The primary set of documents covering Charles Mikkelsen’s life is in the NAA, with barcode 31817302. This is mainly comprised of single-page memos bouncing between various government departments during 1937 to 1940 as they processed his application for Australian citizenship. The NAA also has a two-page document from 1932 relating to Mikkelsen’s arrival on the Tancred (barcode 5511023).

Note that some online family trees (such as here) give his birthplace as “Vardø”, but I don’t know how to reconcile that with the “Bassjordan” (?) he gave on his passport.

I used the above sources (along with other archival sources where possible) to build up a timeline for what he was doing. Entries in the following that are only a page number refer to the NAA 31817302 (1937-1940) item.

Charles Mikkelsen Timeline

17th July 1902 – Born in “Bassjordan”, Norway. (1932 p.1)

Jan / Feb 1924 – Norwegian steamship Bessa – deserted at Port Adelaide. Went up country to Clare, returned to Adelaide some months later. (p.30) He worked “clearing of land in S. Aus.” (p.34)

“Late 1925” [Mikkelsen probably meant “Late 1924”] – American steamer Eastern Sea – signed on in Sydney.

13th Nov 1924 – American steamer Eastern Sea – Charles Mikkelsen arrived in New York from Sydney. He was 5’8″ tall (Ancestry.com).

12th May 1926 – Discharged from Eastern Sea (1932 p.2, pencil)

July 1930 – Norwegian oil tanker Turicum – signed on at Melbourne (1932 p.1)

12th July 1930 – Turicum – left Melbourne (1932 p.2) and returned to Norway (p.34)

9th January 1932 – Norwegian steamer Tancred – landed in Adelaide. Last address on passport: “Löberg – Villa, Solheim, Bergen” (1932 p.1)

11th January 1932 – Norwegian steamer Tancred – Signed off in Adelaide. Passport stamped by Customs in Port Adelaide. Valid for “Australia via Holland Belgium for emigration”. Valid until 11th December 1932. 170cm tall (i.e. 5’8″).

“March 1935” – employed for about a month as a painter in the renovation of Customs House in Newcastle NSW. (p.30)

10th April 1935 – Norwegian tanker Herborg – Charles Mikkelsen signed on as a seaman in Newcastle. (p.30)

15th March 1937 – steamer Herborg from Singapore – expected in Auckland. (New Zealand Herald).

17th March 1937 – steamer Herborg – Charles Mikkelsen deserted at Auckland. Ran away. Did “farm work in the Waikato” for some months. (New Zealand Herald)

22nd July 1937 – arrested at Frankton. Was to be held no more than six months while awaiting a suitable Norwegian ship to be deported on. (Same New Zealand Herald article as 17th March 1937 entry).

[7th August 1937 – Norwegian tanker SS Svenor – arrived in Auckland from Balikpapan at 12:50pm. (Sydney Morning Herald and Papers Past).]

14th August 1937 – Norwegian tanker SS Svenor – completed discharge of petrol from Balikpapan and departed for that port. (Auckland Star)

24th August 1937 – SS Svenor – Charles Mikkelsen put ashore on Thursday Island with suspected appendicitis, and immediately admitted to Torres Strait Hospital. (p.37)

10th September 1937 – Discharged from hospital. (p.37)

25th September 1937 – SS Taiping – Departed Thursday Island.

3rd October 1937 – SS Taiping – Arrived in Sydney, stayed in Sailor’s Home. (p.34)

(About three weeks later) – took a job at Dalcross Private Hospital in Killara (p.34, p.30)

“February 1938” – the date that Mikkelsen’s still-unnamed fiancée intended to come across from New Zealand to get married to him (p.35)

16th February 1938 – Charles Mikkelsen was granted leave to stay in Australia, contingent on paying a £1 Landing permit. (p.22)

[28th March 1939 – SS Anten – ship arrived in Melbourne from Vancouver. (Burnie Advocate)]

(Earlier in 1939?) – SS Anten – joined vessel in Australia. (p.7)

11th August 1939 – SS Anten – signed off vessel at Newcastle. (Note that the Anten then got caught up in a port dispute over war bonuses allowance: and was then captured by Germans in November 1939). (Adelaide Advertiser and Port Pirie Recorder)

5th December 1939 – Anglo Maersk – signed on to the vessel’s articles in Melbourne. (p.11)

20th March 1940 – Anglo Maersk – absent on departure for Balik Papan (p.10) [on the east coast of Borneo]

30th May 1940 – M/V Tirranna – departed for Mombasa. (p.2)

10th June 1940 – M/V Tirranna – attacked by German raider Atlantis. Charles Mikkelsen (passenger) and four crew-members killed in the attack.

