A small remark in the 2013 TV documentary on the Somerton Man seems to have escaped everybody’s attention. I covered the documentary here at the time, but arguably the most interesting bit begins exactly five minutes into the video (transcript as follows):
Kate Thomson: And… there was home life, and there was outside life; but I grew up very much that there’s a barrier between the two, and the two you don’t integrate.
Charles Wooley (voiceover): Today, Kate remembers a mother who was loving, but secretive – so secretive, she now believes that her mother was a Soviet spy.
Kate Thomson: She certainly said once she was teaching English to newly arrived migrants, and at the time there’d been a small group coming from Russia into Australia, and as she said to me, “Ah, I’m surprised that I can still quite understand Russian”.
Charles Wooley (as interviewer): She dropped that bombshell!
Kate Thomson (reported speech): “Yeah, so when did you learn Russian?” “Well, that’s for me to know.”
At first sight, this would seem to achieve nothing apart from hosing a tankerful of petrol onto the already-long-burning conspiracy fires raging beneath the Somerton Man’s pyre-like heap of evidence. But in fact, if you carefully link what Kate Thomson is saying with the history of post-war migrants to Australia, a quite different picture emerges…
Postwar Migrants
I mentioned Ramunas Tarvydas’ (1997) “From Amber Coast to Apple Isle” here back in 2015 when I was first looking at the Electrolytic Zinc Co. of Australia’s mining operations in Rosebury and Risdon (both in Tasmania).
But Tarvydas’ book starts by describing how the very first wave of post-war Balts (i.e. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians) came to Australia, from their arrival by boat in Fremantle to being allocated work.
The migration scheme had been set up by Arthur Calwell, the Minister for Immigration: because Australia had to “populate or perish” (p.6), migration from the enormous numbers of displaced persons (“DP”s) throughout Europe was – though as politically sensitive an issue then as now – the only real option to try to lift the overall economy.
Tarvydas states that “the initial intake for Australia was restricted to single men and women between the ages of 18 and 40” (p.7). Calwell also put in place a selection policy that favoured those immigrants who happened to be “white-skinned, with blue eyes and blond hair”. Not something that modern historians would look on with any great admiration, let’s say. 🙁
The first group of migrants was known as “the First Transport or Transport I […] 729 men and 114 women” (p.7): these “First Swallows” arrived at Fremantle on 28th November 1947. Four days later, the Balts were put on the HMAS Kanimbla (an Aussie troop-carrier), arriving at Melbourne on 7th December 1947, whereupon they were taken to Bonegilla camp.
Tarvydas asserts that many of the Balts in the first waves “were political refugees rather than immigrants motivated by economics” (p.17): all the same, I’m fairly sure neither account captures the entire picture. Even so, though the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman was supposed to have carried only labourers and similar workers on its first migration run from Europe to Australia, this was clearly not the case. Many of the Balts on board had had professional careers: for example, a lady (Mrs Augustauskas) who had formerly been a pharmacist in Lithuania was initially given a cleaning job at Calvary Hospital (though she later “resat her examinations and became a fully qualified pharmacist” (p.18)).
And so the problem is…
Now that you can see the external history a little more clearly and specifically, do you see the problem with Kate Thomson’s “Soviet Spy” interpretation of what her mother Jo Thomson told her?
The Balts – who made up a very large part of the early waves of immigration into Australia – did not primarily speak Russian. And at that time (and for decades afterwards) there were no waves of Russian-speaking migrants washing onto Aussie shores.
It therefore seems highly likely to me that the migrants Jo Thomson would have been helping to learn English were Balts or possibly Poles, because they were “coming from [what had become annexed into] Russia into Australia”.
Adelaide Migrants
Postwar, the Commonwealth Migration Office was based in Adelaide. And at the beginning of 1948, it was decided that a camp should be built for migrants not too far from Adelaide: this was Woodside, but it was only opened in 1949 (so is out of our date range).
The first sight Adelaideans had of these post-war migrants was in January 1948, when a group of 65 young Balts who had been allocated to work for the Water Supply Department building a new pipeline from Happy Valley Reservoir were accommodated in tents in a paddock in Bedford Park, just south of Adelaide. The press took lots of admiring photos of the strapping young migrants:
But (just as Tarvydas says), they weren’t an obviously good fit for the work that was on offer. A spokesman for the Engineering and Water Supply Department noted: “The Balts are not very keen on pick and shovel work. Most of them are young intellectuals — musicians, draftsmen, surveyors, electricians, medical attendants, engineers, and students. Not one was a laborer by occupation. They were picked from the wrong section of the community from our point of view. We want laborers.”
