Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows newly arrived immigrants at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre in Victoria in 1962. The narrator says that these migrants have come from many countries in Europe and will stay at the Centre until they find jobs and more permanent accommodation. After disembarking from buses, the migrants collect their luggage and are shown to their quarters by Centre officials. The clip then focuses on three children, siblings Maret, Juri and Yanni, as they set out to explore their new surroundings. It is accompanied by jaunty flute-and-cello music.

Educational value points

• The Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, established by the Department of Immigration in 1947 to process immigrants before they were permanently settled in Australia, was the first, the largest and the longest operating centre of its kind in Australia. By the time it closed in 1971, 320,000 migrants had passed through, remaining for about six weeks on average, until permanent employment could be found for them.

• The clip represents Bonegilla as a benign and welcoming environment by depicting it largely through the activities of three siblings, who are shown skipping along to the sound of jaunty music as they explore their surroundings. This is reinforced by the narrator’s motherly tone, the use of phrases such as ‘new adventure’ to describe the immigrant experience, and the portrayal of centre officials as supportive and the policeman as benevolent rather than authoritarian.

• The experience of many migrants at Bonegilla was strikingly different from that portrayed in the clip. They felt completely isolated in rural northern Vic and the accommodation was basic. It consisted of galvanised-iron or fibro-cement huts, arranged dormitory-style to sleep about 26 people, with no heating, sparse furniture and communal bathrooms.

• The clip paints a rosy picture of Bonegilla life – however, in 1961, the year before the film was made, migrants descended on the Centre’s Commonwealth employment office with placards reading ‘We Want Work’ to protest a lack of jobs. About 100 migrants had been at Bonegilla for more than five months waiting for jobs and felt misled by the Department of Immigration’s promise of employment. During the protest, scuffles broke out between police and migrants.

• The family shown in the clip were just a few of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who were part of the Australian Government’s large-scale post-Second World War immigration program. The Government felt that Australia’s population of 7 million people needed boosting to improve the nation’s economic growth and ensure it could be defended if attacked. Between 1947 and 1968, 2.3 million migrants arrived in Australia.

• A World for Children was made by the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement with the support of the Department of Immigration, and may have aimed to promote greater acceptance of migrants among Australian children, particularly as, on leaving centres such as Bonegilla, migrant children went to school alongside their Australian peers. There was still some resistance to non-British migrants based on fears that they threatened Australia’s homogeneity.

Filmed from the point of view of a bus driving into Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre in Victoria. Families of newly arrived migrants disembark from the buses.
Narrator (voice-over) They have come from many countries in Europe, and speak several different languages. Men, women and children, to a new adventure in this big, strange land so far from their own. This is Bonegilla, a migrant reception centre in Victoria, Australia, where they will stay for a while until jobs and more permanent accommodation can be found for them.

The new arrivals stand around until they are greeted by the Centre’s director. They pick up their baggage and officials show them to their quarters.
Narrator (voice-over) They have travelled many thousands of miles to get here. Over the sea in a ship, by train from the coast, and finally by bus from the station. They look tired and a little bewildered at first. But officers of the centre have prepared for their coming. They welcome them, talk to them, help them to find their baggage, and show them to their quarters.

Shots of the centre grounds and wildlife. Three children wake up in their bedroom and are seen walking and skipping through the grounds. They ask directions from a man in uniform standing in the grounds.
Narrator (voice-over) These three children, Maret and her brothers Juri and Yanni, are looking forward to a day of exploring the centre and the countryside. As they move about the centre, they will meet various people whom they will come to know better during their stay here. First, the policeman, who shows them the best way to go.