My Revised Opinion

It now seems to me that even though Mikkelsen’s account is somewhat convoluted on the surface, it does check out OK. So, alas, I now don’t believe that there were two Charles Mikkelsens both trying to emigrate to Australia at the same time: in the end, my conclusion from the documents taken as a whole is that the historical record is clearly telling us a very linear story about a single Charles Mikkelsen.

Moreover: even though I could easily accept that Charles Mikkelsen was the man Keith Mangnoson had worked with in the second half of 1939, and that Charles Mikkelsen was also probably the man the “unnamed woman living in Cheltenham” had met in 1930, I struggle extremely hard to reconcile the possibility that he was the Somerton Man with his apparent death in 1940 at the hands of the raider Atlantis.

I can easily see how Byron Deveson considers him an excellent candidate: but all the same, dying twice is something I can’t believe of Mikkelsen. Even so, perhaps some other evidence will surface – and I admit that I’ll still be very interested if the identity of Mikkelsen’s fiancée in New Zealand turns up – and prove me wrong. We shall see…

Hardy researcher Byron Deveson has been prospecting in the Aussie archives for traces of a Norwegian by the name of Charles Mikkelsen, a name long linked (though so far not completely satisfactorily) to the Somerton Man.

As a result of Byron’s efforts, it now (I think) seems reasonably likely that Charles Mikkelsen was the Scandinavian ‘Carl Thompsen’ who Keith Mangnoson remembered working with in “Renmark” in “1939”, and who Mangnoson believed was the Somerton Man.

(Of course, whether or not Mikkelsen/Thompsen actually was the Somerton Man remains another question entirely).

But there is an elephant in the room. To be precise, a very large and very dead elephant.

A Fishy Story?

The sticking point is that Charles Mikkelsen died at sea in 1940 in an unfortunate but well-documented way, when the boat he was on (the SS Tirranna) was captured by the German raider Atlantis…

According to this page (and indeed many others), Mikkelsen died on 10th June 1940, the day that the Atlantis shot at, chased and captured the Tirranna. Later that year, the Tirranna was sent back to Europe as a prize ship full of war prisoners, but was sunk by the British submarine HMS Tuna (N94) with a large loss of life.

(Picture source).

Hence what would seem to make the link to Charles Mikkelsen a fishy story is that our Scandinavian candidate appears to have died more than eight years too early to be the Somerton Man.

However, things are never quite that simple in the Tamam Shud research quagmire…

An Australian Paper Trail

What also piqued Byron Deveson’s interest was a claim of a direct link to Charles Mikkelsen that turned up some years later:

In 1953 an unnamed woman living in Cheltenham (a suburb of Adelaide) identified SM as Charles Mikkelsen whom she had known “about 21 years ago” (ie 1932) when he was employed at Jensen’s guest house at American River (Kangaroo Island). She stated that when she had last heard of Mikkelsen he was staying at a Somerton guest house. “Det.-Sgt. R. L. Leane and Det. L. Brown have been told Mikkelsen often quoted the last verse, which ended with the words “Tamam Shud,” from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” (News, Adelaide, 23 April 1953 page 9). The un-named Cheltenham woman said that Mikkelsen spoke fluent English and she said Mikkelsen was aged about 30 (ie. 30 in 1932) when she met him at Kangaroo Island, and he spoke English fluently. Mikkelsen was later employed as gardener to Sir John Brookman and was last heard of while boarding at Somerton.”

As a result, Byron decided to look more closely at Charles Mikkelsen: and he recently struck on a glinty archival seam relating to his stay in Australia from 24th August 1937 (when the SS Svenor put Mikkelsen ashore on Thursday Island with appendicitis) to his departure from its shores on the 30th of May 1940 (aboard the SS Tirranna, where he died eleven days later).

In the last few days, Pete Bowes has published excerpts from many of the documents Byron dug up in a series of posts (here, here, here, here, and indeed here).

Mikkelsen claimed that he had previously stayed in Australia between 1924 and 1930 (having jumped ship in Port Adelaide from the Norwegian steamer Bessa), before travelling back to Norway for a little over a year, returning in early 1932: and then went off in a Norwegian tanker in April 1935, before returning in August 1937.