Moreover, it quickly became clear that four weeks of English language classes at Bonegilla hadn’t really been enough: even an op-ed piece of the day thought that the authorities should do something about it (Why oh why? cont. p.94). The young lad Olaf Aerfeldt who was the Bedford Park Balt’s unofficial interpreter had only got there by chance, flipping a coin to choice between Australia and South America (pp.42-46): but they needed to learn English. And – as you can clearly see from this photo – they were anxious to learn, but had no lessons:
At this point, several local people – Mrs and Mrs Lyall Fricker, Peter McDonald and L. A. Tepper – stepped forward to offer their services as volunteer teachers. Though things seemed to have improved somewhat by May 1949.
Finally: I’ll leave the story of how 280 Polish ex-servicemen were discharged in Adelaide on 30th September 1947 for another day: they formed arguably the very first large wave of migrants from mainland Europe, predating the “First Swallows” by a few months. But who’s counting?
And so…
To my eyes, there seems to have probably been only a relatively small window when Jo Thomson would have been helping Adelaide migrants to learn English: late 1947 (when they started to arrive) to early 1950 (when the flow of big migration boats stopped). And there were basically no Russians at that time: mainly Balts and Poles.
If some of the migrants who had formerly lived in Bedford Park were asked if they remembered Nurse Thomson, what would they say? It would be interesting to find out, I think: it might give us a better idea of how that side of her life worked. It probably wouldn’t stop the crackling conspiracy fires (though these may well continue burning, regardless of whatever happens to be uncovered in the future), but it would be good to know, right?
Adelaide Railway Station (Again)
One last thing: while trawling through Trove, I found an Adelaide News article from 20th November 1948 about Balt women working in Adelaide Railway Station that I thought I’d share with you:
[Mrs Natalia Aerfeldt at top, Mrs Vera Plume at bottom left, and Mrs Anna Kirkmann at bottom right]
Three newly arrived Balt women working in the refreshment service at Adelaide Railway Station have husbands training as railway porters here.
A 17-year-old son of one couple is a youth cleaner in the department.
Mrs. Anna Kirkmann, who serves in the dining room, was a bank manager’s private secretary in [Estonia] before the war, and later worked for Unrra.
She arrived here with her husband, Paul Kirkmann, on Thursday as members of a party of 55 Balts.
Other railway family groups besides the Kirkmanns are Mr. Janis Plume, Mrs. Vera Plume, and their son, Roberts, who are
Latvians, and Mr. Bronius Lukavicius and Mrs. Jule Lukavicius, who are Lithuanians.
Mrs. Kirkmann is living with her brother at Glenelg. The married men and Roberts are at the railways hostel at Islington. The other women are in refreshment service quarters at Adelaide Station.
Balts with the railways total nearly 400. Seventy men are porters and cleaners; 100 are being trained for that work, and the remainder are divided between south-east gauge broadening and metropolitan maintenance work.
Mrs. Natalia Aerfeldt, also in this week’s party, is the mother of Olaf Aerfeldt, interpreter at the waterworks camp at Bedford Park. Olaf’s father has gone to Globe Timber Mills, Port Adelaide.
And so there you have it – even by late November 1948, Baltic migrants were working in Adelaide Railway Station, embedding themselves right into the very texture of the Somerton Man’s story.
Who’s to say that he himself wasn’t a migrant?
A lot of unrelated stuff, but …
My maternal grandparents (and at least the first of their 8 children + 2 of my grandmother’s siblings) were refugees from the war (from Latvia), with my maternal grandparents arriving in Sydney and later settling in Adelaide (along with another family who became such close friends they’re basically family). In fact according to family legend, my “vecmate” (grandmother) was quite the activist against the Russians. I’m not sure whether my paternal grandparents were fleeing the war (I assume they were too, but just not sure), however they moved first to England before moving out to Australia and settling in Melbourne. As far as I know, all of them were reasonably educated – on my mothers side an Engineer (who eventually got work at Chrysler/Mitsubishi – at Tonsley (just up the road from Bedford Park) but I think he may have started there as a factoryhand with his engineering background totally unrecognised) and a Teacher, and my fathers father was an Author, academic (and I think possibly playwright – and I think at one stage worked for the Consulate (as did an uncle on my mothers side)), I’m not certain whether his mum worked. so a lot of what you write here interests me greatly (but don’t worry, I’m not about to claim some ludicrous connection to SM – although my paternal grandmother lives at Somerton Park (she’s about 88 now, I think) and until the last 5 years still enjoyed walks along the stretch of beach between Glenelg and Brighton (I’m guessing not all in one hit – because that’s quite a distance at her age).).
