Robert and Laimdotta and Valdis Bukmanis

Story

As I sit in my comfortable home office and look up at a framed photograph of myself in my mothers arms among many other people, filled with hope and expectation about to disembark from the ‘General Black’ I cannot help but wonder how many of them are still alive. I know that the man at the bottom of the photograph and centre of attention no longer is. You see, we were met by the then Minister for Immigration, the Hon. Harold E. Holt. It was April 1950 at Station Pier in Melbourne. We were about to start a new life.

Both my mother and father were born in Riga, Latvia. The war saw many changes to their lives but they survived. My father Robert was a dental technician and was seconded into the German Medical Corps. After marrying my mother Laimdotta he installed her as his assistant. Just how I am not sure, as she had no training in that area what so ever. The end of the war saw them moved among various displaced persons camps, and in 1947 I was born in Wurzburg, Germany. By 1949 the camps were closing and decisions needed to be made about the future. Going back to Latvia was out of the question due to the communist regime.

‘Why did you pick Australia?’ I remember asking my father.

‘Well, I didn\’t really know were it was except that it was a long way away. Oh! I also heard that the people didn\’t work too hard, so if you were prepared to put in a bit of effort, you could get ahead.’

And so it was. My father was indentured to work for the Victorian Railways as a labourer and worked from single men\’s quarters in South Yarra while my mother and I were transferred to a camp in Mildura. Eventually he purchased a block of land in Dandenong.

It is at this point that I again look up at my wall and take in a framed page torn from an exercise book. It is a very crudely drawn plan of two rooms and a lean-to with dimensions from boundaries. It is a building application and in the top left hand corner is a stamp from the Council ‘APPROVED’ 9th Nov 1951 and a fee of 3/6d.

I smile. I have just finished a ‘shed’. The approvals, engineering and inspections have cost me thousands and the file is over 25mm thick. Times have changed.

But there is more. In 1951 money is tight but there are always ways around things if one has the strength and will. My father is working on a gang restoring railway bridges. The old removed timber is burned. Robert can see an opportunity and asks his foreman if he can take some of the timber and is granted permission. Every day he selects two red-gum stumps about a metre and a half long. After work he takes the train to Dandenong and walks the two kilometres to his block with a stump over each shoulder; digs two holes, inserts the stumps, walks back to the station and returns to South Yarra. He does this every day until all the stumps are in place. Eventually the ‘house’ is nearly finished. No floor, water or electricity but we join him in our new home. What a palace.

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