Egon Skov

Story

Father was a deep sea diver and was attached to a salvage company. He spent months and sometimes years away from home. My parents had decided to go to either Australia or Canada in the hope of keeping the family near to steady work. I think my parents flipped a coin to make up their minds. Australia won and so everything was sold, fares paid for and ready to leave Denmark.

We (my parents and my two sisters) traveled by train to Bremahaven in Germany where we boarded the Castle-Felice, an Italian ship, on the 23rd May 1958 for our 5 week long sail to Australia and arrived 20th June 1958 in Fremantle, Australia. My father was the only member of the family who spoke English so we children had English classes on board ship where we learnt to sing ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep\’. The ‘Australian Bight\’, crossing was the only storm we encountered. We did not have very many ports of call on the way but I remember Gibraltar and The Red Sea as well as a stop at Aden. Here I was aware of what I thought to be the ultimate in poverty when I saw people having to buy water from a cart on the street. Little did I know that fifty years later I would be buying bottled water and paying a lot of money for it.

Our first Australian port of call was Fremantle in W.A. Although it was June it was a beautiful warm sunny day and I had my first glass of proper milk since we left Denmark. This was important when milk was my most favorite food. We arrived in Melbourne where we were herded into a huge iron shed with no seating. There we were processed through customs. It took a very long time, hours in fact, and it was extremely cold. Many had very small children and we were all forced to stand in the cold. It was dark before we were taken to a waiting train (cattle train just like the Old West in America). The carriages were single sections with a door out each side of the train but not into the next section of the train. In one way it was not bad in that we had one of these to ourselves. It had wooden benches with no other comforts. Again it was extremely cold as the train traveled through the night into the heart of Victoria and towards the New South Wales border. The train stopped once when we were taken off the train and given some food, and someone put a metal hot water bottle on the floor of the cabin. We all put our feet on it as we continued our journey. Can you imagine how long the hot water remained hot? Towards mid morning the next day we arrived at Bonegilla, the migrant camp, situated near the snow country.

Bonegilla. How to describe an army camp from WWII. Wooden barracks off the ground. One window, one door out, one room. Each room had two or three metal beds with one pillow and sheets and one gray army blanket. No heating, no toilet. There was one small table and two wooden chairs. At night we were extremely cold so consequently we slept two to a bed and used the extra blanket off the spare beds. My older sister and I had a room to ourselves and if we had to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, we peed in a large tin can (chamber ‘pee’ pot), which we then had to carry to the toilet block to be emptied in the morning. I do not remember showering too often while we were there, but the toilets were holes in the ground with wooden benches.

After four more hostels in NSW, WA, back to Melbourne and eventually SA we settled in Adelaide.

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