The General Langfitt Story
Chapter 6 - Resettlement in Australia (continued)
Making a Home in Australia
The development of a strong Polish community in the years after settlement was perhaps an inevitable off-shoot of the patriotism common to most Polish Australians, a characteristic shared by the Polish diaspora across the globe. As Pakulski (1988, p. 743) noted in an assessment of Polish community life in Australia:
Strong national and religious identity, shared experiences of war, migration and resettlement, geographical proximity and initial social isolation helped to develop and maintain strong community ties amongst the post-war immigrants, and facilitated the formation of voluntary organisations and ex-servicemen's groups.
Such activities included the creation of Polish Roman Catholic congregations, where the Mass, given by a Polish priest, could be heard in Polish, as well as voluntary organisations which promoted self-help and the strengthening of collective ties. Sporting clubs, particularly soccer, Polish houses where groups could meet for a variety of purposes, libraries, coffee shops, and cultural ensembles to retain traditional Polish dance and songs, provided more avenues for community participation, while the Polish associations played a key role in representing Polish interests in the broader community. Polish welfare organisations also served the purpose of maintaining strong links with Poland, for most Australian Poles retained a keen interest in events in their homeland. While many of these groups were primarily concerned with the retention and transmission of Polish national, religious and political values, they helped to forge a distinct place for Poles within the Australian community.
Regina Tabaczynska, whose parents and husband were founding members of the Polish Association in Perth, recalled how important these community ties could be:
there were times in the first few years when I felt very alienated from everything and everybody so, as a therapy, I decided that I would work in the Polish Association. There was a Polish Club in Northbridge and we had social evenings where we would organise discussions and dances. There was also a Polish library - not many books but still occasionally I was on duty there. The Polish Association and Polish contacts were very important when we first came here because Australians were not too kind to foreigners who spoke a different language. Very often you would be told on the street, 'Don't talk that language. Speak English!' It was extremely unpleasant.
Ruth Johnson noted in her study of Polish settlers to Western Australia that many post-war Polish migrants to Australia placed a special emphasis on the preservation of their language, 'deeply convinced of the role that language plays in the perpetuation of Polish culture abroad' (Johnson, 1988, p. 741). Many of the participants in this project reflected that sentiment; most have encouraged their children to learn Polish by speaking it in the home and by sending them to Polish language classes organised by the Polish associations. While it appears to be harder to do the same with grandchildren, many grandparents continue to speak to their grandchildren in Polish, aiming to keep alive the relationship between cultural heritage, patriotism and language.
Troupes of Polish Scouts were also established in both Perth and Melbourne to help pass on the values of patriotism and good citizenship to second generation Polish Australians. In Melbourne, the Polish community acquired 4.5 hectares of bushland in Healesville, 70 kilometres from Melbourne, to build a youth centre named 'Polana',15 where each summer, children of Polish post-war migrants could go to enjoy the environment and have the lessons of their Saturday classes in Polish language, history and geography reinforced. It is a beautiful facility, with a cottage for a caretaker who facilitates the use of the centre for any groups or organisations who require it. Instead of serving the needs of the Polish community only, 'Polana' is now open to the whole Australian community, thus providing a metaphor for the varied ways in which members of the Polish community have taken Australia into their hearts.
Over the forty years since they arrived in Fremantle, members of the 'General Langfitt Group' appear to have adapted remarkably smoothly, and successfully, to life in Australia. Given that they were initially considered to be a 'high risk' group of immigrants, a substantial proportion of whom had grown up in single-parent families, participants in this project were asked what factors may have contributed to this transition. The role of community organisations, particularly the Polish Scouting movement which focused upon youth, were emphasised by many people. Zofia Skarbek considered that the Polish Scouts fostered the young people's interests in music, acting and dancing and prepared them to become 'fully functional citizens'. In addition, the schools in the Polish settlements in India and Africa, where most of these young 'New Australians' had received their earliest formal education, 'had very high moral standards, with a strong focus on religious education: it was a moral fibre thing, not training us to become like nuns and brothers in Catholic schools'.
While all these factors were important, Zofia Skarbek summed up the sentiments of many of her compatriots by attributing the 'success' of the 'General Langfitt Group' primarily to:
our mothers. They were the ones who actually made it and made it fast. I think the way they brought us up was fantastic because they had very high standards, morals and ethics. There weren't too many troublemakers amongst their children so I think it was our upbringing. Our mothers had to be very tough to survive and go through Russia and bring us up in all of that.