Proud to call Australia home
People
A new book looks at families who came to South Australia to start a new life and asks why identity matters. Among them is South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas.
A publication released earlier this year captures the heart and identity of migrant and refugee families who left their homeland to call Australia home. Among them is South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas whose family arrived here in 1949.
Heartlands – At the Heart of Identity is an emotional, authentic and heartwarming 66-page exploration of the stories of people who have forged a new life in Australia, while also maintaining connections to their cultural heritage.
They come from a diverse range of backgrounds and each one reflects on their relationship with their family’s homeland, their parents’ journeys and their own sense of belonging.
The Heartlands project is an initiative of AMES Australia, which provides settlement services for refugees and migrants.
The stories are a reminder of the contributions migrants and refuges have made to this country.
Premier Malinauskas, who is Catholic, shares his grandparents’ post war journey from Hungary and Lithuania to Australia, and his own childhood growing up in a migrant community.
In the late 1930s his grandmother was forced to flee her home in regional Hungary as a 20-year-old widowed mother, leaving her daughter with extended family in a nearby town.
‘It was a fateful moment, as World War II mercilessly engulfed Europe,’ he writes.
Eta quickly found herself caught in the web of the war.
‘Moved from camp to camp as forced labour for the Nazis, no parent could bear to imagine the pain, frustration and sense of desperation that Eta must have felt as every avenue to get back to her daughter was closed. Despite multiple efforts to return to Hungary, by the war’s end Eta had been stuck in a German munitions factory.
‘As the Nazi regime collapsed and Eta closed that chapter of her life, her ambition for reunification with her daughter was again thwarted, this time by another peril in the form of communism. Having had her sole possession, a single bike, confiscated by the Russians at a key roadblock, Eta was again turned around and sent back to Germany.’
Mr Malinauskas’ grandparents met after separately coming to Australia as refugees in the aftermath of WWII. A love story ensued (with a few bumps along the way) and the family’s next chapter began.
‘This is not just a story about my paternal grandparents,’ he writes.
‘It is not even just a story about the 785 other people who boarded the General Omar Bundy with grandma.
‘Indeed, this is a story about a young State in an even younger nation whose infectious optimism about the future gave it the courage to be open to new people looking for one thing above all else: opportunity, the same sort of opportunity our first re-settlers sought 112 years earlier and the exact same sort of opportunity new arrivals to our shores seek today.’
Mr Malinauskas said his grandparents’ story had a ‘profound impact on my view of the world and my politics’, sometimes in unexpected ways.
‘When my grandparents got married, they bought a block of land on Trimmer Parade, Seaton, where they built their home and, for many years, operated a fish and chip shop’, he continues in the chapter.
‘I distinctly remember as a young boy standing at that fish and chip shop my grandfather (Peter) built with his own bare hands as he told me about the importance of taking opportunities. He was always talking about opportunity – every opportunity you’ve got to grab.
‘An equally clear memory is of the time I inquired about him becoming an Australian citizen and grandpa quickly rushing off to retrieve his naturalisation certificate…the desire of my grandparents, including Bob and Ursula May from my mum’s side, to seek, seize and share opportunity, even in the face of real hardship, has undoubtedly influenced my politics.’
The book also includes contributors Archie Thompson (former Socceroo who has a New-Zealand born father and Papua New Guinea born mother); Federal MP Cassandra Fernando (whose parents are from Sri Lanka); and architect Maru Jarockyj (whose parents were born in Ukraine).
Heartlands – At the Heart of Identity is free to download via ames.net.au