According to NAA Item barcode 5511023, Charles Mikkelsen was (when he passed through port clearance at Port Adelaide on 9th January 1932 on the Tancred) a seaman 5 feet 10 inches in height, fair hair and blue eyes, with no identifying marks. He gave his birthday as 17th July 1902 in Bassjordan, Norway: and was single.

Interestingly, the Tancred was due to arrive at Number 2 Quay at Port Pirie on 5th January 1932 “to load 2,000 tons of lead. At Port Adelaide the Tancred will discharge general cargo and timber, and will load 2,000 tons of barley before sailing for Continental ports.” So there’s also a link to lead you perhaps weren’t expecting. 🙂

(Incidentally, a Charles Mikkelsen arrived in New York from Sydney on the 13th Nov 1924 on the “Eastern Sea”: he was a 22 year old Norwegian, and was 5’8″ tall [according to Ancestry.com].)

I have to say that it’s a confused affair: there would seem to be at least three files for Charles Mikkelsen: C.38/468, C.40/2000, and C.40/2192. Though the authorities of the day eventually decided that these various Mikkelsens were one and the same person, it’s easy to see how they might possibly have been wrong.

A New Zealand Paper Trail

To extend the timeline a little further backwards, I decided to find out more about what connected Mikkelsen to New Zealand: and it didn’t take long to discover what had happened just before his arrival in Australia.

It all started with the M/T Herborg (a few more details here (or here if you prefer to read Norwegian).

(Picture source)

The Herborg had visited Auckland in May 1932, though sadly I found no passenger list for the Herborg in the NZ archives. Five years later, according to this page, the Herborg was expected from Singapore in March 1937, which is when Charles Mikkelsen got to Auckland.

Several months later, on the 31st July 1937, we catch our first archival glimpse:

NORWEGIAN DESERTER

Seaman to be deported accused intended to marry

“If you have nothing against the Scandinavian race, I would bo much obliged if you could allow me to stay in New Zealand, as I intend to get married shortly,” said Charles Mikkelsen, a Norwegian seaman, aged 34, when he appeared before Mr. F. H. Levien, S.M., in the Police Court yesterday, admitting charges of deserting from the steamer Herberg at Auckland on March 17 and landing as a prohibited immigrant. The Collector of Customs. Mr. J. Mcintosh, said accused was refused permission by the captain of the Herberg to sign off at Auckland, after which he made application to become a permanent citizen of New Zealand. He was told the formalities he would be required to comply with, but he took the law into his own hands, and left his ship. Nothing more was heard of him until he was arrested at Frankton on July 22, after having been engaged in farm work in the Waikato. A deportation order was made by the magistrate, under which accused might be held in custody for not more than six months, pending arrangements being made for him to be placed on board a suitable Norwegian ship. The magistrate told accused the only method to adopt to land in New Zealand would be to comply with the immigration regulations.

A quick trawl through Papers Past reveals plenty of references to Mikkelsens in Morrinsville (Eastern Waikato) playing golf etc , so it seems tolerably likely to me that Mikkelsen had some family out there farming. Perhaps Byron Deveson already knows this?

So… What’s Going On, Then?

If you’ve been paying a little bit of attention, you probably already know what I’m going to conclude.

In this case, I strongly suspect the authorities got it wrong: and that there were almost certainly two different people, both called Charles Mikkelsen.

The first Charles Mikkelsen had the reference “C.38/468”, because the “38” is very probably the last two digits of the year that he first applied for Australian citizenship: 1938. We can therefore probably identify this Charles Mikkelsen with the man who jumped ship in Auckland in March 1937, worked on a farm in Waikato (probably with family near Morrinsville), before being arrested in Frankton on 22nd July 1937, and being told he would be put on a ship bound for Norway within six months. My guess is that he then faked appendicitis to get set down on Thursday Island, thus starting his Australian odyssey.

The second Charles Mikkelsen had the references “C.40/2000” / “C.40/2192”, and it would seem that he was most likely the one who died on the Tirranna in 1940. But… it’s a mess, and that’s the truth.

As a result, it may very well be that one of these two Charles Mikkelsens was the Somerton Man: but it will take a fair bit more digging to properly disentangle the two men’s archival strands from the knot that they have ended up in before we are in a position to make a genuinely clear-headed assessment either way.

