Biruta Pabrants (1922-1965): Was she happy?

The biographies posted here so far, with one exception, have been of men of achievement. 

Elsewhere, I have written the stories of two women of achievement from the First Transport, for a Canberra centenary celebration on the online Australian Women’s Register (Tündern-Smith 2013a, 2013b). The story of another woman of achievement, Helgi Nirk, is on this blog now too. 

Many of those on the First Transport would have been glad just to live a quiet life in Australia after seven years of turmoil, which started for them with the Soviet invasion of the Baltic States in the 1940 summer. They included 112 women, whom I have summarised in an article published in the Canberra Historical Journal (Tündern-Smith, 2020). 

Here is more detail about the life of one of the quiet women, Latvian-born Biruta Pabrants. We do not know much about her early life, only that was born in Riga, the capital of Latvia, on 22 August 1922 and she had had 7 years of primary school and 5 years at secondary school. 

Her ‘general appearance’ was rated ‘above average’ by the Australian selection team. She appeared before these three men in the Butzbach DP Camp on 14 October 1947. She travelled there, possibly even in the back of a truck, from a DP Camp in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main in the middle of the far west of Germany.

A smiling Birute photographed in October 1947,
in preparation for her voyage to Australia
Source:  NAA: 2571/1, 201

The General Stuart Heintzelman sailed from Bremerhaven on 30 October, so those two weeks of her life must have been hectic indeed. They included a chest X-ray on 22 October, which detected no signs of tuberculosis (NAA: A11772, 784). Everything else about her health was fine, there was no record with security agencies, so she was ready to go! 

We have the declaration she made to a Customs official at the Graylands Army base in Perth, the day after her arrival in Australia. This says that her previous occupation was ‘saleswomen’ and her expected occupation in Australia was ‘domestic’. One page of her selection papers said that her ‘present occupation’ in Germany was a ‘domestic worker’, with two years of experience. Another page says that she had worked as a ‘sales clerk’ in Hanau for one year also. 

She also was ‘Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue’, as the popular American song of the 1920s put it, with blond hair as well. She brought no money at all to Australia. The blond hair and blue eyes caught the attention of newspaper photographers. On the very day of their arrival in Australia, the Perth Daily News had front page photographs of some of the passengers including Biruta.

The caption for this page 1 photo read, "These three Latvian domestics--J Zogorska (sic), B Pabranto (sic) and A. Marchilevics--are going to Canberra"
Source:  Perth Daily News, 28 November 1947

The arrival in Melbourne led to another newspaper photograph, at the top of page 1 of the Sun News-Pictorial of 9 December 1947. Biruta is sitting on the right, facing the camera. While her hair looks dark in the Daily News photograph, the Sun photographer caught the blond colouring better.

Biruta is on the right of this group, attracting some of the stares
Source:  Reinhold-Valter Põder collection, Estonian Archives in Australia

One passenger list on a National Archives file records that Biruta left the Bonegilla camp for her first job in Canberra on 14 December 1947, only five days after the train trip from Port Melbourne to the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre (NAA: PP482/1, 82). This makes her one of the first group to be sent into the community to work. Her English must have been excellent to earn her inclusion, although rated only ‘fair’ in the selection papers. 

A list recording the distribution of Aliens Registration Certificates to the new arrivals in January 1948 shows that Biruta was resident at and working in the Mulwala House (NAA: A437/1, 1948/6/11; ArchivesACT (2019)). She received another Aliens Registration Certificate on 12 October 1951, when she was still living at Mulwala House (NAA: A437/1, 1948/6/469). Presumably she was working there still. 

She next appears in the public record on 7 March 1955. It was then a legal requirement that anyone applying for Australian citizenship had to publish a notice of their intention in two Australian newspapers. The Canberra Times, page 3, was one of her choices. Note that Biruta used the opportunity of applying for citizenship to drop the very Latvian ‘S’ from the end of her family name.

Biruta's notice of intention to apply for naturalisation
Source:  Canberra Times, 7 March 1955

There being no objections raised, Biruta became an Australian citizen on 21 June of that year. She took part in an ‘impressive, but largely informal ceremony’ according to the Canberra Times report of the following day. 

Newspaper report of Biruta's naturalisation ceremony
Source:  Canberra Times, 22 June 1955

Only six years since the commencement of Australian citizenship on Australia Day 1949, the ceremonies which still surround the grant of it were important enough for detailed journalism. This included foreshadowing Biruta’s participation in the Canberra Times of the preceding day.

The Canberra Times foreshadows Biruta's receipt of citizenship

as 'Miss Ruth Pabrant', 20 June 1955

True happiness at last? The Canberra Times’ social pages of 15 October 1958 reported the marriage of Biruta, using the name ‘Ruth Pabrant’, and Edward Finlay on the previous Monday, 13 October. A Monday wedding suggests that it was not celebrated in a church.

'Social Diary' record of Biruta's bridal shower and wedding

Canberra Times, 15 October 1958

The next public record for Biruta Pabrants is about her death, on or about 18th September 1965. 

The Canberra newspaper's death notice used Biruta's married name,
not the one she had assumed later,
and recorded her as still married to Edward Finlay
Canberra Times, 28 September 1965

It occurred in Sydney, only seven years later. By this time she was using the name ‘Ruth Veenendaal’ but was still known also as ‘Ruth Finlay’. The only marriage noted on her death certificate was that to Edward Finlay and there were no children, but this marriage cannot have lasted given the change of family name.

