| | by Peter Toedter These are the experiences of Peter's parents Heinrich and Antonie Toedter. Peter was eight years old when the family decided to move to Australia under the Government Assisted Passage Scheme. READ THE FULL STORY >>> |
Bonegilla
My father was a carpenter and we came to Australia on a Government Assisted Passage Scheme, which meant that in return for the fares dad would work in Australia for a minimum of two years. He had a contract to work at the BHP Steelworks at Newcastle. My parents migrated rather late in life, mum was 43 and dad was 45. They were both from Harburg in north Germany and had lived through World War I (1914-1918), hyperinflation (1921-1923), the great depression (1929-1939) and World War II (1939-1945).
The bombing of Hamburg-Harburg was particularly severe. So by any measure they had had a rough trot. By 1954 the German economy had not picked up so dad decided to migrate with his brother, an electrician. Australia was calling out for tradespeople. At the last moment dad's brother pulled out. I can understand why because there is no way that I would have gone to a new country on the other side of the world at that age not knowing any of the language or customs.
We disembarked form the SS Skaubryn at Port Melbourne on the 13 May 1954 and were processed and put aboard a train on the wharf for the journey to the Bonegilla camp. We had our sea legs and it felt strange being on terra firm. The train was an old wooden rattler and the eight-hour trip seemed to take forever.
On the outskirts of the city the great empty unknown began. There were no farmers in the fields. "Fields" to German eyes, normal paddocks to Australian eyes. There were only scattered animals and wide horizons. The occasional settler's camp and trackside shanties broke the monotony. All very alien.
Bonegilla formed our first impressions of Australia and they became the foundation on which all new experiences were built. Events and things which were to become commonplace were strange or novel at the beginning. We arrived in Bonegilla on the 13 May and departed on 31 May for the Nelson Bay Hostel north of Newcastle.
In Bonegilla we were in block 21 but there is no record of the hut number. There was no railway station at Bonegilla, only a narrow bare platform in the middle of dry pastoral grazing land. I think if mum and dad had been given the option they would have turned around and gone back to Germany right then and there.
We were bussed to the camp, which consisted of row upon row of corrugated iron huts. As far as I know we were amongst the first German migrants to arrive under the Assisted Passage Scheme. Prior to this the post WWII immigrants consisted mostly of displaced persons and refugees.
On arrival we were processed again. Mum and dad were given Alien Registration Certificates, which had to be updated with each change of address for two years. We were supplied with sheets, blankets and eating utensils. Meals were in a big mess hall, and to the European palate the food tasted disgusting. It was probably standard army food. I can remember my first meal of Australian sausages; they tasted strange, although the food was not such a big deal to the kids. The food must have been unacceptable to the European palate as it was a common complaint amongst the new arrivals. Apparently in the previous two years, after a riot by mainly Italians, some attempt was made to cater for "foreign" tastes but it hadn't succeeded. There was a lot of mutton which dad couldn't stomach because of his bad meal experiences during the war of really old mutton. Dad had worked as a ship's carpenter, an essential industry and hadn't been in the armed forces.
We were given a small room in a hut, which had wire fold up beds of the same type that I would be using 14 years later in mineral exploration camps in WA. Toilets were pit toilets and bathing was communal but separate for men and women.
Dad was kept busy learning English that he had started on the voyage over. Learning English was one of the conditions under the assisted passage scheme. Dad arrived as an "unskilled labourer" because his German qualifications and experience were not recognised. This was common; at the time the only European qualifications given recognition were those from the UK. Dad completed and passed a Trade Test in Carpentry and Joinery at the AIbury Technical College on 25 May. He was admitted as a member of the Building Workers Industrial Union on the 20 July the same year.
Mum, a good German 'Hausfrau' [ed. 'house wife'], was at a loss for the three weeks that we were there. She cleaned our one room and did the washing, and then socialised with some of the other women. I remember a lot of people strolling around the camp and the nearby countryside with no objective in mind. Mum and dad were in shock from the conditions at the camp and dad took no photos. It was a letdown, compounding the rough and separated living conditions on the boat on the voyage to Australia. The prospective living arrangements had not been discussed honestly at the Australian Consulate in Hamburg.
