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| This is the International Friendship Wall set in a little park under one of our government buildings- I couldn't count all the commemorative stones here. In the front is an Aboriginal Artwork entitled "Reaching Out" It symbolises the roots and branches of migration spreading out and how the one sky unites us all | |
The Early C20th
JEWISH MIGRATION
Jewish people had been arriving in Australia since convict times with 800 of them being transported here between 1788 and 1868. One Judah Solomon who was transported to Tasmania served his time and became a successful businessman. By 1845 he had already built a synagogue in Hobart. Others arrived of their own volition and settled mostly around cities such as Melbourne and Sydney. Some also joined the Gold Rush, often setting up stores to supply miners.
Towards the end of the century, a combination of widespread poverty in Europe, persecution and progroms in places such as Russia and Poland, prompted others to come so that by the end of the C19th there were approximately 6,000 Jews in Australia.
In 1917, the Russian Revolution triggered a wave of Russian immigrants, many of them wealthy, intellectual and or aristocratic and which also included many Jewish people, who proceeded to influence the cultural life of Australia, bringing as they did things like ballet and opera.
Sidney Myer – then Simcha Myer Baveski, was one of those and his name still graces major department stores in our capital cities. A violinist and a music lover, he put on free concerts by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and had the Myer Music Bowl built in Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens. He was also the man behind the Victorian Arts Centre.
During the Great Depression he and his staff took a pay cut so that more people could be employed and he contributed £22,000 (around $AUD 45,000) towards relief work for the same purpose. At Christmas he gave a dinner for 1000 people in the Exhibition Building with a gift for every child. The philanthropic foundation he created also funded part of the University of Melbourne.
More Jews continued to trickle in between the wars, but especially as dark clouds gathered over Germany. Some 7,000 Jewish people fleeing Nazi Germany were settled in Australia between 1933 and 1939. They gave a huge boost to the clothing trade with popular brands emerging at this time. In Melbourne ‘the rag trade’ as it was called, largely centred on Flinders Lane with national brands such as Rockmans, started by Polish Jews, making their appearance. Others still around today include Portmans and Sportscraft which followed soon after the war.
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| From a plaque at the International Wall of Friendship |
The First World War not only wrought devastation in Europe. It cost 60,000 Australians their lives. With a population of less than 5 million at the time, it was Australia’s “costliest war in terms of deaths and casualties.” This was particularly devastating in sparsely populated rural areas, which lost many of their young and fittest men. A drive around any regional town will reveal a significant war memorial and a long list of names.
In recognition of their service and to fill great gaps in agricultural production, 23,000 returned soldiers were granted small plots of land to farm – mostly around 5 -10 acres in most states. In Queensland they centred on sugar production and pineapples. In Tasmania and especially King Island, they were mostly intended for dairying, while those around the Murray River were for fruit production, particularly grapes and citrus.
Unfortunately, most such farms did not survive. They were either too small to be commercially viable, many returned soldiers were either injured or just not cut out for farming and fire or drought finished off many of the rest. The final blow came in Great Depression when agricultural prices fell too low to keep small farmers afloat and most were absorbed into larger farms, though the rural manpower shortage remained.
In the 1920 -30s Southern Europeans, particularly Greeks and Italians were recruited to fill the gaps. Finding the climate not dissimilar around the Riverina, many settled in this area, introducing new crops such as olives, zucchini, pomegranates, figs and artichokes and using traditional farming techniques they had used at ‘home.’ Newly established Irrigation schemes helped them to thrive. Other Italians settled around Orange and Bathurst in New South Wales.
Not all the Italians lived in the country. One Natale Italiano who had arrived from Calabria in 1922, applied his cheese making skills and established the Perfect Cheese Company in North Melbourne.
Another, Claudio Alcorso, who arrived in the 1930s, first established a textile printing business in Sydney and employed top artists for his design. He believed in art not being a separate thing but a part of daily life. In the 1950s he moved to Tasmania in the 1950s and set up a textile mill there, again collaborating with local artists. Being fond of music as well, he helped to establish the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and supported other artistic endeavours. Later in life he became an ardent environmentalist, not only establishing the Alcorso Arts and Nature fund, but also by joining in the protests the building of Franklin Dam in the 1980s, which would have meant the end of Tasmania’s last wild river.
Facing political instability and poor harvests in their home countries, a further 360,000 Italians and 160,000 Greeks arrived in Australia after World War II. This time many of them remained in the city and by the 1950’s Melbourne had become the largest Greek city outside Athens.
Many were employed in the burgeoning car industry – Ford had established a large manufacturing plant at Geelong in 1925 but to keep up with demand it had opened a second plant in Broadmeadows, a Melbourne suburb, in 1959. Rival General Motors, had opened its Fisherman’s Bed plant in the heart of Melbourne in 1936, but began producing the all – Australian Holden there in 1956. However, as demand increased it too built a supplementary plant in the outer suburbs at Dandenong in 1956.
Migrants also worked in construction or in public utilities such as the railways and tramways or started small businesses. By the time we moved to Melbourne in the late 1950s, we were could only stare in amazement at the great variety of fruit and vegetables in the Queen Victoria Market and at the enormous rounds of cheese, pasta and ropes of garlic in the grocery shops.