We know that this certificate is for our Biruta or Ruth because the father’s name is given as Karl Pabrant. While there is no date of birth, the place of birth is Riga and the length of residence in Australia, 18 years, tallies roughly with Biruta’s November 1947 arrival (‘Ruth Welta Veenendaal’, 1965). 

Some of those who knew her back in Canberra thought she had married a Dutchman and that the death was a suicide. They were wrong, but their ideas indicate that she was known to be unhappy. 

Women and men had suffered a great deal during those seven years of war and its aftermath. Today, we have counsellors at the ready after major disasters. We acknowledge that the Australian military, and civilians too, can suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. 

During and after World War I, “shell shock” was an acknowledged medical condition. In reality, it was a form of PTSD under another name. It seems that the mental health lessons of World War I were forgotten through World War II and subsequent conflicts, like the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency. 

It took the Vietnam War and its mental toll on those who survived fighting in it for psychiatry to recognise PTSD. This was twenty and more years too late for survivors of World War II. 

Biruta’s death certificate says that she died from ‘myocardial degeneration'. Wait a moment! These days, mainstream medicine acknowledges the existence of ‘broken heart syndrome’. According to America’s Mayo Clinic (n.d.), it’s ‘often brought on by stressful situations and extreme emotions’. 

Biruta’s myocardial degeneration occurred in the days when much less was known about treating heart disease. A relationship between extreme unhappiness and cause of death cannot be ruled out in Biruta’s case. 

She must have died alone, since the death certificate notes that she died ‘on or about 18 September’. No-one else was present to give an exact time or even date of her passing. Despite this lonely death, the cause was so evident to the examining doctor that an inquest was declared unnecessary by the Coroner at Sydney on 1 November 1965, as noted on the death certificate. 

Biruta died intestate, without a will. The New South Wales Public Trustee included her name and description (married woman, late of Point Piper, NSW) in a Government Gazette of 1 July 1966. 

The informant recorded on Biruta’s death certificate was Zenta Liepa, another Latvian woman who had come to Australia on the First Transport. Zenta lived in Canberra from the time she was sent there to work in December 1947. Since the date of presumed death is a Saturday, she may have gone to Sydney to visit Biruta/Ruth, but found no-one answering the door. The date of registration for Biruta’s death is a Sunday, so Zenta must have had an awful weekend dealing with her friend’s death. 

Biruta’s early death is one of four I can think of immediately, where the woman passenger from the First Transport passed away aged 50 or less — despite all the medical tests they had in Germany, on board the Heintzelman on Fremantle Roads, and in the Bonegilla camp. 

Zenta herself died at the early age of 60, from lung cancer caused by smoking in her case. I have recorded Zenta’s notable career in entomology elsewhere (Tündern-Smith, 2013b). 

Of the 37 women whose dates of death are known to me, the median age of death is a much healthier 81. Biruta, only 25 days past her 43rd birthday is the youngest, while another Latvian woman died at 43 years, 5 months and 16 days of age from then untreatable kidney failure. 

On the other hand, the oldest age at death of a woman was a hearty 98 for Regina Meinhold and I am aware of at least three women still alive aged 87 or in their 90s. One of the men lived past his 101st birthday. Many of the General Heintzelman passengers have proven to be at least as sturdy as their selectors hoped, if not more so.

REFERENCES 

ArchivesACT (February 2019) Mulwala House: 'Our house in the middle of the street', https://www.archives.act.gov.au/find_of_the_month/2019/february/previous-find-of-the-month-22019, accessed 29 June 2021.

Australian Broadcasting Commission Radio National (15 September 2014) ‘The history of forgetting, from shell shock to PTSD’, https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/hindsight/the-history-of-forgetting/5744242, accessed 10 July 2021.

Canberra Times (7 March 1955) Advertising, p 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article91194372, accessed 30 March 2021.

Canberra Times (15 October 1958) ‘Canberra Diary’, p 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/103123869, accessed 30 March 2021.

Daily News (28 November 1947) ‘Pretty Girl Migrants’, Perth, p 1 (CITY FINAL), accessed 29 Jun 2021, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article79814870, accessed 16 July 2021. 

Estonian Archives in Australia, Reinhold-Valter Põder collection.

Mayo Clinic (n.d.) Broken heart syndrome, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/broken-heart-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20354617, accessed 29 June 2021. 

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A437/1, Correspondence files, class 6 (aliens registration), 01 Jan 1946 - 31 Dec 1950; 1948/6/469, Record of issues of Registration Certificates in the ACT. 

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; 784, PABRANTS Biruta DOB 22 August 1922. 

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A12508, Personal Statement and Declaration by alien passengers entering Australia (Forms A42), 01 Jan 1937 - 31 Dec 1948; 35/358, PABRANTS Biruta born 22 August 1922; nationality Latvian; travelled per GENERAL HEINTZELMAN arriving in Fremantle on 29 November 1947. 

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947 - 1956; 201, Paabo, Albert to Palczewskyj, Borys. 

New South Wales Government 24 Jun 1966 'In the matter of the estates of the undermentioned deceased' (Ruth Welta Veenendaal), Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales, p 2593, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article220019032, accessed 14 Jul 2021. 