Luckily I have every faith that Byron Deveson is the best man for such a job. Good luck, Byron! 🙂

Trawling through the New Zealand shipping records for departures from New Zealand to Sydney for 1947-1948, it turns out that there were quite a few more to consider than just the Wahine. And so I went through them all. Though I filtered names out where I could (based on age), I included names where no age was given – but hopefully most of those will be easily cross-off-able.

What may be most interesting for some researchers is that the Marine Phoenix travelled from San Francisco to Sydney via New Zealand: and so, in one fell swoop, would seem to have the capacity to possibly join the American clues (Juicy Fruit + tailoring) and the New Zealand clue (Whitcombe and Tombs’ Rubaiyat) to the dead man in Australia.

According to this very interesting page:

She was launched on the 9th. of August in 1945 by the Kaiser Shipyard at Vancouver Washington. 12,420 tons, 523 feet long with a 71.2 foot beam. One funnel, engine aft with a single screw and a speed of 17 knots. Built with accommodation for 3,800 troops.

The ship was thus too late to play any part in WW2.

Troopships were operated by Army Transportation Service with civilian crews, by the US Navy, or by the War Shipping Administration. The ship was managed by the Moore- McCormack Line for the US Maritime Commission.

Her maiden voyage on the 12th. of December 1945 was from Seattle to Nagoya Japan. She seems to have carried troops from Japan to Tacoma WA over the period 5th. of January/ 17th. of January 1946.

My report states she was laid up in Suisim Bay at San Francisco in 1947, but you thought your family sailed in her in 1948, perhaps that was, in fact in 1947, before the ship was laid up.

Anyway, here are a whole sackful of Eastern European names culled from these lists, make of them all what you will: I’ve carried out simple NAA searches where I can, but many of you can doubtless proceed much further if you so wish. 🙂

“Marine Phoenix” to Sydney, 26 May 1947

* Mr Herech Gildener (42) + Mrs Henryka Gildener (42) + Miss Renata Gildener (11) + Edyta Gildener (1) – Poland
* Mr Wolf Lewenkopf (47) + Mrs Mirla Lewenkop (37) – Poland
* Mr David Litman (52) – Poland

Hersch Gildener and David Litman are both listed in the NAA, but I couldn’t see the Lewenkop[f]s there at all.

“Marine Phoenix” to Sydney, 28 Jul 1947

* Mr Alush Emin (52) – Albania
* Mr Ludwik Menasohn (45) + Mrs Augusta Menasohn (37) – Poland
* Mr Jozef Perlen (52) + Stefanica Perlen (30) + Hyvka S. Perlen (39) + Ludwik Perlen (9) – Poland

Alush Emin is in the NAA (1947-1972), Ludwik Menasche [corrected spelling] likewise (1947-1947), and Josef Perlen (1947-1955). The Menasches appear in a paywalled 1968 Sydney Morning Herald, so we can rule them out. Jozef Perlen seems to have been born in 1903: his pre-war address is given here.

“Largs Bay” to Sydney, 04 Sep 1947

* Mr V Mischenko (42) Police Officer + Mrs V Mischenko (31) Domestic Duties + Master D V Mischenko (7) Student – Siberia
* Mr B Zarimba (38) Electrical Engineer – Russia

Vladimir Mischenko (born 24th July 1904, NAA files 1930-1947, but also document dated 1952), “B Zarimba” (“Zaremba”?) not found on NAA.

“Marine Phoenix” to Sydney, 06 Nov 1947

* Mr O Hanker (?) – Poland
* Mr J Pakula – Poland
* Mr J Zylber – Poland

According to the NAA, Oscar Hanner was born on 24th January 1922 (so would be too young for us); Jozef Zylber’s file is 1947-1972; while Jozef Pakula’s file is 1947-1947 (barcode 8781463 – note that there are two Jozef Pakulas as well as a Jozek Pakula listed).

“Annam” to Sydney, 19 Nov 1947

* Joe Lateiner (51) Hairdresser – Poland

No sign of Joe Lateiner: lots of hits for the pianist Jacob Lateiner, though.

“Rangitiki” to Sydney, 30 Nov 1947

* Mr M Sumic (47) Orchardist – Yugoslav
* Mr P Braun (43) Manufacturer – Czechoslavakian

No sign of either of these men in the NAA. Howeverm Trove has an advert for grapes on 26th February 1939:

GRAPES for Sale, White and Red Muscat. Passenger train 6/6 freight paid, M. Sumic, Swan View.

There appear to be plenty of Sumich family members in Swan View.

