor's father.  His name appears on a nominal roll of Displaced Persons Departing From Resettlement Repatriation and US Migration Center Butzbach on 6 May 1949, held by the Arolsen Archives.  The Archives also have digitised a record which shows that Pranas was in Hanau, Germany, with his two children.  Why then did the three of them settle in three different countries?  Was the absence of any next of kin on Victor's Bonegilla card an oversight, or was it deliberate?

Others who asked the selection team for the First Transport if their relatives could come too were assured that they could follow.  In at least one instance that I am aware of, the relative came on the Second Transport.  Why was Victor not declaring that he had family and arranging for them to join him in Australia?

Pranas at the time of his migration to the US was aged 52, his occupation was given as Caretaker and his marital status was signified with a D, presumably for Divorced.  Somehow he was travelling independently when everyone else on his page of the nominal roll had a sponsoring organisation.  He was headed for Henry Street in Kings Park, Suffolk County, on New York State's Long Island.  Who did he know there?

Born on 4 June 1897, Pranas died on 1 October 1962 aged 65.  He died in Cook County, Illinois, so he was living with or near his son in Lockport.

The simple answer to many of the questions raised above might be that the young Victor was as adventurous as any other 18-year-old, maybe even more so given his scouting background.  When he heard about the possibility of moving to Australia, it may have seemed also like a quick way out of the previous 7 years of war and deprivation. 

Viktoras Kuciauskas is third from the left in the front row of this 1944 photo
of the fifth form students of the Kybartai Gymnasium in Lithuania

Source:  Collection of Edvardas Šulaitis via Draugas

If there were other young people from the same refugee camp answering Australia's call, that would have added to the pull factor.

Victor clearly did well in Australia.  It's likely, however, that he realised that he needed Australian citizenship for the passport to travel to reconnect with family members who had resettled in North America.  He must have been earning enough money through his responsible job in Australia to make not one, but two trips to North America. 

Returning to the US was a wise personal decision for Victor, not only for marriage and children but he was able to achieve more qualifications and a job which probably gave give security and satisfaction for the rest of his working life.  His move was Australia's loss, though.

I thank Jonas Mockunas for drawing attention to Edvardas Šulaitis' Draugas obituary, which has filled in gaps in Victor's life in the US.

Sources

'Documents from AIDUKAS, ADOLFAS, born on May 20th, 1895, born in LAUCIUNISKE and from other persons', Arolsen Archives, DocID 78869128, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/78869128.

'Draugas' (1 February 2023), in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draugas, accessed 8 April 2023.

'Hobartas, Nauja apylinkės valdyba' (Hobart, New community board), Musu Pastogė, (Sydney, NSW), 8 February 1956, p 4, via Trove, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article259359765, accessed 31 March 2023.

Jankus, Endrius, personal communication, 25 September 2009.

'Migrant Culture Praised at Naturalisation Ceremony', Advocate (Burnie, Tas),  18 July 1953, p 6, via Trove,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article69481268, accessed 25 March 2023.   

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration; Kuciauskas, Viktoras: Year of Birth - 1929: Nationality - LITHUANIAN: Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN: Number – 941; accessed 27 March 2023. 

'Naturalisation ceremony at Burnie on Friday ... ',  Advocate (Burnie, Tas), 20 July 1953, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article69481365, accessed 25 March 2023.   

[Pranas Kuciauskas], Arolsen Archives, Document ID: 81711918, Correspondence and nominal roles [sic], done at Butzbach: means of transport train, plane; Transit countries and emigration destinations: Australia, Italy, Canada, USA, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/81711918.

Pranas Kuciauskas, in Cook County, Illinois, Death Index, 1908-1988, Ancestry.com, accessed 31 March 2023.

'Pranas Kuciauskas', Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/239782705/pranas-kuciauskas, accessed 25 March 2023.

'Regina T. Parulis Kucas', Petkus & Son Funeral Homes (Lemont, Illinois), [December 2015], https://www.petkusfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/Regina-T-Parulis-Kucas?obId=2585224, accessed 25 March 2023.  

'Regina Kucas', Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/239782753/regina-kucas, accessed 25 March 2023.

Siliunas, Victoria, 2023, personal communication, 17 April.

Šulaitis, Edvardas, 'Dar Viena Skaudi Netektis, Atsisveikinta Su A. A. Viktoru Kuču' (Another Painful Loss, Goodbye Said to Viktoras Kučas RIP), Draugas (Chicago, IL), 20 August 2008, p 8, https://www.draugas.org/key/2008_reg/2008-08-20-DRAUGASo.pdf.

'Viktoras Kucas', Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/239782738/viktoras-kucas, accessed 25 March 2023. 

'Victor Kuciauskas, in the California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959', Ancestry.com, accessed 31 March 2023.

'Victor Kuciauskas, in the Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., Arriving and Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1900-1959', Ancestry.com, accessed 31 March 2023.

'Viktoras Kuciauskas, in the Illinois, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1856-1991' Ancestry.com, accessed 31 March 2023.

'X-ray unit', Advocate (Burnie, Tas), 20 October 1954, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article69880102, accessed 25 March 2023.