‘Ruth Welta Veenendaal’ (1965) Death certificate of Ruth Welta Veenendaal (also known as Ruth Finlay), 18 September 1965, (Registration no. 5092/1965) (certified copy), NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages, https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search?30. 

Sun News-Pictorial (9 December 1947) ‘Smiles Welcome Them To New Homeland’, Melbourne, in the Reinhold-Valter Põder collection, Estonian Archives in Australia, Sydney. 

Tündern-Smith, A (2013a) Koobakene, Salme (1919 - 1998), The Australian Women’s Register, http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4860b.htm, accessed 16 July 2021. 

Tündern-Smith, A (2013b) Liepa, Zenta (1927 - 1987), The Australian Women’s Register, http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4910b.htm, accessed 15 July 2021. 

Tündern-Smith, A (2020) First Baltic migrants for Canberra, 1947, Canberra Historical Journal, pp 34-43.

Helgi Nirk (1919-2005): Tomato breeder

Updated 23 May 2023.

 

ABC television’s Gardening Australia featured a packet of Burnley Bounty tomato seeds in its opening sequence until the end of its 2018 season. Renaissance Herbs still sells the Burnley Bounty in its salad seedling range. The Little Vegie Patch Co sells seeds of Burnley Surecrop tomatoes. Australian Seed sells Burnley Gem. This is the story of their breeder. 

Renaissance Herbs credit Helgi Nirk with
the breeding of Burnley Bounty on their Website.  Excellent!

Helgi Nirk had arrived in Australia in November 1947 with the first party of refugees from Europe after World War II. She was born a year after the end of the First World War, on 15 December 1919, in Sangaste, in the southern Estonian province of Valgamaa. 

Her father had been a schoolteacher at the local school. Then he had gone to the Caucasus, where oil had been discovered, to work as a bookkeeper. He had come back a wealthy man. 

He used his money to improve the farm near Sangaste which he had inherited from his father. He developed it into a model mixed farm. University and high school students used to visit the farm for classes on its operations.

Helgi’s father had died when she was only ten years old. He had been aged 56 when she was born, having followed an Estonian pattern of the man making his career and money before settling down with a wife.  Helgi's mother died seven years later, having been old for a first-time mother, 39, when Helgi was born.

Helgi disagreed with her uncles on how she should manage her inheritance. They asked a court to give her full responsibility for her own affairs. The court granted this right when Helgi was only 18. As in Australia, 21 was then the normal age of legal majority in Estonia. Hers would have been a rare case. It is an early demonstration of her strength of character. 

Helgi Nirk in 1959

Elderly tenants helped her by feeding the farm animals, cows and pigs. When she was 20, the Soviet Union invaded independent Estonia. She thought that her future would be that of an employee of a state farm, a prospect which did not appeal. She decided to alter that future by enrolling in agricultural science at Estonia’s centuries-old University of Tartu. She was able to recruit share-farmers to continue working the land for her. 

Tartu University's main building and surrounds, much as they would have looked
when Helgi Nirk studied there in the early 1940s.
Photo by Kaupo Kalda from EstonianWorld.com

She should not have been able to enrol at the University as the daughter of a kulak, a landowner from a peasant background. The helpful local authorities gave her an identity card which described her truthfully as a child from the country without parents. In Russia, the kulaks had opposed the collectivisation of land. Stalin had ordered their liquidation in 1929. In the countries occupied by the Soviet Army during World War II, the practice was to round up kulaks and their families for train trips in cattle wagons to the extremes of Siberia. 

Helgi was one of the girls who swapped their rooms with boys who thought that they were in danger. If they did that, the Soviet troops would see at once that the young men they had come to arrest were somewhere else. 

One year later, international allegiances changed when the Germans pushed through the Baltic States to lay siege to Stalingrad. Estonia was occupied by the Germans for three years. During this time, Helgi completed her agricultural science studies and was awaiting the grant of her degree. The citizens of Stalingrad resisted their siege, the Soviet Union regrouped and rearmed, and once more it invaded the Baltic States. 

Helgi left Estonia in September 1944 with the last of the German troops. She was riding under a tarpaulin in the back of a truck, on top of munitions. She knew what was in the truck, but had made the decision that being blown up with the German truck was a better end than imprisonment or exile in Siberia. 

Helgi and a friend left the convoy in Lithuania and found a train travelling towards Germany. There was no passenger carriage for them, only a wagon without sides, little more than an open platform on wheels. The train was travelling away from the Soviet Army. That was all that mattered. 

The train stopped in Danzig, then a Prussian port city in turmoil. Nobody they asked knew what was going on. 

Central Danzig in 1945, after destruction by bombs and artillery fire;
Unknown photographer, sourced through Wikipedia

All who reached Danzig on that train were told that, before they could move on, they had to dig anti-tank trenches to halt the Soviet Army. Helgi’s friend was willing to do as ordered, but Helgi had another idea. 

The other travellers were led behind a wire fence. Helgi and her friend lay on their stomachs on the wagon which had brought them to Danzig. When darkness fell, they grabbed their small suitcases and walked carefully around the railway station to its western entrance. This was the entrance nearest to their destination, so they no longer looked as if they were Baltic refugees. 

They demanded and received two train tickets for the far west of Germany, Mannheim on Rhine. They got as far as Berlin, which they found also to be in turmoil. There were masses of people among the ruins of bombed buildings. Helgi went looking for a train to the west, while her friend guarded their luggage. 

