From Lipari With Love (The Immigrants Daughter)

So it was on May 29th that my brother John — then five — and myself — nearly 10 years old — with my Mum and Dad sailed out of Southampton Harbour on the former troop ship, the HMT Asturias, on a sunny day along with my Nan, Prim Scarlett, a widow after my grandad Bob died from TB five years earlier. I was old enough to feel the stress my parents were under in the weeks and days leading up to our departure. Then all of us saying goodbye to family and friends at the Rockferry Railway Station.

My mum was never to see her own mother again. But when we set sail from Southampton, over time a calm descended on my parents and an excitement gradually began to creep into our everyday life on board ship. My dad especially enjoyed life at sea again after all those years in the navy. Mum with no more food ration coupons to worry about or daily home duties relaxed into being looked after. And us kids, well, dad, even though he had to leave school at 12 years of age, had sailed around the world and told us many stories of countries we were passing; places he had visited in peacetime; seas we were sailing through and countries we would visit.

We watched flying fish racing the ship in the Mediterranean Sea; the fun all the children had of participating in activities organized by the crew like being hosed on deck when we got closer to hotter climes and crossing the equator ceremony. We even brought our mattresses up on deck when it got too hot below to sleep. This was great fun — like camping under the stars and in the middle of the ocean. Sailing through the Suez Canal our ship broke down and we would throw coins into the canal and Egyptian kids would dive in to catch them before they reached the bottom.

Adults would barter for goods pulled up on ropes to the decks from the small trading boats. Life was so very exciting and the sky so blue and sunlight so bright and warm. So very different from home. And we had our first exotic fruit sitting on the floor of our cabin with a towel around us …a big sweet juicy pineapple — the first one I had ever seen. In Ceylon we were picked up by a kind British lady who drove us around the city showing us the sights and invited us back to her apartment for afternoon tea but not before we had a toilet stop at a local school for my brother and I.

We met the headmaster who was very obliging and I was introduced to an Asian style toilet for the first time. Sailing into view off the Western Australian coast we were met by a pod of whales travelling north to their breeding grounds. Nan went to live there for a few months but soon moved up to Queensland where her two younger sisters had settled after marrying two Aussie soldiers in Ireland after WW1. Before we knew it we were on a train inside Station Pier with hundreds of others bound for Albury and the Bonegilla Migrant Hostel for one week, then down again to the Ballarat Hostel in Wendouree.

These two train journeys seemed endless to us kids. I remember Mum telling us to keep looking out of the window because we were sure to see a kangaroo or two hoping by. We never did of course.

There was one image though that I saw that has stayed with me to this day. It was of a two story house surrounded by bush seemingly in the middle of nowhere with iron lace work all around the verandas. Well on our first night in our Nissan hut it snowed for the first time in Ballarat for 13 years and we only had a two bar radiator that had to be switched off when lights were out.

But Mum and Dad both got jobs within a fortnight. Mum in the Hostel Canteen and Dad with a fencing gang working in the bush, sleeping in tents in the middle of winter. And John and I were settled into school — at least I was. It only worked once. The nuns were very kind to us giving us all our uniforms and shoes. The school was named after another Irish exile St. All work done by Mum and Dad after work and on weekends even making their own roof tiles, twelve each evening, with a hand machine passed around between fellow migrants in the area.

It took a long, long time but it became a lovely home for us all and more beautiful today as my family live there now with renovations and extensions. Both my brother and I were given the best of educations and we were given every support for whatever career we wanted to pursue. Mum for those first few years was extremely homesick and letters in those days took much longer than today. My Dad was a driven man to provide a home debt free and to give us the gift of the education he never had all through the hardship of recessions and unemployment in the building industry when jobs came to an end.

Dad died in as a result of a car accident but he did live to see and give horsey rides to his first grandchild Jeffrey and along with Mum to never miss an AFL game where his son John played full back for the Great Geelong Footy Club.

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He lived in Australia for only 20 years — so hard to believe when he had accomplished so very much in such a short period of time. Mine would be so proud of their Children and grandchildren. I was 24 when I left England, with my then husband of a year, to move to Australia. He had a friend who had already immigrated to Sydney who loved it and we thought we would like the lifestyle — it would be great to get out of the cold! After a week we found somewhere to live, jobs each and our new life began!

It was 90 degrees Fahrenheit and the sun was shining as we came into Sydney Harbour early in the morning. Our first impressions were the weather was great and we thought how different it was to England. Everything was more relaxed and easy. Reason For Leaving Homeland: Bohumil was born at Sekule in within the then Communist Czechoslovakia.