In Germany we had a two bedroom flat with all of the normal furniture and fittings. Trades people who came over on the assisted passage scheme were told that accommodation and a job was waiting for them on their arrival. Most had left a job in their home country with the promise of better things in Australia.
There was a school at the camp but because we were transients I didn't have to go. This left a lot of kids with free time to explore the new country. For me it was an adventure. The shores of the Hume Weir (now Lake Hume) were a popular walking area. Some people picked up gold and diamonds; this was a good country after all. The gold particles were flakes of biotite mica from the granite. When weathered they shimmer like gold, especially in water. The diamonds were small pieces of clear quartz, which scratched glass, taken as a proof of their authenticity as diamonds. I realised this when I became a Geologist, but at the time they were gold and diamonds.
Some of us children collected resin from wattle trees because it had to be good for something. The first birds that I became conscious of were rosellas sitting in peppercorn trees. The image of the vibrantly coloured exotic birds in bright green trees adorned with red clusters of seeds is still with me.
Paddy Melons grew along the fence of the adjoining paddock and we kids debated whether they were edible or poisonous. Fortunately no-one tried them. Some of the men went hunting rabbits and explored the countryside. One night there was a commotion on our block. There was a possum on a roof. Real Australian wildlife! The poor thing was almost blinded by the torchlight.
On the 31 May the people heading for Sydney and Newcastle were bussed to the Albury railway station and were put into a crowded ordinary "red rattler". The trip took 24 hours or more. People slept on floors and in the luggage racks, and tried to sleep sitting up while being jolted around. Food consisted of soggy sandwich packs and lukewarm tea. The carriages were crowded and stifling hot. There was only one toilet per carriage. This was another disheartening introduction to a new country.
Nelson Bay
We arrived at the Newcastle Railway Station on 2 June 1954. Dad had to register with the nearby Commonwealth Employment Office in Pacific Street. At the centre of the intersection I noticed a road marker. A type common at the time, a "silent cop", consisting of an almost flat round metal dome painted yellow, with cat eye reflectors around the circumference all within a circle of white paint. I thought someone had dropped a cake on the road. Anything was possible in an unknown country. We were put on a bus and headed for the Nelson Bay Migrant Camp, officially the Nelson Bay Holding Centre.
The migrant camp was a converted WWII site, as most of the hostels were. Dad started work at the BHP Steelworks at Port Waratah, Newcastle. We were at the hostel for two weeks. Again, there are no photos as they were not good times for my parents. We (children) would walk to Little Beach within Port Stephens. Sometimes we went a bit further to Zenith Beach – an ocean beach with big waves. We collected shells and generally hung around the camp. Nelson Bay was a small fishing village then, not the holiday resort that it is now. Another lost real-estate opportunity.
The good life for me was coming to an end. In the second week there I had to attend school. The teacher knew that most of the camp residents were transients and we couldn't speak English so he sat us at the back of the class. He didn't have any time to spend on us and it was boring as we couldn't understand anything.
The bus journey to BHP was an hour each way so dad left and came home in the dark. He looked for alternative accommodation for us and found a room with a family in Waratah, an inner suburb of Newcastle.
37 Bridge Street, Waratah
Mum and I caught the afternoon shift workers bus from Nelson Bay to BHP, with our luggage and met dad after his day shift. Someone with a car took us to Waratah. Before we left the area in front of BHP one of our cases fell off the roof of the car and had to be retrieved and secured again. The people who owned the house were Polish and had two children, a girl about my age and a younger boy. We had one room and shared the kitchen, bathroom and laundry. This was really hard for mum.
It was time to get serious about school for me. One morning dressed in my best 'lederhosen', held up by leather braces, long pulled up socks (not matching as we realised later on) and polished black shoes mum and I headed off. We went to the most obvious large school at the end of Bridge Street. We found the office and were told that it was the girl's primary school. They directed us to the boy's school, which was nearby. Because I had missed six months of the school year they considered sending me to repeat second class at the infant's school down the road. However Mr Smith, the headmaster thought that I was too big in size to go there and fortunately took me in. I couldn't speak or read a word of English. I did establish on the first day that my manner of dress was drawing a lot of attention from the other kids and I did not wear lederhosen to school again. Also I dropped 'Klaus' from my German given names of Klaus Peter to become just plain Peter. I was put into one class but after a few days it was hopeless as the teacher could not communicate with me and there were no other migrant kids that spoke German. Then there was a stroke of luck or one of those interventions of fate that changes one's life. Mr Munro, the class teacher of 3W, took me under his wing. Not only was he an intelligent person but also one of his grandmothers was German and he spoke a few words of German. My learning of English went ahead by leaps and bounds and because of Mr Munro's efforts I kept up with the other subjects. Ten years later I met up with Mr Munro again, at the Newcastle Technical College and University Bushwalking Club, when I was going to university. He became my friend, Arthur "Darby" Munro. He was a high school science teacher by then, having completed his BSc. part time.