Berlin in ruins, August 1947:  photograph from George Kiddle,
one of the three-man team which selected First Transport passengers

A German in a decorated uniform, evidently an important officer, saw that she was distressed. He accompanied her back to the travellers’ aid office where her inquiries had already been rebuffed. Seeing the officer, the women behind the counter were now ready to assist. 

He discovered that Helgi and her friend had been three weeks on the road. He took them to the apartment of a female friend where, for the first time in nearly one month, they could wash and rest on beds. They were able to stay in Berlin for one week, which made it easy to find the station from which trains left to the west. 

Once they reached the west of Germany, Helgi and her friend were able to stop their flight. Helgi got work picking vegetables for the market on a small farm at Hockenheim. One day she found herself under Allied bombing attack. She threw herself to the ground at the sound of the approaching plane. As bombs hit the ground, she was covered with soil. When she scrabbled out from her covering of earth, she found that the cart nearby had been destroyed. The horse pulling the cart had been killed. Helgi was deaf for nearly one week. 

In Mannheim, she nearly found herself under arrest. Everyone was permitted to change 500 Occupation Deutschmarks into real Deutschmarks in one transaction, but no more. She had been changing her money in various towns across Germany, but she grew tired of the 500 Occupation DM limit. She asked a bank in Mannheim if she could change a few thousand in one transaction. “Please wait here”, she was told. She waited and waited, a friend for company. 

Suddenly she was confronted by a group of police and bank officials. “Where did you get this money? Who did you rob?” The money actually had come from the private sale of extra bacon and butter from her Estonian farm during the German occupation. That could be considered to be trading on the black market, so she told her interrogators that it came from the sale of her farm. This satisfied them. Fortunately, they did not know that selling anything in Estonia under the German occupation was also illegal. 

Under the American occupation, there was another incident when she almost lost her life. Word went out among the local refugees that an animal had been butchered and the meat was available for free. Helgi did not realise that the free meat offer was for refugees only. 

She told a German who had been kind to her about the offer. When a drunken American Army officer realised that there was a German in the butcher’s shop and Helgi had invited him there, he raised his pistol to shoot her. Another American pushed his hand so that the pistol fired out of harm’s way. 

While she was in a camp for displaced persons, she noted the UNRRA enthusiasm for DDT. Not only did they insist on dousing the inmates with liberal quantities to control insect infestations, they also tried to feed them spoonfuls. 

From Hockenheim, Helgi moved to Heidelberg, where she worked for the American Red Cross Club in a former museum. Her task was to organise concerts for the Americans. This was not taxing work. It supplied her with free food and accommodation. Downstairs the Americans had access to free coffee and doughnuts. Helgi had enough free doughnuts to last her the rest of her days. 

She moved to Stuttgart, where she studied genetics at the Hohenheim University, which has the oldest agricultural science faculty in the world. After completing this course, she was about to start on chemistry when she heard that the Australians wanted to send a ship of displaced persons to Australia. She got herself on the interview list by contacting a cousin who was working with UNRRA. 

This 1845 lithograph by JH Renz shows the main building of the
University of Hohenheim as it still is today,
so certainly as it was when Helgi studied there

A Canadian team had already interviewed her and declared her to be a suitable migrant, but Canada had not begun moving those they had selected. In comparison to the Canadians, the Australians had easy tests. Helgi did her best to make sure that she was on that first ship, because she was always hungry. 

Her trip on the General Stuart Heintzelman was very good, indeed lovely. She passed the time playing chess, reading and sunbaking. Her recollection of Fremantle and Perth is that they were beautiful and clean. Like some of the other Estonian women, she found the Kanimbla filthy. She remembers cockroaches in the soup on board this Australian Navy vessel. 

In Bonegilla she shared a room with another Estonian, Helvi Liiver. When they reached their allocated room, they found it smelly, so they put down their suitcases and started to clean with scrubbing brushes and sandsoap. They found that the seats had been smeared with fat and there were rat droppings as well. 

Helmi Liiver, left, Helgi Nirk, centre, and an unidentified woman arrive
at the Bongeilla railway stop on 8 December 1947
(from the Helgi Nirk collection, Estonian Archives in Australia)

Having cleaned the room to the best of their ability, the two young women went to have a shower. A large animal perching on a wooden beam in the shower facilities startled them. Despite its sharp claws, it turned out to be a relatively tame camp possum. 

The first job to which Helgi was sent was at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne, to train as a nursing sister. After the privations of the War and post-War Germany, the displaced trainee nurses found that they were still expected to live in relative poverty. They had only £1/3/3 left after payments for their board and lodging were deducted. 

Helgi's own battered, yellowed copy of a newspaper report
on the start of her nursing career,
from the Melbourne Herald, 5 January 1948, page 5

In order to make some more money, Helgi actively looked for extra work, so that she could leave the hospital. She met an Estonian who had come to Australia before the Second World War, who was growing tuberoses for sale in his garden. Helgi and a friend turned up to help him, despite his reluctance. After seeing how they worked, he took them on as paid assistants. 

At the end of June 1952, Helgi started work with the Victorian Department of Agriculture as a laboratory assistant on even lower wages than before, but at least she was working in agriculture. For the next ten years, she had a second job as often as she could find one - gardening, cleaning, making buttonholes for children’s clothes. 

