The General Langfitt Story
Chapter 6 - Resettlement in Australia (continued)
First Experiences in Australia
It was with considerable relief that they awoke early on the morning of 14 February 1950 to witness sunrise from Gauge Roads outside Fremantle. Ryszard Pawlowski spoke for many of the young men who were:
standing on the deck looking at Fremantle from a distance, trying to imagine what Iife would be like in this new, strange place. But we were used to travelling from one place to another so I don't think I expected to stay here. I thought we would be here for a few years and then we would go somewhere else. I think most people had that in mind.
They were to be greeted by a spectacularly hot day, with the temperature reaching 105oF (40oC) on their first day in their new country. Irena Makowiecka summed up the joy and anticipation felt by most of her compatriots, 'At last we had arrived somewhere which was normal. Now let's see what we are worth? What can we do? It was up to us now'.
Disembarkation at Fremantle, Western Australia,
February 195O
(Courtesy of Irena Makowiecka)
It is not possible to do justice to all the post-arrival experiences which participants in this project shared but it was quite clear that Australian 'normality' was going to take some getting used to. Barbara Kaluzynska recalled her feelings on arrival:
After leaving beautiful green Mombasa we arrived in Fremantle where there were little tin barracks and lots of concrete. There was nothing there. I didn't want to get out and said, 'I'm going back to Africa'. I started crying. My mother said that maybe it is not so bad and that, anyway, we couldn't go back. She was more philosophical about it than I was. As soon as I got off the ship a lady from the YWCA asked me,'How do you like Australia?' What could I say! We were each given a pie, an orange, a piece of fruit cake and an apple by the YWCA.
Boguslaw Trella, along with several of his young friends, remembers that the first thing that struck him as 'extremely strange was to see white people working as wharfies. We had got used to black people doing the manual jobs in Africa or even India. Then we realised that this was to be our fate too!'
After scrambling to find their meagre luggage, which had been dumped unceremoniously on the North Wharf, 14 all the passengers from the General Langfitt were immediately transported to the Migrant Transit Camps at Cunderdin and Northam.
We boarded a train. It was hot. At Midland Junction there was a pile of hot pies beside the railway track which we were given. Nobody could taste them. It was getting hotter and hotter. We saw some tents along the railway line and eventually we arrived in Cunderdin. Everything was organised there but it was a disappointment. It was such flat country, nothing but sheep, lots of flies and a hot wind. That was not a charming place to be! But we were not there long before my mother and sister were sent to work in Bunbury. (Zdzislawa Wasylkowska)
Migrant transit camp, Northam, Western Australia,
1950
(Courtesy of Boguslaw Trella)