“Marine Phoenix” to Sydney, 29 Dec 1947

* Mr Solomon Berglas – Poland
* Mr Leon Bilczewski + Mrs Leon Bilczewski + Master Jacob Bilczewski (1) – Poland
* Mr David Fromberg + Mrs David Fromberg + Miss Miriam Fromberg + Master Grzegorz Fromberg (8) – Poland
* Mr Lew Frydman + Mrs Lew Frydman – Poland

NAA has a Salomon Berglas “[Austrian – arrived Sydney per Oronsay, 5 February 1940]” (file 1940-1947); NAA barcode 4309696 refers to “[Application for admission of Leon, Luba and Jakob BILCZEWSKI to Australia]”; but no sign of the Frombergs or the Frydmans.

Archives New Zealand has made seven million historical passenger records available online through an arrangement with Utah-based familysearch.org . The transcriptions were made by network of generous volunteers (though I have to say that the quality of the transcriptions varies, where a fair few of the pages I looked at were only partially complete).

And so, following on from my previous post, I thought I’d see if any male Balts or Poles aged 40 to 60 travelled on the Wahine from New Zealand to Australia in 1947 or 1948. This turned out to be an extremely short list:

Poles on the Wahine

* 09May1947 - N Szuchmacher - 47 - Printer
* 21Nov1947 - M Zable...... - 41 - Engineer (travelled with wife + two sons)
* 05Dec1947 - M Wilniewezyb - 35 - Priest
* 18Dec1947 - N Naum....... - 52 - Manufacturer
* 31Dec1947 - S Bilgorri... - 50 - Tailor

I included Father Michal Wilniewczyc because I have a nice photograph of him on the 5th December 1947. This was the very day that the much-loved priest left the Pahiatua Polish Children’s Camp in New Zealand, where 733 Polish orphans and half-orphans had been taken in 1944. Which is a story for another post entirely. 🙂

What of the others? N Szchumacher (spelt correctly) would seem to be the “Nojach Szuchmacher” referred to in a single document in the NAA from 1946, where he is a nominee for “RYBAJZEN Jozef [aka Aizen]”, who had apparently applied for naturalization in 1943. This “Nojach Szuchmacher” was without any real doubt the Noah Schumacher who (according to the NAA) arrived at Sydney on the Wahine on 13th May 1947. If it is correct that Schumacher’s file runs through to 1955 (as it appears to), we can probably rule him out as a candidate for the Somerton Man.

“N Naum” would appear to be Norman Naum (born 18th May 1895, died 12th May 1959, buried in Karori Cemetery in Nea Zealand), so I think we can rule him out too.

The Zable family – “Mrs H Zables” (Tailoress, 41), Master B. Zable (2), and Master A. Zable (8 months), both born in New Zealand – I traced through to their naturalization application in New Zealand: Zable, Myer (Zabludowski, Mejer); Zable (Zabludowski), Hodes Mrs. All of which (eventually) let me determine that Myer Zable was a poet and that he died on 31st July 1992 in Melbourne. So we can rule him out, too.

Finally: the tailor “S Bilgorri” would appear to be Solomon Bilgorri of 31 Fouberts Place, Regents St, London W1 (very close to Carnaby Street, naturally), who travelled from London to New Zealand on the Rangitata, departing 14th Feb 1947. Might Solomon Bilgorri have been the Somerton Man? The father of Harry ‘Sonny’ Bilgorri (the famous East End tailor popular among London gangsters) was also called Solomon Bilgorri (though he was born in 6th July 1893 and died on 14th June 1973, it says here), but I suspect these were two different people… though it’s hard to be sure. (‘Bilgorri’ itself was simply the name of a town in Poland.)

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?

The Somerton Man – found dead on Somerton Beach near Adelaide on 1st December 1948 – had, in his fob pocket, a small slip of paper on which was printed “Tamam Shud”. It was subsequently determined that this slip had been torn out by hand from the last page of a Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: and that the specific edition of the Rubaiyat had been published by Whitcombe and Tomb’s in New Zealand, as part of their “Courage And Friendship” series.

(Note: if we knew what other books in the “Courage And Friendship” series were listed on the inside front cover of the Somerton Man’s Rubaiyat, we’d almost certainly be able to determine the precise year in which the book was printed).

The Tasman Sea

So: given that the Rubaiyat had started in New Zealand but ended up in Australia, it seemed highly likely to me that the book and its mysterious owner had travelled across the Tasman Sea from the former to the latter between 1st January 1945 and 1st December 1948. But… exactly how did they make that journey?

