The Australian Women's Register

Mrs Ilona Hrubos was born in the town of Mahr, Schonberg in the Sudetenland, in 1928. At the end of the Second World War she, like millions of others, became a refugee. She, her husband and child migrated to Australia, arriving in Fremantle on 1 January 1951. They lived first in the Northam migrant camp, moving to Glen Forrest in April of 1951.

Meitka Gruszka is a member of the Polish community in Western Australia who has taken an active role in multicultural issues. As well as being a leader in the Polish community, having served as President of the Polish Association of Western Australia, she was involved in a number of multicultural organisations. At various times throughout the 80s and 90s she was a member of the Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia, the Catholic Migrant Centre and the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council.

The Catholic Migrant Centre has been crucial to the provision of support services to immigrants to Perth for over twenty years.

There is a long history of contact between Holland and Australia. In early 1606, William Jansz of Amsterdam, captain of the Duyfken (Little Dove) landed on Cape York Peninsula. A number of Dutch ships sank off the Western Australian coast in the 1600s and survivors reportedly established relationships with local Aborigines. By 1644, Abel Tasman had completed a partial circumnavigation of Australia which revealed, for the first time, the size of the continent. The resulting incomplete map of New Holland was not superseded until the arrival of Captain Cook in 1770.

During the 1850s gold rushes Dutch merchant ships continued to visit Australia but immigration of the Netherlands-born remained negligible. Until 1947, when the Census recorded 2,174 Netherlands born, the number of people arriving from the Netherlands were offset by a large proportion of departures of Netherlands-born from Australia. This trend has continued to the present day, apart from a period of high migration during the 1950s and 1960s.

After the Second World War, many Dutch people suffered severe economic and social dislocation in Holland. With an already high population density, a relatively small land area and the highest birth rate in Europe, the Netherlands faced a severe housing crisis and rising unemployment, due mainly to the mechanisation of agriculture. Dutch authorities actively supported emigration as a partial solution to the problem of overcrowding.

Meanwhile, immigration policy change meant that Australia was looking for acceptable migrants from non-British sources. The hard working rural Dutch, with their linguistic and cultural affinities with the Australian population, were seen to be ideal immigrants. Both the Australian and Netherlands Governments contributed to the cost of passage, while the Australian Government accepted the responsibility for assisting settlement. As a result, during the 1950s Australia was the destination of 30 per cent of Dutch emigrants and the Netherlands-born became numerically the second largest non-British group. Their numbers peaked in 1961 at 102,134.

Janet Biddlecombe ran her father’s estate at Golf Hill, Victoria, from his death in 1888 to her own in 1954. She pioneered the breeding of Herefords in Australia. As a pastoralist Janet was remarkably successful, and proceeds from her Hereford Stud went to any number of charitable causes – usually as anonymous donations.

In the nineteenth century Italians priests performed missionary work in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory and the Italian linguist Raffaello Carboni played a significant role in the Eureka Stockade revolt of 1854. Small Italian communities catered to miners on the goldfields of Victoria and Western Australia. In 1885 a group of some 300 migrants from northern Italy established a traditional Italian community called ‘New Italy’ in northern New South Wales (NSW). Italian fishermen also established communities along the south coast of NSW, Port Pirie and Fremantle. During this period Italian labourers arrived in Queensland to work on the cane fields. By the late 1930s, one third of all Australia’s Italian migrants lived in the cane-growing regions of Queensland. Italians also became involved in market gardens, comprising about 40 per cent of Queensland’s
market gardeners.

In 1947 the population of the Italy-born was 33,632 persons and by 1971 the number had increased to 289,476 persons. Most of the Italian migrants came from Sicily, Calabria and Veneto and settled in metropolitan areas. Italy experienced economic buoyancy after 1971, and this prompted many Italians to leave Australia and return to Italy. This led to a decline in the size of the Italian population in Australia. The 1996 Census recorded a drop in the number of Italy-born persons to 238,216.

