Sakari Lahdensuo

Story

Sakari was born to fairly wealthy parents who owned a large dairy farm in Lapua, Finland. There he grew to love horses and would race them at the trotting tracks around Finland. He also liked wrestling and during one of his wrestling tournaments he met Pirkko-Liisa Siitonen whom he married. They settled on his parents farm in their own home. But due to the war the Lahdensuo Family had to give land away to people who had been displaced during the war. As this affected the size of Sakari and Pirkko’s dairy farm, it became very hard to make a living. Sakari soon found they were looking for immigrants to settle in Australia. Already with 2 sons (Toumo and Eero) and 2 daughters (Lea and Tuula) and one on the way, they decided to take the journey in 1958.

Sakari and Pirkko made the journey to Helsinki, with children in tow and took a boat to Stockholm. There they caught a train to Italy which took them through Denmark and Germany and finally arriving in Treisla, Italy after 5 days. There they boarded the Italian immigration ship “‘Aurelia””. One hundred and twenty seven Finnish families, Germans, Italians (with just a swag for luggage) and a mixture of other countries boarded the ship for the four week long trip to Australia. Being an Italian ship, the menu consisted of spaghetti and red wine. Conditions were very poor and overcrowded. Finally they arrived in Fremantle in W.A. where Sakari hopped off and came back saying this is the country to live in, you should have seen the size of those bananas and carrots. Sakari (29 years old) and Pirkko’s (25 years old) sea journey ended in Melbourne. Like cattle they were herded into a train which would take them to the Migrant Camp at Bonegilla which was near Albury on the Victorian, New South Wales border.

Sakari was sent to Tully in Queensland to cut sugar cane by hand like most of the other migrant men. This left the women alone with the children for the majority of the time. Pirkko gave bith to her fifth child (Janet) at the Albury Hospital late in October 1958. After 6 months Sakari returned and they made their way to Hobart, Tasmania. Because they could not speak English and had nowhere to go , they ended up at a police station. A lovely family by the name of Maxwell came to their rescue. He owned a huge sheep farm in Hobart and asked Sakari to help him in exchange for accommodation in a spare house on his property as well as a wage. They stayed there for about six months before moving on to their own dairy farm in Loyetea, which is on the north coast. It is twenty miles inland from the nearest township of Penguin. The Farm had about 350 acres which was half bush and was rather run down. Whilst Sakari was quite proud of his purchase, Pirkko was a little disappointed. Their house wasn’t nearly large enough to hold their family especially when Pirkko had 4 more children (Johnny, Frederick, Helen and Rita), soon after moving to the farm. Now there were 9 children and only 2 bedrooms. It wasn’t until the late 1960’s that Sakari built a new 3 bedroom home on the dairy farm. Sakari started his dairy farm with one cow and also supplemented his income by building a sawmill and a new milking dairy. Sakari and Pirkko worked hard for 15 years before selling the farm and moving to Melbourne. Sakari didn’t like Melbourne so he remembered Queensland’s nice warm weather and bananas and decided to move there. Moving to the Gold Coast in 1973 until 1989 Sakari began working as a Formworker and earned enough money to afford a horse. Racehorse that is. He had no winners but loved every one of them. His horse collection became quite large and Sakari and Pirkko moved out to Killarney in Queensland in 1989. In the year 2000 Sakari and Pirkko finally retired on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

[Impressions on Arr

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