To try to answer that question, I bought a copy of Peter Plowman’s (2009) Wanganella and the Australian Trans-Tasman Liners to find out. Plowman’s book covers the history of all the major passenger ships that travelled the roughly 2000km across the Tasman Sea very well, and with admirable attention to detail (the page numbers in the following refer to Plowman’s book).

It didn’t take long to discover that we would appear to have only three ships to consider: the Katoomba (briefly), the Wanganella (also briefly), and the Wahine. Let’s look at each of these three ships in turn…

Katoomba

As 1946 began, there was pressure on the Australian government to help get “the thousands of New Zealand residents who had been stranded in Australia for the duration of the war” back across the Tasman Sea (p.118).

However, this apparently simple-sounding objective proved very difficult to attain in practice. Of the ships that had seen Trans-Tasman service before the Second World War, the Awatea had been sunk en route to Gibraltar in 1942; the Monowai’s intense war-time usage had left it needing an extensive refit; while the luxurious liner Wanganella similarly needed a year’s refitting to turn it back from the hospital ship it had served as for many of the war years.

In the short term, this only really left “the veteran coastal liner Katoomba” (p.118), which had been converted to a troopship during the war: as a result, it was only able to take passengers across in what at the time was called “austerity” quarters. I found a nice picture of it here.

The Katoomba made only a single round trip, initially carrying 600 passengers and 2,000 tons of cargo out to Wellington: even so, its departure was plagued by industrial action that delayed its departure by a fortnight, before finally arriving on 6th February 1946. Its return journey terminated at Sydney on 23rd March 1946 (travelling via “Totokina and Rabaul”), (p.121), but the ship never made another journey on that route.

Wanganella

(Image from Reuben Goossens’s excellent webpage)

The Wanganella had been a beautiful (and much-loved) liner before the war, but its post-war refit took until October 1946 to complete. And its first journey then was from Sydney to “Auckland, then on to Suva, Honolulu and Vancouver. Leaving Vancouver on 27 November, Wanganella returned to Sydney on Saturday, 28th December”. (p.122).

However, its heavily anticipated (and fully-booked) second journey on 17th January 1947 fared much worse. As the gigantic ship entered Cook Strait in Wellington Harbour on the evening of 19th January 1947, it was accidentally steered onto Barrett Reef, where it remained stuck for seventeen days amidst remarkably mild weather (since then known locally as “Wanganella weather”) (p.130). Unsurprisingly, it then needed extensive mending in the shipyards before it could take to the seas again.

So as things turned out, the Wanganella’s next journey was to be 9th December 1948: and as a result, its part in our timeline comes to a close here also.

Wahine

Though the Wanganella’s much-hoped-for fortnightly sailings had been booked out for months, after its accident in the harbour put it out of commission there were simply no suitable ships to replace it with. So the Wanganella’s owners (Huddart Parker) decided to use the “veteran steamer Wahine” instead (p.136).

(Image taken from a website devoted entirely to the ship!)

It carried 300 passengers on its first journey from Wellington to Sydney on 14th February 1947: it left Sydney on the 21st February 1947. It then left Wellington on 28th February 1947, and continued a regular service for the next three months. However, the trips stopped for the (antipodean) winter on 3rd June 1947, restarting on 12th September 1947. “In all, Wahine made sixteen return trips across the Tasman Sea in 1947” (p.137).

In 1948, however, the Wahine made only ten round trips across the Tasman Sea, with its last departure being on 14th May 1948. “For the rest of 1948 there was no passenger service provided by Huddart Parker or the Union Line across the Tasman” (p.137).

And so…

It may not sound like much, but I harbour [*] a very strong suspicion that the Somerton Man travelled from New Zealand to Australia on one of these trips, with the little Whitcombe and Tomb’s “Courage and Friendship” Rubaiyat stowed [**] in his pocket.

And, moreover, I further suspect that should we list all the male passengers aged (say) between 45 and 55 who travelled on the Wahine’s twenty-six journeys during this period, we would see the Somerton Man’s name.

How many names would that yield? Perhaps three hundred or so would be my finger-in-the-air guess: but we may be able to eliminate many of them very quickly. And we may may already have seen one or two of the names from other directions (I have one particular surname in mind… but that’s a story for another day completely), which would be a highly intriguing development.

OK, so… shall we draw up a list, then?

[*] Sorry about that. 🙂
[**] And that. 😉