Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows a day at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre in Victoria in 1962, portrayed through the eyes of three immigrant children, Maret, Juri and Yanni. Opening scenes depict sports day at the Centre’s primary school, the kindergarten and older migrants playing lawn bowls. The children join their mother in the communal dining hall for lunch. In the final sequence they try to fly a kite before the clip cuts to the ‘Creative Leisure Centre’, which the narrator says is a club for children of all ages and nationalities. The clip includes flute-and-cello music.

Educational value points

• The clip represents Bonegilla as a nurturing and carefree environment for children by depicting it largely through the activities of three siblings, who are shown taking part in a sports day, trying to fly a kite and at a crafts club. Even the adults are shown at play, while the focus on the canteen indicates that migrants are well provided for. This is reinforced by the narrator’s motherly tone, the cheerful music and phrases such as ‘a lot of fun to be had by all’.

• The commonalities shared by Australians and migrants, particularly children, are highlighted through statements such as ‘the fascination of flying a kite is common to all children’, shots of Bonegilla parents cheering at the school sports day just as an Australian parent would do, and shots of three blond-haired children who look similar to many Anglo-Australian children.

• The clip focuses on the facilities provided at Bonegilla – however, many migrants felt isolated in rural northern Vic, while the accommodation was rudimentary as was the diet of ‘meat and potatoes’, which was very different from the food to which the migrants were accustomed. Accommodation 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 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 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 to be boosted to improve the nation’s economic growth and to ensure it could be defended if attacked. Between 1947 and 1968, 2.3 million migrants arrived in Australia.

• The ‘Creative Leisure Centre’ shown in the clip may have been run by the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement, which also made the film. Two sisters, Elsie and Mary Rivett, set up the group in the 1930s with the aim of encouraging children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to express themselves creatively, particularly through art and craft. The title of the film suggests that the group saw Australia as a better environment in which to raise children.

Primary school-aged kids at Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre run races and play games.
Narrator It’s sports day at the centre’s primary school. There are races to be won, and parents to applaud. And teachers to organise and help. There are games to be played, and generally, a lot of fun to be had by all.

Maret, Juri and Yanni visit the kindergarten where they throw a ball back and forth with a teacher.
Narrator On the way home to lunch, our three youngsters pause to look at the enclosed kindergarten, where the very small children of the centre are left by their busy mothers to play with toys and games especially chosen and provided, and are cared for by a trained kindergarten teacher.

Adults play lawn bowls.
Narrator Then they stop to watch some older people, intent upon the ancient game of bowls on the smooth lawn of the centre’s bowling green.

Migrants line up at the canteen counter for lunch.
Narrator Every section of the centre has its own kitchen and dining rooms. Here, the cooks have been preparing lunch for the many hundreds to be fed in this one. Afterwards, the staff will clear away and begin preparations for the evening meal. The children join their mother and the other members of their family at the table. Their excursions of the morning have given them a good appetite, but, as they eat, they have much to tell her, of the planes and of the farm and the people they have met.

Outside after lunch, the children fly a kite in the grounds.
Narrator The fascination of flying a kite is common to all children. But the thrill is increased when they have made it themselves. If only there were more wind. The sign reads ‘Creative Leisure Centre’.

The children go inside the Creative Leisure Centre where other children, among other things, are sculpting figures out of clay.
Narrator Inside, the children meet many others. This is in effect a big club for boys and girls of all ages and nationalities, where they can make and do a number of things which absorb their interest and attention.