Sekule is a small town not far from the river Morava, which flows in to the Danube and forms the border between the now Slovak Republic, Austria and Czech republic. His early years saw him witness many harsh realities of war and its countless victims. He too, had a near death experience at 13 years old, when a Russian soldier held a pistol to his head and threatened to blow his head off, after being caught running out the back of his home to ring the church bell, alerting the towns folk to another occupation of their village.

As he grew under the auspices of war torn Europe, he began working as an apprentice mechanic at the age of 12 or 13 and spent four hours a day, by train, travelling to and from his place of work. Often due to the long days he would fall asleep on the return journey home, end up at the end of the rail line, where he had to sleep on the empty train with no means to communicate his whereabouts to his parents.

In his later teen years Bohumil embraced the virtues of democracy, where he eventually found himself picked up off the street by the authorities, spending 4 months in a communist mine due to his emerging beliefs. After his release, he and several friends from neighbouring towns saved up enough money and swam across the river Morava to Austria, with little more than the shirts on their backs and at the risk of certain death.

Due to the fear of reprisals against his family, Bohumil told his parents he was going to watch a football match in the next town….. During his ship journey he was amazed at the flying fish that leapt from the water in the middle of the ocean. He disembarked in Melbourne, Australia on the 5th of May , 25 days before his 21st birthday. He as many others, then spent time at Bonegilla in Victoria before beginning his immigration contract building the rail roads in the centre of Australia, just south of the Northern Territory Border.

At this stage his English was very broken and relied on basic forms of communication. His experiences working under the ILO contracts in central Australia in a very harsh and inhospitable environment saw him work and socialise with Native Australians. Bohumil worked hard to create a new life a world away from his own and sacrificed many things such as family that should not be taken for granted. He eventually settled in Hahndorf, South Australia as the small German town reminded him of his homeland. Bohumil suddenly passed away in Hahndorf, on 10 December His sons remain very proud of the man he was and the sacrifices he made to provide a better future for his family.

Bohumil was a proud, strong and committed person who transitioned his unwavering and resilient morals and beliefs to the next generation of Australia. As a teenager he was called up to service in the Hungarian army.

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He lost an eye on the battlefield. But Hungary was not the country he grew up in, for the Iron Curtain across had fallen over Europe and by then Hungary had a communist government under Soviet control. Unfortunately, individualism did not sit well with the new communist rulers of Hungary and he attracted the attention of the authorities and was arrested.

On a train on his way to a work camp for re-education, he jumped from a moving carriage and eventually he got across the border to Austria, where he sought asylum. Once in Australia, he spent several years on construction sites in Tasmania before obtaining a diploma in physical education from Melbourne University in He was appointed gym master at Christ Church Grammar School by the then new headmaster, Peter Moyes, who along with most of his teaching staff at the time were ex-military officers from the Australian Army and Air Force.

Return to glorious Lipari - Los Angeles Times

Among the many hundreds of boys who went through the school during his tenure, his charges included Olympian and former hockey coach Ric Charlesworth and gymnast Lindsay Nylund, who won silver in the Commonwealth Games and was an Olympian in Moscow. He became a living legend of the school and around the Claremont area of Perth, where he was seen riding his iconic bicycle everywhere. Akos was a symbol of the post-World War II migrants who came to Australia from eastern Europe to make a new life and who contributed so much to Australia and our way of life.

Akos famously brought eastern European gymnastics to Christ Church and Perth. Within a few years, the teams from the school were winning the WA gymnastics championships and continued to do so for a long time. Thousands of students benefited from his teaching methods with challenges to climb the ropes to the ceiling of the gym and use various kinds of equipment. Akos, literally, as he had lost an eye in WWII, and figuratively was one-eyed in his determination to drive his students to extend themselves to achieve physical feats, generated confidence in them to face the challenges of life.

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He required boys to stand at attention when he spoke to them. He had always been a strong philosophical believer in the individual and encouraged his students to follow their beliefs and achieve their potential. In retirement, Akos worked at the school as a handyman looking after the rowing shells until a few years ago when he retired to the St Louis estate across the Stirling Highway from the school where he had devoted most of his life.

Not long before he died, he suffered a fall and passed away in the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, in August Akos Kovacs OAM was a great man dedicated to bringing out the best in his boys and giving them the confidence to tackle the obstacles life would bring them by forcing them to extend themselves to reach their potential, not just physically but psychologically. Alan Eggleston- Submitted by Attila Urmenyhazi. Berislav Babic known as Bery escaped from the former Yugoslavia with 2 friends to avoid having to go into the army.