On one occasion, she found out that a two-storey building near where she was staying in Chapel Street, Prahran, needed painting. The owner could not find a tradesman to do the job, such was the shortage of building workers in the first years after the War. 

Helgi took on the task, single-handedly. The owner was able to arrange for scaffolding to be built. He moved it himself whenever Helgi had finished painting a section of the building. 

By 1955, less than eight years after she arrived in Australia, Helgi was able to buy a property in the Dandenong Ranges. The house had not been lived in for a decade or so. The land was overrun with tough plants like blackberries and ivy, and a tall privet hedge on the high side of the hill, along the road, cast its shade over the front garden. Again, mostly single-handedly, Helgi poisoned and removed the unwanted plants. 

She turned the soil into the production of flowering plants. The house was cleaned up so that Helgi could move there in 1956. She started to collect plants for her property. 

Helgi’s work focus became tomatoes for the commercial growers of Victoria. She developed two varieties, K7 and the very fleshy 7002, which became so popular with the growers trialling them that they never had the chance to be named properly before commercial release. 

Named varieties for which Helgi was responsible included not only Burnley Bounty, Burnley Surecrop and Burnley Gem but also Burnley Fortune, Burnley Metro, and Arcadia. 

The prestigious scientific journal Nature, in its issue of 5 December 1959, carried an article by Helgi on how to obtain fertile hybrids from two tomato species which did not cross-fertilise naturally. Her success was due to the use of both stock and graft materials which were just beyond the dicotyledon stage of development, when only the first two leaves show above the ground. 

The aim of the experiments was to produce commercial tomato varieties which had the disease resistance of a Peruvian parent as well as the yield and fruit quality of a conventional parent. The cell materials from the stock tended to merge with the materials from the scion because of the very early stage of development at which the grafting has been performed. 

When the plants grew older, it was possible to use their pollen for normal cross-fertilisation and the resulting plants had some of the characteristics of each parent. Examination under the microscope showed that the cells of the hybrid plants had chromosomes from both parents. 

The Nature article created interest around the world. Other plant breeders had success with the technique. For example, jute hybrids in India were obtained from two species which had not interbred previously. 

International visitors now made a point of meeting with Helgi. One delegation from the Soviet Union came specifically to study Helgi’s tomato breeding. When she took the Armenian geneticist and his interpreter to field trials, the geneticist assured her of a good job if she returned to the Soviet Union. Helgi reminded him that this offer was a risk too huge for her to take. 

Helgi also received offers of employment as a tomato breeder in Spain and California. She was already so happy on her property in the Dandenongs that she did not want to leave. It was her own piece of paradise. 

Despite the encouragement of the supervisor who told her that her work was unique and should be recorded for other researchers in Nature, Helgi found that her employer could not deal with her lack of formal qualifications. She lodged applications and appeals, but she received neither promotions nor pay increases beyond those awarded to compensate for the slowly rising cost of living. 

This passport enabled Helgi to go on a tour of tomato breeding institutions
during July-August 1972 on behalf of the Victorian Department of Agriculture
from the Helgi Nirk collection, Estonian Archives in Australia

Helgi did more research which may well have been as original as her work on the tomato hybrids, but she kept it to herself. English was a language in which she had been working for only ten years. Writing the Nature article had been a major effort. She did not feel the need to repeat the effort because she knew that she already had international recognition for her work. 

As the lack of recognition from those for whom she worked was upsetting, putting in the effort to write more articles for scientific journals would only have stirred up more enmity, she thought. 

The business which had developed around her house, Helgi’s Nursery, became a refuge. She resigned from the Department of Agriculture on the day that she became eligible to access her superannuation, her sixtieth birthday. 

Helgi had experienced other, more overt discrimination when she first lived in Melbourne. On one occasion, she and her friend were told by the operator to speak English on phone. “Why?” responded Helgi. “This is not wartime.” The operator cut them off. 

On a Melbourne tram, a fellow passenger told her and her friend to “speak Australian”. Helgi responded that she had not learnt an Aboriginal language yet. The other passengers were on the side of the Estonians. There was so much laughter that the man left the tram at the next stop. 

Estonia did not find its freedom while Helgi was still fit to travel, so she never returned. She undertook many trips in Europe, North America and Asia, visiting relatives, friends and fellow researchers. 

Helgi closed the nursery to customers in the mid-1990s. At its peak, she had hundreds of different plants growing on the site. Fuchsias, foxgloves, feverfew, honesty and hydrangeas, rhododendrons, azaleas and alstromerias flowered in profusion, each to its own season.  

When I met Helgi there, late in her life, she had to be very particular about what she could and could not eat. She thought that her digestive problems might have been caused by the liberal use of DDT in the German camp. Given what we know about DDT, including it causing cancer in humans if the doses are high enough, she might have had a case. 

She died in her former nursery, surrounded by the beautiful gardens of her own creation, on 29 August 2005. 

Then Helgi returned to Estonia at long last. Her ashes were buried beside her parents in the Sangaste cemetery. 

Sangaste Cemetery gate and boundary wall
Photograph by Ivar Leidus, from Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

On 27 October 2006, the University of Tartu compensated for Helgi for her lack of formal qualifications by appointing her a Honorary Member.  The University's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology says, "It is a great honor for our institute that two persons, who have significantly contributed to the achievement of the statutory goal of the University of Tartu, among other things with significant financial support, have been appointed honorary members of the University of Tartu."