At school I had to learn what the difference was between playing marbles for "fun" or for "keeps", and various other culturally different children's business. I also went to Sunday School where I was presented with my first book in English. I must have picked up the language well. There was some kind of "be nice to migrants week" thing and I was chosen to speak on one of the Newcastle radio stations. The studio was at the top left hand side of Hunter Street, between Watt and Pacific Streets, in a multi-storied brick building, which had a rickety old caged lift. Mr Munro took me there. I was asked about coming over here and questioned about the ship. I was also featured in an article (with picture) in the Newcastle Morning Herald.
Shopping was a trial for mum. There were no 'self-serve' super markets then and everything was bought from corner shops. Mum and I used to study the German-English dictionary. I went shopping with her as interpreter like so many New Australian kids did. The shopkeepers like much of the general population saw migrants as unwelcomed intruders and saw no reason to be helpful or tolerant. The better-educated Australians were probably different but we did not have the chance to mix with them. For instance when we wanted to buy rice but pronounced it like the German, "Reis", even though it was very similar they didn't try to understand. Another difficulty was "jam". The German word is "Marmelade", so we ended up with orange marmalade. The system of weights and measures was also a difficulty as the Australian units were Imperial and we were used to Metric. This would have been hard for dad in his job. After a few more shared rental places my parents had saved enough money for our own place in Cardiff South and later in Cardiff. I went to Newcastle University and completed a BSc. majoring in Geology, studying part-time while working as a Trainee Industrial Chemist at the BHP Steelworks. I then roamed Australia as a Geologist.
My father was a carpenter and we came to Australia on a Government Assisted Passage Scheme, which meant that in return for the fares dad would work in Australia for a minimum of two years. He had a contract to work at the BHP Steelworks at Newcastle. My parents migrated rather late in life, mum was 43 and dad was 45. They were both from Harburg in north Germany and had lived through World War I (1914-1918), hyperinflation (1921-1923), the great depression (1929-1939) and World War II (1939-1945).
The bombing of Hamburg-Harburg was particularly severe. So by any measure they had had a rough trot. By 1954 the German economy had not picked up so dad decided to migrate with his brother, an electrician. Australia was calling out for tradespeople. At the last moment dad's brother pulled out. I can understand why because there is no way that I would have gone to a new country on the other side of the world at that age not knowing any of the language or customs.
We disembarked form the SS Skaubryn at Port Melbourne on the 13 May 1954 and were processed and put aboard a train on the wharf for the journey to the Bonegilla camp. We had our sea legs and it felt strange being on terra firm. The train was an old wooden rattler and the eight-hour trip seemed to take forever.
On the outskirts of the city the great empty unknown began. There were no farmers in the fields. "Fields" to German eyes, normal paddocks to Australian eyes. There were only scattered animals and wide horizons. The occasional settler's camp and trackside shanties broke the monotony. All very alien.
Bonegilla formed our first impressions of Australia and they became the foundation on which all new experiences were built. Events and things which were to become commonplace were strange or novel at the beginning. We arrived in Bonegilla on the 13 May and departed on 31 May for the Nelson Bay Hostel north of Newcastle.
In Bonegilla we were in block 21 but there is no record of the hut number. There was no railway station at Bonegilla, only a narrow bare platform in the middle of dry pastoral grazing land. I think if mum and dad had been given the option they would have turned around and gone back to Germany right then and there.
We were bussed to the camp, which consisted of row upon row of corrugated iron huts. As far as I know we were amongst the first German migrants to arrive under the Assisted Passage Scheme. Prior to this the post WWII immigrants consisted mostly of displaced persons and refugees.
