Bruno Just

Story

It was nine years after the end of WW II and many of our compatriots from Muggia (Trieste) had been migrating to other countries to find either a better life or with the intention to work for a few years in the new land, make their fortunes and then return to the patria. My father, an artist and musician, with my mother and their four children were hoping to do the latter. The day after the trunks had gone to Genoa where we were to board the MV Oceania, my father was offered a lucrative employment in Torino. My parents decided to continue with the adventure and we boarded a train for Genoa in May 1954. Our immigration cost the Australian government 1,000 pounds.

The journey took six weeks and was amazing. Only my father had ever been outside of our seaside town to Monfalcone and to Venice. For the rest of us, this great journey to Australia was also our first departure from our home town. I was nine years old and as the eldest of the four siblings I suffered most because my country was ingrained in me; I was Italian through and through.

We stopped in Naples to take on more passengers, then sailed on to Port Said, where I saw for the first time Arabs in small boats alongside the ship trying to sell us colourful leather goods, e.g. purses, bags and whips. When we traversed the Indian Ocean, we were hit by severe storms six times and we experienced sea-sickness for the first time. We stopped at Columbo, Ceylon, and my father went ashore. I remember our course through the Indonesian archipelago for its beauty and also because my mother, against instructions, opened a porthole for some fresh air when the 16-berth cabin we were in was at about sea level. The gush of water syphoned through the porthole, wet the nearest bunks and got my mother into trouble with both my father and the relevant ship’s officer.

At Fremantle, we disembarked for a day. It was Sunday. Unlike we were used to back home, the place was virtually deserted. The fibro houses with paling fences all painted a rusty brown were silent. My parents were particularly shocked. Eventually, we left the ship in Melbourne and were trained to Bonegilla, on the Victorian/NSW border. There for two weeks in transit for Brisbane, we tasted, for the first time, tea, toast with honey, porridge and mutton–and railway sausages; my mother, a great cook, was particularly impressed with those. She’s not eaten sausages since.

Wacol immigration camp, outside of Brisbane was an experience of bungalows with many Germans and Dutch their window-pots bright with flowers and beautiful tulips; I never forgot them. From their we went to live at Inala, a housing commission area populated by many European migrants. The local primary school that I frequented produced a Queensland Premier, and among my friends, a state minister, a director of education, a manager within the state’s education department, as well as a high school teacher/psychologist school counsellor.

Apart from my father who repatriated in 1981 after 27 years, my family did not return to Italy to live, only for holidays, but we have done very well in Australia. Yet, I have always felt that I have two nationalities, a motherland (Italy) and fatherland (Australia). So, in that sense, it is a fine balance.

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