Walter Elphinstone Muspratt was born Nasserbad, Bengal, 3 Oct 1868. His father, Henry was a judge in the Bengal Civil Service. His mother, Rosalie Caroline Sutherland had connections through nobility to the Plantagenet Kings of England. Walter…

Walter Elphinstone Muspratt, England, 1891

Migration Story

Eliza Farnbach

Eliza Farnbach sailed from London on 26 September 1857 aboard the ship Indemnity of 741 tons under the command of Captain Phillip Sayer. Ninety five days later (30 December 1857) she arrived in Melbourne.

Eliza was…

Eliza Farnbach, England, 1857

My father\’s quest for freedom

My late father, Slavko, was born in 1909, in Kraljev Vrh (King\’s Peak), a small picturesque village in Zagorje province. His mother passed away at his birth. It is not surprising after giving the numerous…

Slavko Orsag, Croatia, 1959

My great grandparents – John Meharg was born in Rathfriland, County Down, Ireland sometime in 1841, his wife Margaret Kernahan in Cornehaugh, County Down, Ireland sometime in 1848. So their early lives were spent in very poor conditions …

John Meharg, Ireland, 1874

During WW 11 the Russians invaded and occupied Hungary. The Kish family, Dad as a MAV railway executive, fled from Erdely and the imminent communist terror.

We arrived as DPs on the ship SS Dundalk Bay in Fremantle W.A. We disembarked in Fremantle …

Colin KISH, Hungary - Erdely, Mar-50

From the Goldbergs to the Icebergs

By Tim Harcourt*

When I think of Sydney I do think of the icons Ð especially Bondi Beach. I think of Bondi for its great natural beauty, its hip cosmopolitan but casual feel but also because of its importance in my own…

Kopel (Ken) Harkowitz (Harcourt), Transylvania, C1900

Minnie Jane Newton was the youngest of a family of six born to William and Elizabeth Newton (nee Collinson) at Whitby in the County of York England on 3rd February 1888. Her siblings were Jack 1878, Georgina 1880, Hannah 1882, Anthony 1884 and Will …

Minnie Newton, England, 1912

Berend and Aaltje Oosterveen (nee Sieders) were both born in Hoogeveen in the northern Province of Drente, Holland. Berend worked in various jobs; at a bakery, repairing bicycles and stoves and in coal mines, while Aalie had paid domestic work. …

Berend Oosterveen, Holland, 1954

Daniel Henri Treyvaud was born to Louis Samuel, a joiner by trade and Sophie (nee Schmidt) on 11 Nov 1832 at Cudrefin, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. He had an older sister Elisabeth. Treyvaud family connections with Cudrefin go back many hundreds …

(Daniel) HENRI TREYVAUD, Switzerland, 1852

Daniel Henri Treyvaud – arrived Australia 1852

Daniel Henri Treyvaud was born to Louis Samuel, a joiner by trade and Sophie (nee Schmidt) on 11 Nov 1832 at Cudrefin, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. He had an older sister Elisabeth. Treyvaud family…

Daniel Henri Treyvaud, Switzerland, 1852

Dolly Powell (nee Van Brugge) was in Holland during World War two. She was exposed to German soldiers knocking on doors to take fathers and sons to become soldiers. Each time her father would be locked inside a small hidden room so the German soldiers…

Dolly Powell, Holland, 1951

My father Joseph, an East End cabinet maker, born and having lived in London and experienced The Blitz, and the experience of living through two European World Wars, wanted to get, with his most beloved wife Bessy, and his two much loved children, …

Joseph Gould, United Kingdom, 31/10/48

Left Serbia after war, (both held as prisoner of war in Germany) with wife & 2 children to The Lucky Country, The promised Land and of fortune to be made.

Mila worked as factory hand as qualifications from Europe were not valid in Australia.