On arrival we were processed again. Mum and dad were given Alien Registration Certificates, which had to be updated with each change of address for two years. We were supplied with sheets, blankets and eating utensils. Meals were in a big mess hall, and to the European palate the food tasted disgusting. It was probably standard army food. I can remember my first meal of Australian sausages; they tasted strange, although the food was not such a big deal to the kids. The food must have been unacceptable to the European palate as it was a common complaint amongst the new arrivals. Apparently in the previous two years, after a riot by mainly Italians, some attempt was made to cater for "foreign" tastes but it hadn't succeeded. There was a lot of mutton which dad couldn't stomach because of his bad meal experiences during the war of really old mutton. Dad had worked as a ship's carpenter, an essential industry and hadn't been in the armed forces.
We were given a small room in a hut, which had wire fold up beds of the same type that I would be using 14 years later in mineral exploration camps in WA. Toilets were pit toilets and bathing was communal but separate for men and women.
Dad was kept busy learning English that he had started on the voyage over. Learning English was one of the conditions under the assisted passage scheme. Dad arrived as an "unskilled labourer" because his German qualifications and experience were not recognised. This was common; at the time the only European qualifications given recognition were those from the UK. Dad completed and passed a Trade Test in Carpentry and Joinery at the AIbury Technical College on 25 May. He was admitted as a member of the Building Workers Industrial Union on the 20 July the same year.
Mum, a good German 'Hausfrau' [ed. 'house wife'], was at a loss for the three weeks that we were there. She cleaned our one room and did the washing, and then socialised with some of the other women. I remember a lot of people strolling around the camp and the nearby countryside with no objective in mind. Mum and dad were in shock from the conditions at the camp and dad took no photos. It was a letdown, compounding the rough and separated living conditions on the boat on the voyage to Australia. The prospective living arrangements had not been discussed honestly at the Australian Consulate in Hamburg.
In Germany we had a two bedroom flat with all of the normal furniture and fittings. Trades people who came over on the assisted passage scheme were told that accommodation and a job was waiting for them on their arrival. Most had left a job in their home country with the promise of better things in Australia.
There was a school at the camp but because we were transients I didn't have to go. This left a lot of kids with free time to explore the new country. For me it was an adventure. The shores of the Hume Weir (now Lake Hume) were a popular walking area. Some people picked up gold and diamonds; this was a good country after all. The gold particles were flakes of biotite mica from the granite. When weathered they shimmer like gold, especially in water. The diamonds were small pieces of clear quartz, which scratched glass, taken as a proof of their authenticity as diamonds. I realised this when I became a Geologist, but at the time they were gold and diamonds.
Some of us children collected resin from wattle trees because it had to be good for something. The first birds that I became conscious of were rosellas sitting in peppercorn trees. The image of the vibrantly coloured exotic birds in bright green trees adorned with red clusters of seeds is still with me.
Paddy Melons grew along the fence of the adjoining paddock and we kids debated whether they were edible or poisonous. Fortunately no-one tried them. Some of the men went hunting rabbits and explored the countryside. One night there was a commotion on our block. There was a possum on a roof. Real Australian wildlife! The poor thing was almost blinded by the torchlight.
On the 31 May the people heading for Sydney and Newcastle were bussed to the Albury railway station and were put into a crowded ordinary "red rattler". The trip took 24 hours or more. People slept on floors and in the luggage racks, and tried to sleep sitting up while being jolted around. Food consisted of soggy sandwich packs and lukewarm tea. The carriages were crowded and stifling hot. There was only one toilet per carriage. This was another disheartening introduction to a new country.
Nelson Bay
We arrived at the Newcastle Railway Station on 2 June 1954. Dad had to register with the nearby Commonwealth Employment Office in Pacific Street. At the centre of the intersection I noticed a road marker. A type common at the time, a "silent cop", consisting of an almost flat round metal dome painted yellow, with cat eye reflectors around the circumference all within a circle of white paint. I thought someone had dropped a cake on the road. Anything was possible in an unknown country. We were put on a bus and headed for the Nelson Bay Migrant Camp, officially the Nelson Bay Holding Centre.
