Conditions

Table of Contents

Conditions

The official processing of migrants took a few days. Newcomers had to attend a medical examination and X-ray for tuberculosis. They were tested for language competence and allocated language classes, registered at the Commonwealth Employment Service and interviewed for a job, registered with social services for unemployment and child endowment payments, and for an Alien Registration Certificate allowing them to live in Australia.

English competence was ‘a necessary commodity in the normal working life of all Australians’ – ‘No English – No Job.’

The Centre:

Bonegilla was made up of twenty four separate accommodation blocks. Each block had several long huts arranged around a central kitchen and dining area, with showers, a laundry, and deep pit latrines.

The corrugated iron huts were unlined with ventilation gaps between the roof and walls.

Accommodation

Accommodation was basic. The sleeping and eating quarters were sparsely furnished tin huts which were hot in summer and cold in winter.

Communal living meant sharing bathrooms, toilets and eating places with changing sets of strangers. Most blocks of huts had deep-pit latrines and old fashioned urinals. There were basic showers and one bath in each accommodation block.

Complaints included lack of privacy, queuing – especially if sinks or toilets were blocked, and the distance of toilets from the sleeping huts which were 100-200 metres away. Chamber pots were eventually issued.

Quotes

We all got the runs at Bonegilla. The toilets were just a shed with a pit in the ground, and dreadful spiders were waiting for you.

- Leonard Ostrowski, Poland, 1950

I have many memories of Bonegilla; some cherished, some not. I remember spending two weeks in hospital with very bad sunburn, snakes in toilets, big spiders in showers.

- Siegrun Baker, nee Billen

My early memories are of extreme cold. Our warm clothing was not available for some time, and there were frost-flowers on the inside of the unlined walls. I touched them and my fingers stuck.

- Sika Kerry O.A.M.