 

I would have thought that Helgi's undergraduate education at that University plus her career as a plant breeder should have been enough to earn her that honour.  However, it is likely that a donation of 3 million Estonian kroons, worth more than $300,000 in Australian currency and probably from her estate, to the Institute would have helped too.

I'm sure the Helgi would have been very pleased by the honour from her alma mater.

I thank Helgi Nirk for sharing her life story.  Her papers are held in the Sydney-based Estonian Archives in Australia.

REFERENCES

Australian Seed, 'Tomato Burnley Gem, Lycopersicon esculentum', https://www.australianseed.com/shop/item/tomato-burnley-gem/, accessed 5 July 2021. 

'Balt nurses start work', The Herald, Melbourne, 5 January 1948, p 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243852526, accessed 6 July 2021.

Estonian World, 3 September 2020, 'The University of Tartu among the 300 best universities in the world', https://estonianworld.com/knowledge/the-university-of-tartu-among-the-300-best-universities-in-the-world/, accessed 6 July 2021.

Geni.com, 'Helgi Nirk', https://www.geni.com/people/Helgi-Nirk/6000000011967155258?through=6000000005439112272, accessed 6 July 2021.

Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Tartu, 'Honorary Doctors, Professors and Associated Professors', https://tymri.ut.ee/en/content/honorary-doctors-professors-and-associated-professors, accessed 23 May 2023.

Nirk, Helgi, 1959, 'Interspecific hybrids of Lycopersicum', Nature 184 pp 1819-20.

Nirk, Helgi, 1972, 'Study tour of tomato breeding institutions', Melbourne, Victoria, Department of Agriculture.

Renaissance Herbs, 'Tomato Burnley Bounty', https://renaissanceherbs.com.au/product/tomato-burnley-bounty/, accessed 5 July 2021. 

The Little Vegie Patch Co 'Tomato, Burnley Surecrop Heirloom Seeds', https://littleveggiepatchco.com.au/collections/tomato-seeds/products/burnley-surecrop-heirloom-seeds-1-1?variant=239173155, accessed 6 July 2021

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Edvins Baulis (1916-95): Builder of houses and communities

Updated 1 March 2024.

Migrants can contribute to their new nations in many ways.  Edvins Baulis' speciality was the welfare of his fellow migrants and the community in general.  This made for a better Australia for all where he lived. 

Edvins in his early 60s

Photograph courtesy Erik Baulis

The Good Neighbour Councils (GNCs) started in 1949 and emerged as an Australian-wide movement in 1950, from a Citizenship Convention sponsored by the Commonwealth Government.  They united community groups and individual volunteers in assisting new arrivals to assimilate, to become like other Australians, the goal of settlement policy in those days.

As the work the GNCs was doing was valued by the Commonwealth Government, it supported them with funding.

In the 1960s, Australians and their governments started to think in terms of 'integration' rather than 'assimilation'.  This 'melting pot' approach aimed for an amalgam of the old and new, a new society rather than an expectation that only the migrants would change to fit into the old society (Lewins 2001).  It was in this environment that the Fraser Government decided to establish a Review of Post-arrival Programs and Services for Migrants in August 1977.

Known as the Galbally Review, its 1978 report acknowledged the good work the GNCs had done but found that their funding was now being used primarily for internal operations, such as liaison with other organisations and running conferences and seminars.  The money was not going towards direct services to migrants.

The Galbally Review advised that the money supporting the GNCs should be spent instead with ethnic organisations which were able to provide direct services to their own communities.  A two-year phase out of GNC funding was recommended (Galbally et al. 1978).  Around Australia, the GNCs folded, with only two exceptions:  one in Glenorchy and that in Launceston, led by Edvins Baulis.  As of 2021, only the Launceston Branch still operates (Winter 2006; Multicultural Council of Tasmania [2020]; E Baulis 2021) .

Known in Australia as Ted, Edvins led the Launceston GNC from that fateful year of 1978 until 1995, two months before he died.  As well, he was State President of the GNC during the periods 1982-85, 1987-90 and 1992-95.  In 1990, the GNC awarded him life membership (Anon n.d.; Winter 1993).

In a eulogy for Ted before Tasmania's Legislative Council, Independent Member for Launceston, Don Wing, said, 'Withdrawal of Federal funding ... following the Galbally Report caused him great anxiety and concern.  Good Neighbour Councils were abolished throughout Australia but survived in Tasmania and not only survived but actually flourished in the State mainly due to the commitment, leadership and persistence of Mr Baulis' (Wing 1995).

Ted's wife, Jean, was a Launceston local working in a bank, with several months experience of a refugee camp in Germany as a Girl Guide volunteer.  She kept up her interest in the refugees on her return to Launceston, enabling her to meet her husband-to-be at one of the Thursday evening meetings of the Launceston GNC he attended.

They married in October 1953 and had three sons.  After his death, she had the strength to finish up the remaining two months of his GNC presidency term (Examiner 1953; J. Baulis 2009).

Ted found the goodwill and energy to help start the Launceston Migrant Resource Centre while GNC president.  In general, Migrant Resource Centres around Australia now fulfil the roles previously carried out by the GNCs, but are led and resourced by post-WWII migrants from non-English-speaking nations and their descendents rather than by the Australian-born with generations of ancestry here.

