As I wrote about my arrival in Australia in 1965 here, "We disembarked in some sort of organised chaos at Port Melbourne and soon afterwards boarded a train for the inland town of Albury from where we were taken to the Migrant Centre at Bonegilla ... Deep blue skies and brilliant sunshine during the day made up for the freezing nights. It was two days after I had arrived in camp and while I was "thawing" out in the midday sun when another German who had come off the ship with me, told me about a "German Lady", a Mrs Haermeyer, at the camp's reception centre who was offering to take three or four recently arrived German migrants back to Melbourne to board at her house. I had been "processed" by the camp's administration on the first day and knew that in all likelihood I was destined to be sent to Sydney to work as labourer for the Sydney Water Board. So what did I have to lose? In record time I had myself signed out by the 'Camp Commandant', my few things packed, and was sitting, with three other former ship-mates, in a VW Beetle enroute back to Melbourne ... The 'German Lady' had turned out to be a very enterprising roly-poly German housewife who with her German husband, a bricklayer, operated something of a boarding-house from their quaint little place at 456 Brunswick Road in West Brunswick in Melbourne. The place seemed already full to overflowing with young Germans from a previous intake, with bodies occupying the lounge-room sofa, a make-shift annex, and an egg-shaped plywood caravan in the backyard."
Quite some time later, a Jürgen Hanke sent me this email, "Hallo Peter, per Zufall bin ich auf Deine Geschichte im Internet gekommen. Ich war auch auf der FLAVIA - 18 Jahre, voller Hoffnung und Erwartung. Es hat sich gelohnt. Ich war nur 7 Jahre in Australien, habe aber die beste Zeit meines Lebens erlebt. Es hat mein Leben geprägt - nun stehe ich kurz vor der Rente und denke an die Anfänge. Im Juli werde ich 65, die Kinder sind gross und ich bin noch fit und ... Ich könnte Stunden schreiben, aber das wäre nicht schön - ich möchte es geniessen. Also, ich bin von Bonnegilla nach Melbourne gekommen über die gleiche nette deutsche Dame, und habe in der Staatsdruckerei in Melbourne sofort einen Job bekommen. Habe für die letzten 30DM einen Arbeitskittel gekauft und war pleite. Habe schnell englisch gelernt durch den Beruf als Schriftsetzer. Habe mich einem Soccerverein angeschlossen (Allemania Richmond) und jeden Winter in Melbourne Fußball gespielt. Die restliche Zeit habe ich mich mit vielen Jobs durch ganz Australien durchgeschlagen: Snowy Mountains Scheme, Fitzroy Crossing, Kimberleys, Perth, Kalgoorlie and Tasmania and so on. If you want to know more about my life, contact me - I sure want to talk about yours. I told a friend from England last Saturday that I had my first skiing lesson at Mt. Buller 1965. Best wishes from Germany "
(If you don't speak German - Ve Haf Vays To Make You Talk - click here)
As he wrote, he had also travelled to Australia on the good ship FLAVIA, the same ship on which I had arrived just five months later ...
... and he had also been picked up from Bonegilla a week after arrival by the same "German lady" and taken to Melbourne where he would still have lived in the same house at 456 Brunswick Road, West Brunswick, when I arrived there five months later. What an amazing coincidence!
... and here is a current street view of 456 Brunswick Road
The house is still there, unchanged, but no longer full to overflowing with young German migrants. Just how many young German migrants had taken their first uncertain steps from this house to start a new life in a new country will never be known. If only those walls could talk ...
FOOTNOTE: The Haermeyer family (father Wilhelm born 6/12/1919; mother Elfried born 13/4/1921; son Andreas born 20/2/1956) had come out to Australia aboard the Castel Felice on 20 June 1959. Daughter Elke was born in Australia on 16/6/1961. Their "guesthouse" business must've paid off because the whole family could afford to travel to Germany in 1967 and return aboard the Flavia on 20/12/1967. All this information is on record at the National Archives of Australia where it is also noted that Wilhelm Haermeyer left Australia once before on 8 December 1963.
Jürgen Hanke's immigration records are also available from the archives:
