Henry and Inge Heinl

Story

In Nuremberg, Germany 1954, opportunities were limited. The Heinl family saw an advertising campaign about Australia needing and looking for migrant families with qualifications in a Trade, willing to immigrate to Australia. Seeing this as an opportunity, the Heinl family consisting of 4, father Heinrich (Henry) and mother Ingeborg (Inge), with son Hellmut age 3 and daughter Angelika (Angie) age 1, applied and after rigorous medical and civil examinations were accepted mid September 1954. They were requested to board the Dutch vessel named Johan Van Olden Barneveld on the 6th December 1954 bound for Australia with a three week cruise across the Indian crossing the very rough Great Australian Bight and arriving in Melbourne on the 13th January 1955 with only 20 pound in their pocket. It was here they experienced their first ‘milk shake’. From the Port of Melbourne they were put onto the red rattler trains to the migrant camp at Bonegilla. The family was appointed one of the Nissen huts to make their home. Coming from winter in Europe to a hot and dry Australian summer was a shock. Cooking for themselves at the camp was not allowed, but the food supplied by the camp was so bad that the 400 children from the ship all ended up in hospital. Henry was given an address in Yarraville to work as a baker. His accommodation was at Maribyrnong Hostel for him alone, and his wife and two children were sent to Somers Camp where they endured racial taunts from the Baltic migrants. Being post the wa,r the German women and children feared for their lives every night. Luckily after 4 weeks the family were reunited at Maribyrnong. Here Inge would secretly cook for the family on an up turned radiator when possible, as this was forbidden. Henry was unable to get to his assigned job early enough in the mornings, so he was laid off. He promptly found himself another job as a builders\’ labourer. Jobs and hours were plenty for those who wanted to work. He later found a job at Four n Twenty Pies and then moved to Noon Pies who offered him more hours. Inge was also able to get a job as a tracer at the SEC for 3 years. She was trained in Germany as a professional drafts woman and had worked on the plans of the reconstruction of Nuremberg. With no extended family for support to fall back on Henry worked evenings to enable him to mind the children by day while Inge worked by day to care for them by night. Eventually they found their first real home, a rented maisonette in Hawthorn at 8 pound a week. At a deposit of 19 pound and a weekly payment of 2 shillings and 4 pence for the next year and a half, they bought their first lot of furniture, all second-hand except for Inge\’s insistence for new mattresses, after a previous experience with bed mites. In Hawthorn with every birthday and commemorative celebration, Henry would make a cake. His cakes were passionately consumed by their new found friends and neighbours, so much so he was encouraged by his then new Australian friend and neighbour, Colonel Lesley Coleman, to start up his own cake shop business. With further encouragement by financial assistance arranged by another new and enduring friend, solicitor Mr Harold Carter, Henry and Inge opened their first business in 1959, a rented cake shop in Glen Iris. A year later they bought their first business in West Heidelberg becoming the well known ‘Henry\’ Cake Shop’ in the Mall. With Inge working in the shop and Henry in the bakehouse., later buying their first house in Ivanhoe and then Rosanna. They grew the business where by opening another 2 cake shops, Lower Plenty and Bulleen. The whole family of 4 were naturalised and became Australian citizens on the 22nd of January 1963 before Mayor of Heidelberg, Charles Weales. By October 1963 the family had saved enough money to be able to return for a long awaited visit back to Germany, here the two children would meet their whole family they did not remember or even know. Henry unfortunately never saw his beloved mother again as she died three years after his arrival in Australia in 1958, but he had made his father proud. Hellmut became an Electrician, later in 1974 had a son Paul Heinl Jr, named after his paternal grandfather. In 2005 Paul Heinl Jr had his own children, twins Makayla and Jordan Heinl and lives in Canberra. With Henry having the only son in the Heinl family to carry on the name, and only in Australia, Paul, Jordan and Makayla will be the ones to carry on the Heinl family name. Hellmut now lives in the Otway\’s with his partner Anita Calder. Angie became a Freelance Advertising Photographer and Director, working from Brian Brandt and Associates Studios in Melbourne, then from December 1989-96 started Heaven Pictures in South Yarra with business partner George Apostolidis.

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