Eulogies from Don Wing and the then Tasmanian Minister for Multicultural and Ethnic Affaris, Frank Madill, an undated curriculum vitae, and the recollections of his sons, particularly Erik, list Ted's many other community activities.

He was President of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia in northern Tasmania and President of the Latvian Community of Tasmania for ten years.

He organised an exhibition of Latvian arts and crafts to mark the 25th anniversary of the GNC in Tasmania.  It ran for two weeks in the Northern Regional Library, Launceston, in 1975.  He organised a similar exhibition for the State Library, Hobart, in September 1975.  During 1979, he was Vice-President of the Latvian Federation of Australia and New Zealand.

The Launceston branch of the GNC, under Ted's leadership, staged an International Concert at Launceston's Albert Hall on 4 October 1980.  It featured 70 dancers and singers from around the world, including the Wielangta Aboriginal Dance Group.  It attracted an attendance of four hundred.  Weeks later, on 21 November, he co-ordinated the mass choirs for Albert Hall's official opening by the State Governor.

Ted Baulis at the Latvian Arts Festival, Launceston, 1984

Courtesy Erik Baulis

He chaired the organising committee for the 34th Australian Latvian Arts Festival in Launceston in 1984, bringing many visitors to the region.  The week-long festival included singing and dancing performances as well as exhibitions of paintings by Latvian artists and traditional arts and crafts.  In 1990, the Latvian Community of Tasmania awarded him life membership.

Latvians parade in Launceston during the 1984 Latvian Cultural Festival:

Ted Baulis is on the right of the front row

Photograph courtesy Ervins Miezitis, from Latvians on Line Website

Part of a Hobart exhibition on multiculturalism in Hobart, early 1980s

Ted is the 'prominent migrant settler' from Latvia, second from left

Photograph courtesy of Jean Baulis

In 1987, he helped establish a weekly drop-in centre for migrants in Launceston.  It is still operated by the GNC in the Greek Community Hall and continues to bring together around 40 migrants every Friday morning.  The sessions conclude with a rousing rendition of We are Friends, which Ted composed for the Branch many years previously.

He was a member of the Launceston Male Choir for over twenty years and its President for 1975-78.  In 1988, Launceston's celebrations for Australia's Bicentennial included a performance by the Choir in the city's packed Albert Hall.  That year, it also sang in front of 10,000 at a Colonial Concert in the Royal Park, and at the Launceston Velodrome as part of the Anzac Day commemorations.

A quartet of singers from the Choir, the Tassietones, consisted of Ted, Robin Gregory, Alan Broughton and Merv Barnes, with Aileen Smith on piano.

Ted is on the far right of the back row

Courtesy Erik Baulis

He was on the executive committee of the St Giles Society, providing disability support for Tasmanians, during 1974-77 and worked for the Society for many more years.

He was a member of the State Government's Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs and the Commonwealth's State Council of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) after being a member of the ABC's Program Advisory Committee for Northern Tasmania in the early 1980s.  He was a member of the Royal Commonwealth Society for many years and a councillor for 1976-78.  He was State President of St Paul's Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tasmania for 15 years, between 1974 and 1988.

In the second half of 1992, the Australian Government concluded a major cross-portfolio Evaluation of its Access and Equity Strategy's impact on all of its departments and agencies (OMA 1992).  Ted's contribution to this was acknowledged by a letter of thanks from the Government (E Baulis 2021).

After testing by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, he was found fit to be an interpreter for the Latvian language.

He became the co-ordinator of a Multicultural Insight class at the Adult Education Institute's School for Seniors in Launceston.  He was a member of Launceston's Tasmania Day Committee.

Ted was President of the Master Builders' Association of Northern Tasmania for more than seven years and, in 1990, won the Master Builders' Ern Davey Award in recognition of his outstanding service and contribution to the building industry in Tasmania.

Ted (with two friends) building his first house in Bridgewater, 20 Km north of Hobart

Courtesy Erik Baulis

He instigated and organised the Multicultural Fountain in Launceston's Civic Square, to commemorate the contributions of migrants to Tasmania (Madill 1995).  It opened on 21 March 1992, preceded by many hurdles and some prolonged delays.  As such, it was a labour of love for Ted.  The fountain was created by a local Czech-born artist, Mirek Marik.  It has been relocated to parkland on the southeast side of the confluence of the Tamar and North Esk rivers (R Baulis 2021).

Launceston's Multicultural Fountain, relocated

Courtesy Ralph Baulis

Multicultural Fountain plaque

Photographer:  Ann Tündern-Smith

In addition to all of this community service, Ted and Jean also volunteered to help the Red Cross Meals on Wheels program.

Jean and Ted

It is not surprising that Queen Elizabeth made Ted a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in June 1979 (Wing 1995).

Jean and Ted

Courtesy Erik Baulis

According to the papers which record his selection for migration to Australia, Edvins was born in Piltene, in Kurzeme, Latvia, on 1 September 1916 (NAA: A11772, 33).  The province is known as Courland in English.  At the time of his birth, the area was caught up in widespread turmoil due to World War I.  His family lived on a smal farm and endured meagre supplies, poor medical care and bitterly cold winters.  His eldest brother died of tuberculosis in the year he was born.  His father died of meningitis about 1919 (E Baulis 2021).