AFAIK they were all multi lingual, speaking Latvian, Latgalian (I think recognised as a language rather than a dialect), Russian and German (and possibly French and other languages too).
You have to remember that for most of Latvia’s (and indeed the 3 Baltic States) history they have been oppressed – by Germans, Poles (I think), and of course the most by Russians. This means that the Russian language is fairly wide spread and most Balts (especially from eras of oppression) would be familiar with it. While it may seem funny to teach people language from something other than their native tongue, I would assume it’s a lot easier to find a Russian->English teacher than one-each of Latvian->English, Lithuanian->English, Estonian->English – as highlighted by the lack of a teacher in the article you cite.
One of the problems, however, is that for all their stories (3 of them are now deceased, so even the stories we have is someone else’s recollection of the account they were told) of those years it’s often hard to gauge the exact level of truth – partly because of exaggeration (not always deliberate), romanticisation (or embellishment in the memory) and an incredible paranoia and fear (of the Russians in particular). eg When my grandparents used to return to Latvia for visits they would pack coffee packets which (they claimed) would be taken by Russian customs, but would guarantee they don’t get held up necessarily. In their later years (and for the one still living now) they became paranoid – when my Mum passed away it was “the Russian mafia got her”, and my paternal grandmother is convinced that her room is bugged, and that her appliances are recording every conversation she has and reporting them back. My point is that the experience of Eastern Europe (and probably particularly the Baltic States) in the years between the wars and into WWII obviously left all sorts of psychological impact, and that stories from that generation are filled with allegory and legend-like extrapolation which, while based in truth, have actually roamed away from the fact quite a lot to present themselves (and their compatriots) as the heroes, and the Russians as the unnecessarily (and unreasonably) harsh persecutor (which again, based in some fact, no doubt) – and that’s before they hit the age where the paranoia sets in spinning those stories in an other direction as well (where even some random street vendor was clearly a spy for the Kremlin).
I guess the point is (and I nearly made it on an earlier post) is that it’s difficult to get an accurate idea of what life was like for these refugees, beyond the official record (and there must be a good number in Adelaide, because I’m constantly surprised to find other Latvians everywhere, and I think the “Migration Museum” in Kintore Ave has stronger Latvian and Baltic links than some far larger countries/areas). Until your last couple of posts it never really occured to me that the Migration Museum and our local Maritime Museum might have some interesting avenues of enquiry (the Maritime Museum has a fairly extensive digital record of passenger manifests – although I’d imagine they’d be available online these days too, maybe start at http://maritime.history.sa.gov.au/publications )
The Poles too, are clearly not the greatest fans of Russia. There is an old Polish saying something along the lines of: “The Russians are not our friends, they are our brothers. At least you can pick your friends.”
Actually, that DB seems to be only pax arriving in SA…..I thought they had a more extensive record including the rest of the country….my bad.
milongal: thank you for sharing so much of your family’s experience of being migrants, both the ups and the downs. Memoirs (as per Clive James) are necessarily unreliable: in so many cases, people contort their own past to make it acceptable to their present self. And that’s OK: it’s just one of the many things that each makes being an historian that much harder. 🙂
There are probably many different avenues that could lead us to the Somerton Man’s identity independently, but for reasons of historical happenstance, they are all temporarily blocked. In posts like this, I’m trying to build up a more reliable picture of different aspects of what was going on at the time, so that we have a practical historical framework to work within and to reconcile other data with.