They stole a boat and with only a compass and some food, sailed across the Adriatic into Ancona Italy, and into the arms of the Caribinieri. Thus began a series of interments in various Italian camps for Displaced Persons always referred to as P. Next to the island of Lipari, again in an old castle, and finally to Bagnoli, a much larger camp near Naples. At some stage the Redcross arranged for their immigration, one friend to Sth America and the other and Bery, to Australia. From Trieste they boarded S. Bery was passenger No He was transported by train to Bonegilla siding, where he transferred to buses and Bonegilla C.

He was proud of the fact that he was able to obtain work in Western Victoria, after only a few months, and was never without a source of income. His memories of Bonegilla were faint …learning English …. He also owned the Tabou night club in Cooma, before settling in Melbourne, where he built his proudly occupied..

After his retirement in the late s he made several trips back to Croatia, visiting all his interment camps in Charles was born in Canada but his family returned to England because his mother, Eleanor Nellie found Toronto too cold. Nellie died in from The Spanish Flu and was pregnant at the time when Dad was 9. His 2 younger brothers, Frank and Tom, went into foster care. Their father remarried in to Mabel Annie Oaks and the 5 boys were taken home. Arthur and Mabel had 2 more children, Albert Len and Doreen.

An uncle gave Dad five pounds and that was all he owned on his arrival. Their brother Arthur followed. He was not too impressed with Australia at first as he was very homesick, and tried to save his fare to return to England, without any degree of success. Nor was he impressed with the bush, having arrived directly from London. Dad arrived in December and started working on a farm immediately. When Dad had a nose bleed due to the heat he sat under a tree and the farmer told him to stop being a lazy sod and get back to work.

However, once the rest of his family arrived in they also went to Macksville. Charles then settled happily in Australia and never returned to England. In the early s the family moved to Sydney. At that point Charles went to North Queensland cane cutting, sending his wages back to Sydney to help his family during the depression.

His brother Arthur decided Australia was not for him and returned to England by stowing away on a ship. Smallpox broke out on the ship and Arthur was discovered. He was taken off the ship at Vancouver and as Canada was his birthplace he was left there.

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He made his way across Canada to the east coast and returned to England. In Charles met Edith Brook and when they decided to marry he sent his wages to her for banking. They married in and had one daughter, Anne Marie in He worked under the name of Joe Brook for many years until he could acquire his own medal. Later he worked under his own name but was always known as Joe.

When containers became the way of things on the wharves he learned to operate the machinery to load the containers. As there were not enough men with the knowledge to operate that machinery he was kept on for 2 or 3 years after retirement age until enough operators had been trained. My family left Paris because times were hard we went to live with family in Italy. This was a three bedroom apartment and there were ten people living in it. We were poor but very happy with a large extended family, no way of finding private rentals. This was exiting being on the ship Angelina for thirty days — one small cabin with bunk beds.

This was luxury for us and fun. My Father believed that he could claim land like the American Pioneers. It was exciting but we were surprised to see a city where we were expecting to see bush. Once Italy was knocked out of the war and joined the Allies, life became a little easier, allowing Joe Megna, enemy alien, to become Joe Megna, munitions worker, making flamethrowers.

The family regrouped in Five Dock, Joe worked in a milk bar, and the small house became a staging post for many Italian "paesani" who streamed into Australia after the war.

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There are now more people from Lipari living in the Canada Bay area than on the island. Megna met his wife, Frances, on the back of a Bedford truck crammed with family and friends on a farm visit, and they were married in St Mary's Cathedral in Joe and Amedeo set themselves up as carpenters. They built a small factory at the rear of their adjoining homes, employed men, and built kitchen cupboards and display counters for fruit shops. Despite a constant battle with Crohn's disease, which required numerous abdominal operations, he kept working and during the '60s took his young family around Australia.

In true Italian style, several families travelled together in convoys of caravans and other vehicles. In the s the brothers began building project homes before bad health forced Joe to slow down - temporarily. He managed his daughter Maria's music store, and forgetting his health problems, was soon delivering pianos up flights of stairs with his son Michael.

Years of helping immigrants and running businesses got him elected. In Joe and Frances returned to Italy. They wanted to see where they had been born, but had no idea where to look. Cousins, aunts and uncles pieced their past together for them. Megna never really retired. He would pause for a while, then begin again. He opened a giftware shop, had another stomach operation in the mids, then a heart triple bypass, then built his son's house. He made Michael promise that he would never sell the Great North Road property where the Megnas lived and worked for over 60 years.