Travelled…

Mila Stanimirovitch, Serbia, 1951

Our father was born almost 81 years ago in 1926 in a town call Deir Dibwan in Palestine. He was born and raised in a magical but tumultuous time but our fathers\’ village was stable and peaceful. Our father lived in Palestine in a time when regardless…

Shaher (Abu Nasser) Mashni, Palestine, 1959

[Reason for leaving homeland]

In 1981, I met Linda Cotton, an Australian girl who came to Athens for Christmas holidays. A few months later, in March 1982 we got married at Camden Town in London. We lived in Athens for nearly a year and in January 1983…

Kon Vatskalis, Greece, 1983

(As told to her granddaughter Imogen.)

1952 Holland was such a mess after the war. My husband Kees & I decided there was no future there for our five kids.

At first we wanted to migrate to Brazil. So we started to learn Portuguese. Then, one day we…

Maria (Mieta) Van Sebille (nee Van Aalst), Rotterdam, Holland, 1953

Arthur McAllister was born in Ireland on 19 January 1838. Possibly orphaned before he was ten years old, Arthur was sent to South Australia on board the Orphan emigrant ship ‘Roman Emperor\’. This ship was one of six ships participating…

Arthur McAllister, Ireland, 1848

Eileen Mabel Wicks was born in Sompting, West Sussex, England on 3 February 1932, the youngest of four children, and only daughter of Arthur & Josephine Wicks. After leaving school, Eileen began working for the British Railways as a pay clerk.…

Eileen Mabel Ward, England, 1967

[Reason for leaving homeland]

To join father (John Cyril Mather) recently appointed Canon of Newcastle Cathedral

[About the Journey]

Michael (10) accompanied his brother John(12) under the benevolent eye of his spinster aunt Winifred as they…

Michael Mather, England, 1915

Mihai Pansaru (Pinzariu) 1927-1984

My father was born in Romania in 1927. His village of Bogata in the far North East of the country was occupied by the German army during the Second World War and formed part of the Russian Front. After the war when Europe…

Mihai Pansaru (Pinzariu), Romania, 1949

(Continued from Part 1)

For three months in 1885 Harry (as Henry) joined the NSW Contingent to the Sudan in Africa, the first time the colony had had a military representation as distinct from an imperial one. The Egyptian government, with British…

Harry (aka Henry) Drew (Part 2 of story), England, 1884

Harry was born in 1863 Charfield, District of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. He was registered as Harry which he used throughout his life but some of his documents show Henry. He was the son of James Drew (born Horsley), a railway porter at Charfield,…

Harry (aka Henry) Drew (Part 1 of story), England, 1884

Hattie Duncan (nee Hewitson) arrived in Australia in July 1928 with her son Alan (aged 4), as passengers on S.S.Hobsons Bay. She came because her husband George, a Scot born in Aberdair, now a merchant seaman, had come to Australia on the maiden voyage…

Hattie Duncan, England, 1928

My father, William Gardner Smail, was born at North Middleton, a small village south of Edinburgh, Scotland. His parents, John ‘Jock\’ Smail and Elizabeth ‘Liz\’ Gardner, were married in 1923 at Longridge, in present…

William Smail, Scotland, 1966

Part 2 of the Story.

The family camp was largely organized as a German community. The majority of internees had been shipped out some months earlier from the British Mandated Territory of Palestine and they had a dominating influence in the way the…

Rudolf Franz Girschik (Part 2 of Story), Austria, 1941

Rudolf Franz Girschik was born in Vienna on 3 March 1910. Graduating in civil engineering during the Great Depression, he rode his bicycle from Vienna to Baghdad in search of work. He was advised to go to Turkey where huge projects were under way in …

Rudolf Franz Girschik (Part 1 of Story), Austria, 1941

I first arrived in England in 1968 to study English language, and I met some Australian student friends at school in London. Later on early in 1970 I travelled to Australia (Melbourne) to see my friends and ever since I have stayed in Australia because…

Adel IMLAHI, MOROCCO, 1970