I guess in a roundabout way the only “useful” thing I was flagging above (other than that stories evolve beyond the facts over time – which I’m sure you see often enough 😛 ) is that to me it’s quite plausible that you’d teach Russian->English to a group from Eastern Europe who are not necessarily Russian and whose first language is almost certainly not Russian. Firstly it would likely have been hard to found translators for any of the Baltic languages before the mass immigration of the war and there is a reasonable likelihood that the immigrants understood Russian. Secondly, the government factor…(I can imagine the public servants having a meeting “Where do they come from?”; “Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia”; “Where’s that?”; “Uhm, all states of Russia, I think”; “Oh, they’re all Russians, cool our mate Cheknov can do some translating for them, I’m sure he’ll be cool”).
I equally wouldn’t be surprised if more recently the Vietnamese were given Chinese translators, and I’d be interested to know what sort of translators our more recent immigrants from Sudan and other African nations might have had….(you’d sort of like to think we’re getting better at not tarring people all with the same brush, but I’ve been in the public service and I trust them to mess anything up)
No waves of Russian migrants washing onto Aussie shores? 🙂
But there were plenty of Russian ballet dancers in Aussie shores!
Russians introduce Australia to Ballet! There was no Ballet in Australia till arrival of Russians after the collapse of the Russian Empire (1917-1922). Russian Ballet was taught in Australian studios around 1920-1950 and became what we now today The Ballet of Australia.
Biggest Russian Ballet Company (“Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo” later “Original Ballet Russe”) three times (from 1936-1940) visited Australia and some of the dancers decided to stay there forever… and they founded Baravansky Ballet.
So plenty of possibilities to meet Russians, learn little bit of language, fall in love with ballet and sent children to Ballet Studios ! 🙂
Lelde: that’s more of a tiny splash than a full-blown wave, I’d say. 🙂
Nick,
Milongal’s point about coming via England is an important one, I think. Those who had escaped Europe and been given residence in England were (as far as I know) entitled to come at will and with an assisted passage as other English were. The point about not recognising qualifications gained elsewhere is important, and a shameful aspect of the whole business. Just from personal experience: one of my close friends,of Lithuanian refugee parents, had a mother who was a surgeon in Lithuania but here in the 1950s when they arrived she would have had to re-enter the university and begin the medical course again – and even then a woman was expected to leave the work-force on marrying. So that woman became a shop-manager. One of my teachers had been a professor of psychology, but the same strictures prevented his working as anything other than a labourer. He then decided to work as a stained-glass artist and was finally able to teach art in a private secondary school (‘private school’ in Australia = ‘public school’ in England).
Fifties’ migration brought a lot of people from southern Italy and Greece to the eastern states, though perhaps not to Adelaide which prided itself on its ‘blonde haired, blue-eyed and English free men’ image (or so the eastern states’ legend has it).
Sorry for the complete silence from my part. Someone felt the need to hack into my email account for whatever reason. I’ve been in touch with my email provider and the way the person did it was by going to the password reset option and answering a secret question. I am born and based in New Zealand so there is not many main cities to choose from. They then changed my password and all my credentials. After a long battle and copies of my passport having to be manually sent in the post I am back into my email account. It’s now very secure. Please would every be cautious with their email accounts and review their security settings. I run a farming business so it causes absolute havoc.
@Dave:
Security tip number 1: The answers to “secret questions” don’t have to make sense or be true….Just choose an answer you’ll remember:
“In what street did you grow up?” “Pineapples”.
“What primary school did you go to?” “42”
etc….