The migrant camp was a converted WWII site, as most of the hostels were. Dad started work at the BHP Steelworks at Port Waratah, Newcastle. We were at the hostel for two weeks. Again, there are no photos as they were not good times for my parents. We (children) would walk to Little Beach within Port Stephens. Sometimes we went a bit further to Zenith Beach – an ocean beach with big waves. We collected shells and generally hung around the camp. Nelson Bay was a small fishing village then, not the holiday resort that it is now. Another lost real-estate opportunity.
The good life for me was coming to an end. In the second week there I had to attend school. The teacher knew that most of the camp residents were transients and we couldn't speak English so he sat us at the back of the class. He didn't have any time to spend on us and it was boring as we couldn't understand anything.
The bus journey to BHP was an hour each way so dad left and came home in the dark. He looked for alternative accommodation for us and found a room with a family in Waratah, an inner suburb of Newcastle.
37 Bridge Street, Waratah
Mum and I caught the afternoon shift workers bus from Nelson Bay to BHP, with our luggage and met dad after his day shift. Someone with a car took us to Waratah. Before we left the area in front of BHP one of our cases fell off the roof of the car and had to be retrieved and secured again. The people who owned the house were Polish and had two children, a girl about my age and a younger boy. We had one room and shared the kitchen, bathroom and laundry. This was really hard for mum.
It was time to get serious about school for me. One morning dressed in my best 'lederhosen', held up by leather braces, long pulled up socks (not matching as we realised later on) and polished black shoes mum and I headed off. We went to the most obvious large school at the end of Bridge Street. We found the office and were told that it was the girl's primary school. They directed us to the boy's school, which was nearby. Because I had missed six months of the school year they considered sending me to repeat second class at the infant's school down the road. However Mr Smith, the headmaster thought that I was too big in size to go there and fortunately took me in. I couldn't speak or read a word of English. I did establish on the first day that my manner of dress was drawing a lot of attention from the other kids and I did not wear lederhosen to school again. Also I dropped 'Klaus' from my German given names of Klaus Peter to become just plain Peter. I was put into one class but after a few days it was hopeless as the teacher could not communicate with me and there were no other migrant kids that spoke German. Then there was a stroke of luck or one of those interventions of fate that changes one's life. Mr Munro, the class teacher of 3W, took me under his wing. Not only was he an intelligent person but also one of his grandmothers was German and he spoke a few words of German. My learning of English went ahead by leaps and bounds and because of Mr Munro's efforts I kept up with the other subjects. Ten years later I met up with Mr Munro again, at the Newcastle Technical College and University Bushwalking Club, when I was going to university. He became my friend, Arthur "Darby" Munro. He was a high school science teacher by then, having completed his BSc. part time.
At school I had to learn what the difference was between playing marbles for "fun" or for "keeps", and various other culturally different children's business. I also went to Sunday School where I was presented with my first book in English. I must have picked up the language well. There was some kind of "be nice to migrants week" thing and I was chosen to speak on one of the Newcastle radio stations. The studio was at the top left hand side of Hunter Street, between Watt and Pacific Streets, in a multi-storied brick building, which had a rickety old caged lift. Mr Munro took me there. I was asked about coming over here and questioned about the ship. I was also featured in an article (with picture) in the Newcastle Morning Herald.
Shopping was a trial for mum. There were no 'self-serve' super markets then and everything was bought from corner shops. Mum and I used to study the German-English dictionary. I went shopping with her as interpreter like so many New Australian kids did. The shopkeepers like much of the general population saw migrants as unwelcomed intruders and saw no reason to be helpful or tolerant. The better-educated Australians were probably different but we did not have the chance to mix with them. For instance when we wanted to buy rice but pronounced it like the German, "Reis", even though it was very similar they didn't try to understand. Another difficulty was "jam". The German word is "Marmelade", so we ended up with orange marmalade. The system of weights and measures was also a difficulty as the Australian units were Imperial and we were used to Metric. This would have been hard for dad in his job. After a few more shared rental places my parents had saved enough money for our own place in Cardiff South and later in Cardiff. I went to Newcastle University and completed a BSc. majoring in Geology, studying part-time while working as a Trainee Industrial Chemist at the BHP Steelworks. I then roamed Australia as a Geologist.