Our neighbourhood in Fitzroy where our parents had rented two rooms, was almost exclusively Italian. In Lygon Street, near the university there were spaghetti bars and coffee shops and in Brunswick Street there was the clatter of fussball being played coming from small neon -lit bars. Down in Smith Street, the Aquila shoe factory made finely crafted shoes and men’s tailoring got a boost with bespoke tailoring such as that provided by American Tailors which was also run by Italians.
Although sometimes melancholy strains of “Arrivederci Roma” could be heard emanating from balconies or terraces – many men had come without their families and Australia preferred young single men, the Italians particularly, brought with them a certain exuberance and passion which had been largely absent from Australia since the heady days of the Irish pubs.
Post World War II Immigration
“POPULATE OR PERISH”
The bombing of Darwin on the 19th of February 1945, was a huge wake – up call for Australia. Realising how defenceless Australia was against invasion, especially while Britian was busy fighting its own wars, the government decided that it needed a lot more people. Since 1945, 7.5 million people have migrated to Australia.
There was no shortage of people in Europe waiting in refugee camps, devastated cities or impoverished rural communities who wanted to leave, but to maintain its British identity, the government vowed to bring in others only at a ratio of I to 10 people. To enable this to occur it created the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme (1945) jointly with the UK so that would-be migrants only had to pay £ 10 or about $AU20.
The prospect of endless sunshine, an end to post war austerity and the possibility of new opportunities, brought around 1 million British people to Australia between 1947 and 1981. British immigrants were immediately given the right to vote and citizenship could follow within a year, while other Europeans had to wait at least five years to become citizens and then become eligible to vote. Those from non – European countries had to wait 15 years.
IMMIGRATION FROM THE BALTIC STATES
To make mass immigration by others acceptable to Australians, they began with fair immigrants from the BalticStates - Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians
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| From the International Wall of Friendship |
One member of this group, Olegas Truchanas was born in Latvia in 1923 and came to Tasmania in 1948. He, like Gustav Weindorfer, also appreciated the Tasmanian wilderness. His beautiful photography created widespread awareness and inspired later conservation efforts, even though Lake Pedder which he had fought for was eventually flooded.
His protégé, photographer, Peter Dombroskis who was born in
Germany of Latvian parents came to Australia with them in 1950, had far greater success when it came to protecting
Tasmania’s last wild rivers in the
1980s. Other famous names from this era include Olympic swimming legends, Ilsa and John Konrads
and mining engineer, Arvi Parbo who was later knighted for his services to the mining industry.
Between 1947 and 1952 a further 170,000 displaced people (DPs)from Eastern Europe – Yugoslavs, Hungarians, Poles, Czechoslovakians sponsored by the International Refugee Council between 1945 and 1954 had been selected and brought to
Australia. They had to work for the government for two years in exchange for
food, accommodation and the minimum wage. After that, they were free to live
anywhere or to return home.
Only now receiving attention, are the 100,000 or so unaccompanied child migrants, including many from the UK. Some were told that their parents were dead or did not want them and many suffered abuse and exploitation in the various institutions to which they were sent.
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| The Child Migrant Memorial at the International Wall of Friendship |
Beginning in South Australia in 1948, Good Neighbour Councils were established in most states to help newcomers to settle in, However, being focused primarily on assimilation, they often failed to understand or meet the needs of non – English speakers. In the late 1970s they were abandoned in favour of a more inclusive, multicultural approach.
Life was certainly not always easy for new arrivals and Australians were
initially somewhat hostile towards the sudden influx of newcomers. Many British would -be settlers found their initial
conditions not to their liking and returned home, giving rise to the term
“Whinging Poms.”
As far as others went, Australians thought their food
was weird, they spoke “funny” languages and wore strange clothes. Read the book or watch the
film “The Sound of One Hand Clapping” for more on this. This was even more so if they practised unusual
customs, spoke their own language, or kept to
themselves in their own enclaves and did not mix with Australians.
British immigrants were usually given senior positions, not the least because of their command of English and greater familiarity with Australian law and customs, which also caused some resentment among Australians. Non - British qualifications were not recognised at all. While Jewish, Greek and Italian migrants had well established communities which supported them, others were largely left to their own devices.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t difficult to find work. The factories hummed to satisfy the needs of so many newcomers. More schools had to be built to accommodate the Baby Boomers. Skilled tradesmen and mechanics were in high demand, especially as giant hydro schemes got under way such as the Snowy Hydro Scheme in New South Wales and those in Tasmania. The Snowy Hydro Scheme for example, employed over 100,000 people from 30 different countries.
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| Our Dad and his workmates in the 1950s - Skilled tradesmen were highly sought after |
However, until the 1975 oil shocks, times were good. There was full employment and most people – and particularly their children, eventually succeeded in owning a home and doing better than they might have at home. The migrants brought new foods – there wasn’t even coffee when we came – only chicory essence in a bottle, and who can now imagine life without pizza and pasta. Our Mum was thrilled to be able to get freshly ground Danish coffee, continental smallgoods from the many delis which were springing up and if we were lucky, the occasional continental cake from Acland Street in St. Kilda.
However, another source of tension surfaced when migrants started doing better than the Australian born – by for example, having a new house or a more successful business, but migrants did most of the menial jobs and worked many hours of overtime or worked two jobs, while Australians had discovered the joys of more leisure time and more disposable income. Nevertheless, approximately 85% of Australians agreed that the great migration had been a success.
Next - Post World War II
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