The General Langfitt Story
Chapter 6 - Resettlement in Australia (continued)
Regina Tabaczynska remembered that:
everything seemed so very primitive, even after East Africa! Even the food was primitive. It was steak and eggs and peas and cooked cabbage. That was all. For me, it was the end of the world but I was glad that at last I would start life, that soon I wouldn't be in a camp, sheltered. After all those years when we had to do what we were told, I was glad that at long last I would be able to do what I wanted, that I would be on my own to manage as best I could. I would be responsible.
Soon after we arrived in Northam camp my father got a letter from one of our friends in England who was in Polish education there. He wrote that Poles who arrived in England would be sent to a camp and that he had arranged everything for us. My parents would be in the camp and he had already found me a place in a university. I felt terrible. Imagine! In Australia I didn't have the slightest chance to be sent to university. I had to support my parents.
Other people enjoyed their time in the transit camps. Some of the boys and young men took to exploring their new environment with gusto and recall going to the movies, raiding local orchards and swimming expeditions in the Avon River. English lessons were remembered with wry humour by many as they entailed groups of about twenty people standing in front of a teacher, singing Australian songs and repeating English words endlessly. Krystyna Jarzebowska spent about six weeks in the Northam camp where they:
mixed with people from all over Europe. We had a good time. They organised dances and there were such a lot of men! We were longing for the company of men after having lived in Africa for so long with mostly women and girls. At the Northam camp we had English classes every day. I learnt a lot of Australian songs! We had to learn them and sing to the teacher! I knew some basic English from Africa, although I never had a chance for conversation, only reading. Speaking is very different. We knew the words but we didn't know how to use them. After six weeks they started sending us to start our contracts.
People had a variety of experiences in their first jobs, ranging from extremely positive introductions to Australian working culture to demoralising drudgery. A few young adults who had competency in English found work with the Department of Immigration and the Commonwealth Employment Service as clerks, typists or interpreters, but most, as expected, had to see out their contracts in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. Many young men were sent to Mundaring Weir to work on the construction of the dam, while others were sent to work on farms, building railways or to factories. Some of the older men were given menial jobs as cleaners while women were allocated work in factories and laundries, or sent to hotels, hospitals and schools as cleaners and domestics. Of the young women who had acquired experience as nurses during their time in India or Africa, only Urszula Paszkowska was able to take up a training position. In 1951 she became the third non-Australian to be admitted to the nursing school at Royal Perth Hospital. Others, like Krystyna Jarzebowska, her mother and sister Halina were unlucky enough to be sent to isolated rural communities, where they were unashamedly exploited by their employers. As Halina Juszczyk recalled:
these people never could keep their staff any longer than a few weeks. Here they had three women, all young and strong and bound to them for two years. They made our lives hard. We were not allowed to have a shower every day because of the water supply problems. The owner made excuses so we could not attend the Roman Catholic mass which was held every second week. He also withheld our correspondence for months at a time. We found out about this from the postmistress, who was very sympathetic to us.
After six months we couldn't put up with it any more. We said, 'This is not a labour camp in Russia. This is Australia. People must not be treated the way we are'. The postmistress advised us not to return to Perth because there they had more contacts with migrants and might not be very sympathetic. She said to go north to Geraldton, so we bought bus tickets and left with threats from the hotel owner that we would be arrested and sent back where we came from. That was impossible! Even if they had sent us back to this hotel we decided that they couldn't force us to work. We knew that much about Australia - it was a democratic country where you can't be forced to do these things.
Such experiences would be familiar to many post-war migrants who came to Australia on similar terms. Conditions were made even harder by the shortage, and thus the expense, of accommodation in the postwar period and every person had tales of boarding in other people's houses, sharing rooms and kitchen and bathroom amenities. In several cases finding accommodation was made harder by prejudices against 'New Australians' and finding a good place to stay was frequently a matter of simple good fortune. However, the strong sense of community which had been forged throughout the time in the refugee settlements in India and East Africa came to the fore, and friends helped each other as much as they could. Zofia Nadachowska, who talked her mother into letting her leave school early to help with the family finances, found a job as a waitress in a guest house in Perth. She shared one room with three friends:
It was a tiny room with one window and a tiny wardrobe and dressing table. There were two narrow iron beds, pushed together under the window and the three of us slept there. The room was so small that when we had to undress, one would sit on the beds, the other would wait in the passage way. We would take turns until we all got into bed. The beds had sagging springs and narrow mattresses that sank in so the one who was in the middle was sleeping on the join. We very democratically took turns, rotating around the bed. One time a friend of ours who had lost her job and had nowhere to sleep came to ask if she could stay, so there were four of us, like sardines! We would go: one two three, turn to the left; one to three, turn to the right! Because we were young and silly we saw the funny side of it and giggled and giggled. Everything was fun then and we laughed at ourselves. I think that silliness saved us.
It was harder on the older women, the mothers who had once harboured such strong hopes of returning to Poland. Many of them only discovered the fate of their husbands after they arrived in Australia, so they had to let go of any remaining hopes that they might yet be reunited and confront their futures as widows. Time and distance did not lessen their grief. They also had to adapt to new circumstances in an English-speaking nation, where they had few supports except their family and friends, and the occasional helping hand from other more established Australians, many of whom had little comprehension of, and even less desire to acquaint themselves with, the circumstances which had brought these people to Australia. It seemed that many people did not even know where Poland was. As Zenon Zebrowski observed, 'it was amazing how ignorant many Australians were. They would confuse Poland with Holland!'
Maria Sosnowska recalled how hard she found the first years in Australia. While in East Africa she had been surrounded by her compatriots in a 'little Poland', but in Australia she 'felt estranged from Poland. It hit me then that there was no way back. Part of the reason I broke down soon after arriving was that it was so strange for me'. Other women had been hopeful that they might be able to resume work for which they had been trained. Stanislawa Jutrzenka-Trzebiatowska (Adamska) spent six hard months learning English:
hoping that I would find work as a teacher because I had good papers and good references. But I was told not to hope too much because Australians are very jealous and it would be very hard to get a job as a teacher. And it was true. After six months I found that I had very little chance. They were expecting me to work a two years contract. I didn't know much about hospitals but somebody advised me that there was work in hospital kitchens so three of us went to Royal Perth Hospital. I worked there with Mietka Gruszka's mother, Maria Szuster-Nowak for many years.
Helena Lancucka had been a teacher for fourteen years in Poland before the war, but knew that she would have to take whatever work she could when she arrived in Australia so that she could send her 14-year-old son to high school. Initially she worked in the hospital laundry of the Cunderdin Camp, where all the washing was done by hand.