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Mar 26,2006 - Apr 2,2006 |
17 - Immigrants held in Camp Bonegilla
Italians in Australia not allowed to drink in pubs or speak their language in public
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-11-17
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Italian immigrants arriving in Camp Bonegilla
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Bonegilla means many things: a prison camp during World War II, then an arrival centre for foreign workers and their families when the Australian government launched, in 1947, an organic immigration policy. The times and names have changed, but the substance is more or less the same because Bonegilla, 400 kilometres from Melbourne, remained for thousands of Italians the place of their first traumatic encounter with this country.
Debarking after 40 days on the open seas, those who had neither friends nor relatives that could offer them accommodation were loaded onto trains. Those trains advanced slowly through a countryside where the dominant hues were red and yellow. Every once in a while, a little green was seen in the distance. In the end, the barbed wire fences of Bonegilla appeared, and in the wooden cabins our emigrants waited to be called up for work. Some of them waited for months.
"When they arrived," says Maria Tence, co-ordinator in charge of community relations for Melbourne's Museum of Immigration, "the men were separated from the women; the boys over 16 went with their fathers because they were considered adults and could be employed. Sometimes they were sent quite far away from the place where the rest of their family had settled. Then they were given pillows, blankets, bed-sheets, dishes, and bowls. Everybody had to help keep the camp tidy, so shovels, brooms, rakes and pails were also distributed. If they got lost or damaged, they had to be replaced by the person they had been given to: their value was deducted from the one pound per week that the government gave to immigrants. Often, due to a lost shovel or a dented pail, all that was left of that pound were a few shillings, just enough for a packet of cigarettes or a postage stamp."
A soldier's life, little money, poor food and much boredom waiting for a job; all the ingredients for a riot were there. The first one happened in 1952, when the demand for foreign labour plunged due to the great recession, and the few requests coming in systematically excluded Italians and Greeks. The anger exploded because the awful food. The mess hall was destroyed and the army had to be called in. Another riot took place in 1961, for the same reasons both evident and hidden, again with Italians and, this time, the Germans. There were brawls and mass arrests.
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