The General Langfitt Story
Chapter 6 - Resettlement in Australia (continued)
The Younger Folk
These brief and severely edited 'cameos' offer just a glimpse of some of the ways in which many of the children who arrived on the General Langfitt maximised the opportunities to improve their individual and family circumstances. While the following examples focus upon educational achievements which led to professional careers, it is clear that many others found their niches in other areas such as the skilled trades and small business.
Over 30 per cent of the 'General Langfitt Group' were children under 12 years of age and an even higher proportion were still under 16 when they arrived in Western Australia. They started school soon after at schools set up in the Northam and Cunderdin camps. There were no English classes specifically for children and the school teachers appeared to have had little experience with children from non-English-speaking backgrounds. Nor were there any appropriate strategies in place or suitable teaching materials. A few children went to local Catholic schools until such time as their parents were allocated work elsewhere. Some, like Tadek Gruszka, started apprenticeships in their mid-teens, but many others were accepted into various Catholic schools in Perth and Geraldton after negotiations conducted by their Polish priest, Reverend Father Witold Dzieciol.
It seems from various accounts that once in school, the quality of the Polish children's education depended greatly on the ability of the staff to adapt their teaching styles to the needs of new students grappling with the English language. Mietka Gruszka, in an essay on her school days in Australia, explained, 'We were the first big group of non-English-speaking youngsters to land on West Australian shores after the Second World War and the education system was not ready for us'. Three months after arrival in Western Australia, Mietka and three friends, including Halina Szunejko, left their mothers in Cunderdin to board at Santa Maria Ladies College in Perth. There the teachers hoped:
that with perseverance, patience and the grace of God, they would be able to mould these 'New Australians' into good and useful Aussie citizens. By the luck of the draw, the four of us came to Santa Maria to begin our 'sink or swim' adventure with Australian schooling. Later, three more Polish girls joined us for a short time, but only Halina and I remained at the school for five years. Our arrivaI caused quite a sensation and a challenge for both nuns and the fellow boarders, but they made great efforts to communicate with us and make us feel welcome ... On the first week-end of every month we were allowed to go home. Those weekends were a return to a different world, the world of our Polish families, Polish community functions and friends we grew up with in Africa. As the years went by, our English improved and we were able to pass our junior examinations and two years later, our Leaving examination. Both Halina and I decided to follow a teaching profession.
Halina Szunejko, who went on to become the first Polish woman in Western Australia to be awarded the Order of Australia (1989) for her services to education and the Polish community, credited 'the women in my life, especially the nuns at Santa Maria Ladies College, who put forward the options available to us and pushed us in the direction of teaching'. In a career that has so far spanned thirty-seven years, teaching both primary and secondary students, further studies in educational administration and research, and five years as principal of one of Perth's largest high schools, one of Halina's most memorable appointments was her first two years of teaching at a two-teacher school near Collie. The challenge of teaching young Australian children to read and write delighted the young woman who, only eight years before, had arrived in Australia with no knowledge of the English language. She recalls in particular the joy of guiding a young Italian girl who started the year with no English language skills to the point where she became top of the class at the end of the year. Even more importantly, it was at this time that her family received news that their application to bring out their father and sister from Poland had been successful. After seventeen years, her whole family was reunited.
Zenon Zebrowski was twelve and a half years old when he arrived in Western Australia. His mother and two elder sisters were keen for him to continue his education so it was arranged that he would spend a year at Clontarf Boys Town, along with a few other young Polish boys, so that they 'could learn English quickly'. He considered that this time at Clontarf was:
one of the best things that happened to me. The life was fairly harsh there because there were about eight brothers looking after two hundred kids, nearly all of them were either genuine orphans or from broken homes. They were rough as bags and the brothers had to control them. Some other Polish boys who went to Clontarf couldn't bear it, but after I had survived that, little things didn't worry me! After Clontarf I went to Christian Brothers College in Perth. There were sixty-four of us in the class and one brother to teach all the subjects and control us. There were only two 'New Australians' there, myself and a Ukrainian chap, and an Australian-Italian who was born just after his parents arrived in Australia in 1937. The attitude of the children was strange. They would look at our lunches and go, 'Ugg! How can you eat that greasy food? 'We would say, 'It's delicious! You should try it'. They wouldn't. I found it quite easy to adjust and didn't have any problems. it was easy to make friends through sport.
Zenon finished his secondary education and won a Commonwealth Scholarship to study Arts, majoring in economics at the University of Western Australia. However, when his mother became too sick to work, he converted to part-time studies so that he could earn money to keep them both. When it became impossible to find work, they moved to Melbourne, where one of his sisters was living with her husband. Believing that he could not complete his degree from the University of Western Australia, he studied for a Bachelor of Commerce at Melbourne University, only later discovering that he could complete his first degree by correspondence. Thus, with a 'lot of hard slog', he acquired a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia and a Bachelor of Commerce from Melbourne University, going on to work in the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics and, later, the Department of Defence. After thirty years working in the public service, Zenon reflected that there was:
Insidious discrimination, often nothing you could put your finger on, like promotions which would get rolled on appeal. I never complained about it. As time moved on a name like Zebrowski wasn't unusual, but in 1960 when I first joined the public service I was a rarity. Most people with 'New Australian' names worked in factories. By the time I retired it seemed that every second person had a 'New Australian' name and an ethnic background. Most of that discrimination is disappearing, except maybe from very high positions in corporate structures where there are still some 'troglodytes' left! Generally speaking, Australia has changed tremendously. It is not as insular any more.
Fourteen-year-old Zofia Skarbek went on to complete her high school education at St Joseph's Convent and Leederville Technical College in Perth. She left Western Australia for a visit to Melbourne where she met her future husband, a fellow Pole and medical student, and decided to stay in Melbourne. It was fifteen years and three children later, combined with invaluable experience as her husband's 'receptionist/nurse', before she returned to university to complete her psychology degree. Since then she has worked as a psychologist with the Department of Employment, Education and Training.