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Well, Arthur Calwell is really the instigator and the manager of the post-war immigration programme. And he insists that he wants to take people into Australia to help defend it. They're just coming out of the Second World War, and they've been scared of being invaded. And it sounded a good idea to build up the defence forces.
And the second thing he wanted was to have a bigger migrant-- a bigger workforce available to help with post-war reconstruction. And the other two big motives, to defend Australia and to help establish a workforce for post-war reconstruction. And of those two, it's the second one that really appeals to the government and to Calwell They basically are about getting more people in here so they can do the jobs that are needed in Australia to boost our primary production, to start our secondary industries. They needed a bigger workforce.
Bonegilla was the largest and longest-lasting reception centre. Altogether, the government opened 23 accommodation centres all over Australia. Bonegilla was the largest, and in the network of other migrant camps, it would send people out to them. And it was also the longest lasting. It went from 1947 through to '71.
It's not used much now, but 20 years ago this railway line brought hundreds of migrants every day to Bonegilla. Mario Gicelli was one of them. They had hardly any money and few possessions. 10,000 people thrown together in bleak, barrack-type huts in dry, desolate Northeastern Victoria. Bonegilla was to be their launching pad into a new country which needed them as much as they needed it.
For some, the barbed-wire fence around the camp must have been a grisly reminder of what they'd fled. But, inhospitable as it was, Bonegilla was a chance to start again.
And in many ways, this is a kind of war memorial. It shows you what happens to civilian populations who are displaced by war. They're sent halfway around the world.
Then, about 1951, when that scheme begins to slow down, Australia wants to continue to take in migrants. So it looks to assisting people to come, so there are the assisted migrants. And for that, they go to various countries and sign agreements. They go to Italy, and Greece, and Netherlands. They go to Sweden, and Norway. They go to a whole lot of European countries and sign agreements, and they take people from there.
So if you like, the displaced come because there's nowhere else to go. It's not that they're attracted to Australia, it's just they have to get out of Europe. Then there's the assisted migrants, and they're coming because they think they might get a job, that they might better themselves by coming to Australia. So you've got two distinct groups.
Whatever you did, lounging around, playing soccer, or just waiting to get out, you did it inside the barbed-wire fence, and you took orders from the clusters of loudspeakers that covered the camp's 600 dry, windswept acres.
It was very, very hot. Millions of flies, dust, the camp didn't look as it is today. Well, you walked in and find a few banks, six or — to eight people had to be accommodated there. You, you were just wondering whether you had done the right thing by coming. But then again, it was your decision, and you thought it was going to be only for a short time. You had to make something out of your life.
People had a lot of challenges, and usually they met them. Well, the big challenge for the non-British people that came here, and I should have made that point earlier, the nationalities that I've been describing were non-British, usually non-English speaking. So what was the biggest challenge? I was in a country that didn't speak my language.
And that must have been very hard, particularly for an older person, trying to learn a new language. And yet, as they kept telling you, no English, no job. And we all say no, no English, no job, and no life beyond the home. You couldn't join into community life. You couldn't have friends or neighbours if you couldn't speak to them. So English, learning English, was probably the biggest challenge they had to face.
Another big challenge, of course, the jobs they sent to were, on the Australian scale, lower paid. And a lot of them stayed in those jobs all their lives. When there was a review in 1971 of, Where Do Australians Work? they found that migrants were filling the jobs that were least desirable.
Their children go to the camps tiny state school, which, since it opened in 1952, has taught over 12,000 children their first words of English, and the first basic facts about their new country. Bonegilla has seen lots of people since it opened its doors to the world in 1947. Before that, it was an army camp. And on December 17, after 24 years and 320,000 migrants, it will be an army camp again.
Now, in Australia there's an enormous proportion of people, now, who have been migrants, or one of their parent has been a migrant. And it's important for us to try to understand, what does it mean to be a migrant? What are the challenges of being a migrant? And Bonegilla is the only place on the national estate where you can kind of puzzle through what migration meant, not only to Australia, but means to the people who come here.
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