The Baulis family home in Piltene, Kurzeme, Latvia

Courtesy Erik Baulis

The selection papers for Australia say that Edvins had completed six years of primary school and two years of secondary school.  In 1938-39, he completed 15 months of compulsory military service in Latvia.  He had done four years of farming work also and worked for three years as an car mechanic.  Jean advised, when we talked in 2009, that he also had studied forestry for two years in Latvia.

After fleeing to Gotenhafen in German-occupied Poland in October 1944, he travelled overland by foot through what is now northern Poland and Germany before meeting up with British and American troops.  The trek was accompanied by extreme hunger, injury, exhaustion and danger, as it was for all Baltic refugees fleeing by land ahead of the Soviet military's advance westward.

Eventually he reached Oldenburg, between Hamburg and the Dutch border, staying at the Ohmstede Displaced Persons Camp.  This catered for around 5000 refugees.  Conditions were far from ideal, with significant food and clothing restrictions in place for much of his time there.  He recalled for his children that tailors in the Camp's workshops would make shirts and coats from old sheets and blankets.  The selection papers say that he had been a 'magazine chief' for two years, presumably in the Ohmstede Camp.

When the General Stuart Heintzelman reached Australia in late November 1947, Edvins had only a small suitcase and an English-Latvian dictionary.  His suitcase was built from the wreckage of a plane that had crashed on the outskirts of Oldenburg, while his shoes had cardboard soles.  He used to say, 'whenever it rained, I would grow half an inch taller because the cardboard soles would absorb all the water' (E Baulis 2021).

Perhaps it was Edvins' forestry studies which led to his first job in Australia.  The newly established Commonwealth Employment Service, operating at the Bonegilla camp, sent him to work at Veneer & Plywood Pty Ltd, a company headquartered in Balmain, Sydney, but operating in the rural NSW town of Wauchope (NAA: A2571/1, 14).  He moved to Tasmania, working first in paper mills in the southern town of Boyer.  Then he relocated to the States's north, working initially for Comalco at Bell Bay.  He moved to the construction site of a Hydro-Electric Commission power station in the Launceston suburb of Trevallyn in May 1953, staying there until his marriage to Jean in October 1954 (Wing 1995; Madill 1995).

In 1954 to 1955, he worked on his own home for his his new family in Trevallyn.  He and Jean were helped by family and friends, while he took six months of work to concentrate on the home.  Then he started out on his own as a builder,  building more than 70 houses in northern Tasmania.  He sold the last one in March 1978 (E Baulis 2021).

He loved the outdoors, especially along the coast of his island home.  He built holiday cabins for the family at Bridport and Bicheno.  He also loved Tasmania's highlands, favouring the Great Lake in its Central Plateau and, closer to Launceston, Cradle Mountain National Park.

It was while building that he would have sawn sheets of asbestos.  Jean believed that this always was outdoors, but Ted still developed the mesothelioma which killed this energetic and community-minded man at age 78 in 1995 (J Baulis 2009).

The Launceston City Council approved the street name, Baulis Court, in 1998 in memory of Ted Baulis and his service to the city.  It's in the suburb of Youngtown, to the southeast of South Launceston.

Courtesy Erik Baulis

Ted and Jean's three sons have made their mark on Australia too, as an architect, a senior Telstra technician and a doctor in general practice.  Their grandchildren continue the contribution.

This life-story could not have been put together without help from Ted's widow, Jean (d. 2014) and, more recently, their sons, especially Erik and Ralph, with support from Harald.  I thank them all for sharing.

References

Baulis E (21 April 2021) Personal communication.

Baulis J (2009) Personal communication.

Baulis R (4 April 2021) Personal communication.

Examiner (Launceston, Tas) (2 November 1953) 'Bride Chose White Gown And Roses', p 10, http://nla.news-article61108298, accessed on 04 April 2021.

Galbally, F, Nick Polites, Carlo Stransky and Francesca Merenda 1978 Migrant Services and Programs: Report of the Review of Post-arrival Programs and Services for Migrants, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, pp 73-79.

Lewins F 'Assimilation and Integration', in Jupp J 2001 The Australian People: an encyclopaedia of the nation, its people and their origins, 2nd edn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 752-753.

Madill F (19 June 1995) Tasmanian Government Media Release from Minister for Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs.

Multicultural Council of Tasmania [2020] Our Members, 2020-2021: Member Organisations, https://www.mcot.org.au/our_members, accessed 4 April 2021.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration; A2571/1, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; 14, BATALEC-BAUZON.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration; A11772, Migrant Selection Documents for Displaced Persons who travelled to Australia per General Stuart Heintzelman departing Bremerhaven 30 October 1947, 1947-1947; 33, BAULIS Edvins DOB 1 September 1916.  

OMA (Office of Multicultural Affairs), Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 1992 Access and Equity: Evaluation Summary, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au, accessed on 4 June 2021.

Wing D (21 June 1995) 'Death of Edvins Baulis', Hansard, Legislative Council of Tasmania.

Winter G 2006 'Good Neighbour Council' in The Companion to Tasmanian History, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/G/Good%20Neighbour%20Council.htm, accessed 4 April 2021.

Winter G 1993 A History of the Good Neighbour Council of Tasmania, 1949-1992, Good Neighbour Council of Tasmania, Hobart.