There have been lots of arguments in my family over the last couple of months regarding my Grandmother, Poetry Books and The Somerton Man of Adelaide. My family are very confused as to what is going on and my Grandmothers History. I’ve never really delved into my grandparent’s affairs because there has never been a need to. My grandparents were married for 60+ years and were really happy together. They worked really hard and built up a great life for themselves. They had 5 children and there are many grandchildren including myself around and even great-grandchildren around now. My mum was the first born child and after some research and simple mathematics I have worked out she was conceived before my grandparents wedding. I am very close to my mum and we have been talking about the situation in great lengths. It’s actually brought us closer and that’s a great thing. My mum is a medical professional and is highly academic and works with people from many backgrounds. So she is very clued up on many matters when it comes to law and social development etc. My Gran will not open up to me anymore about the poetry books and is claiming that her memory is failing. Other family members that go to see her don’t have any problems at all. We had a big family meeting last month and my uncle remembers a conversation when he was a child that my granddad made about my mum. The comment was that she was not his daughter. It all arose because my mum had a relationship in her teenage years that my granddad didn’t approve of and it was all said in the heat of the moment. My granddad had the most amazing relationship with mum and absolutely idolised her. Teenagers will be teenagers !. My mum has recently gone to see my Gran and because of the whole situation has removed her from her nursing home and she is now living with my mum. I have no doubt in my mind that the Somerton Man is my mums biological father. Gran has been opening up about events prior to her marriage to my granddad. She is opening up very slowly and it is something she has blocked in her mind for a lifetime. At this stage I know this individual deserted her when she needed him the most. I am slowly compiling locations as to where The Somerton Man was i.e. Camps & Countries. Everything my Gran says is jumbled because she feels under pressure. I have shown her the various photos of The Somerton Man and the look on her face says it all really. My mum would like to do a DNA Test to find out if there is a connection, does anyone know how we get access to the sample results that have already been taken? Derek Abbott is a member of the public and we have just as much right to have access to whatever is available. My mum has already written to The Attorney General of South Australia over the matter. I will keep you posted as things develop.
Dave: my best advice would be to concentrate less on the conclusions and far more on establishing the tiny details about what actually happened. Finding out whether or not your Gran was connected to the Somerton Man in some way would only be the end product of (what may well be a long, slow and probably uncomfortable) process, not something to jump at in the middle. Hope that helps!
We my mum doesn’t mess around and she is currently doing a DNA test with my aunts and uncles. They’re all supportive and it doesn’t change anything. That’s where we as a family are starting at. Mum will be receiving a genetic chart too on her family history. My gran said that the Somerton man was her strength to live and survive. I know he originated from Poland but he could have come from many countries around Poland. Back then the trauma must have been horrific. It was a battle for survival. It’s sad he ended up on the beach alone. Whatever the circumstances I really hope he didn’t die alone or suffer.
Nick: I’ve been reading up on the family of the Glenelg nurse and we don’t want things to end up like that. Lots of cruel things have gone around and it’s also embarrassing the way they have behaved. My mum is a very patient person and has experience in her job of relating to people. It shouldn’t take too long with Gran.
Milongal: I’ve learnt that trick now!
I’ve got her journey details now.
She started off in Poland and then transisted through Russia to Persia. From Persia she sailed on a horrondous boat trip to Bombay. From
Bombay she departed on an American ship sailing New Zealand soldiers home.
Dave: if you want to understand more about the Polish Children’s Camp at Pahiatua and your Gran’s war-time experience, you really ought to get yourself a copy of “New Zealand’s First Refugees: Pahiatua’s Polish Children”.
I bought myself a copy, but the contents are freely available on the Internet – http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-PolFirs.html . Some of the early chapters give harrowing accounts of what happened in Poland right at the start of everything… I’d strongly recommend you read them to get an idea of the kind of thing your Gran went through (and very possibly why she doesn’t want to talk much about it).
I have the greatest admiration for the resilience the Polish children showed, and also for the hospitality extended towards them by the New Zealand people. I wish more people knew about what happened there.
A very interesting case scenario; concerning Europe’s so called displaced, people and also refugees of a different category, nominally those of mixed origin, including many Jews who had survived the haulocaust and made it to receptive nations including Australia from 1946. There were others who made their way out by other means, even pre war and most had either come by prevailing on the nonchalance of their prefered host or effecting their arrival by stealth and false pretence. Some that settled soon after hostilities had ceased could be described as oportunistic queue jumpers with money, others precured false identities to evade arrest for war crimes and there were many of these who eventually settled in Australia, becoming model citizens and captains of industry even. However there were also local entrepenerial types who saw the encroaching chaos and took advantage accordingly. Ruthless crime cartels who had during wartime dealt in fencing stolen military materiel, ration cards and other mundane dishonesty, now turned their hand to getting hold of government papers, stamps and seals that might be used to secure travel documents for those intending new Australians who had kept their money from the nazis. They could either recruit the many migrant service officials within the relevent government department, who desired to make for a brighter post war future in private employment. Alternately the crooks could obtain them from people who had recently been granted ctizenship for resale on the open market, but how to do that? one might ask; buy them, steal them, extort for them or kill for them, would seem to be the appropriate response and all three would certainly have been used, depending on degrees of ruthlessness the cons and blood workers were prepared to go to I guess.