A GIRL cuddling a lamb and sign-carrying demonstrators are among those pictured in a new book chronicling life at the Bonegilla migrant centre.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Border historian Bruce Pennay has compiled Picturing and Re-picturing Bonegilla, an 80-page volume filled with images of the migrant reception centre which processed 320,000 new settlers from 1947 to 1971.
Having penned booklets about different aspects of life at Bonegilla, Dr Pennay wanted to write a more complete publication to highlight immigration and its impact on Australia.
Sourcing his photographs from the national archives, newspapers and Albury Library Museum’s Bonegilla Collection, Dr Pennay relished the process of producing the book which features 240 images.
“I think all historians like getting a huge amount of material and trying to make sense of it,” Dr Pennay said, as he held a proof of the book.
“Constructing a narrative out of a huge number of photographs is a challenge.”
Among the more intriguing illustrations is a photograph of young girl, Wanda Skowronska, who migrated from eastern Europe with her family.
She embraced a wary lamb for an image used to advertise the idyllic rural qualities of Australia to prospective migrants in the mid-1950s.
“She says ‘I can remember the photo being taken, but now all I can see is the terrified lamb’,” Dr Pennay said of Dr Skowronska, who became a Sydney psychologist.
Bonegilla attracted international attention in July 1961 when angry migrants protested a lack of jobs after having been drawn to the country by work prospects.
Windows and street lights were broken, offices smashed and a policeman suffered a dislocated shoulder in the uproar.
Dr Pennay’s book includes two never-before-published photos taken by German migrant Friedrich Drehlich of a demonstration march at the time of the rioting.
Another episode which piqued Dr Pennay’s interest was the tale of Edward Golec and his widowed mother Maria, refugees from Poland.
Their identity cards include a two-year-old Edward’s fingerprint next to a headshot of him looking stern and Maria lacking the joy evident in another photo that was taken before she lost her husband.
Dr Pennay’s book is being published by Wodonga Council and will be sold at the Bonegilla Block 19 visitors’ centre.
Picturing and Re-picturing Bonegilla will be officially launched next Wednesday at the Albury Library Museum from 5.15pm as part of the Write Around the Murray Festival.
Its theme this year is “unsettling the story … memories and imagination”.