Only daughter of Sydney newspaper proprietor Sir James Reading Fairfax, Mary Elizabeth played an active part in Sydney society, lending her support to numerous charitable and women’s organisations from the RSPCA to the YWCA.

From the time of her election to parliament, Franca Arean was hopeful of forming a “network” of women of all backgrounds who could meet informally, exchange ideas and help and support each other. In January 1984, she sent a letter to twenty to thirty women asking them to come to a meeting at Parliament House. They met in Feb 1984 for the first time, and the Women’s Network – Australia was born. The first Women’s Network guest was Frederika Steen, the head of a newly established Women’s Desk at the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in Canberra.

In September 1960, seven months after the death of Mary Bertha Raine, the Sunday Mirror was reporting with incredulity that ‘The singing barmaid of a dilapidated outback New South Wales pub became the woman who left most of her £439,626 estate to the University of Western Australia Medical School. The bequest will bring her total gifts to the University to nearly £750,000’.

Francesca Merenda began work with Department of Immigration in 1969 as the first ever Italian speaking welfare worker. She was a member of the group appointed by Malcolm Fraser in 1977, and chaired by Sir Frank Galbally, to review post-arrival migrant programs and services.

Francesca Merenda had a long association with Co.As.It. Italian Association of Assistance, including as a member of the Board of Directors after the Association was incorporated in 1984.

Mara’ was born in Daugavpils, Latvia. Her parents lost contact with one another during the Second World War and her mother brought the family to South Australia in 1949. Mara and her sister were placed at the Goodwood Orphanage and their brother at the Brooklyn Park Orphanage for three and a half years while their mother worked as a nurse’s aid and established a new home. Mara learnt to speak English at the orphanage. She found many of the routines and regulations incomprehensible at first and her perspective as an ‘outsider’ provides different insights into the institution.

The formation of the Greek Young Matrons’ Association was an overt attempt by second generation parents of Greek heritage to ensure that their children married Australian born Greeks like themselves. By providing them with an organisation which would offer social activities and cultural events in which young Greek people could participate, the organisers hoped that young Greeks would marry within the community.

The Centre for Philippine Concerns Australia is a national network advocating for the welfare of Filipinos in Australia

Melba Marginson is National Spokesperson for the Centre for Philippine Concerns Australia.

Catherine Cunningham ran for the seat of Coogee, Sydney, in 1948. Her campaign was unsuccessful, but she continued to take a strong interest in politics at local, state and federal levels.

Lithuanians came in large numbers to Australia in the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of the wave of refugees from the Soviet-occupied Baltic states.

While most Philippines-born settlement in Australia is comparatively recent, contact between indigenous Australians and Filipino sailors in the north of the continent extends back well before Europeans arrived. Early census data shows that some of the sojourners stayed for good: there were approximately 700 Philippines-born persons in Australia at the turn of the century, mainly in Western Australia and Queensland.

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 led to the introduction of policies excluding non-Europeans from entry to Australia (colloquially known as the ‘White Australia Policy’). This resulted in a significant decrease in the number of Philippines-born settlers in Australia. The number of Filipinos was down to 141 at the time of the 1947 Australian Census, and it was not until the 1950s that the population began to increase.

Significant numbers of Filipino students were allowed entry to Australia under the Colombo Plan and many chose to stay after graduation. An immigration policy reform in 1966 allowed well-qualified non-Europeans to immigrate to Australia. The Filipino population approximately doubled between every Census (every 5 years) to 1991, making it one of the fastest growing overseas-born populations in Australia.

The final repudiation of the ‘White Australia Policy’ and the declaration of martial law in the Philippines in 1972 led to rapid growth in the Philippines-born population in Australia over the next two decades. During the 1970s, many Filipino women migrated as spouses of Australian residents. Since then, most of the Philippines-born settlers have been sponsored by a family member.

Most Filipino migration occurred during the 1980s, peaking in 1987-1988. In the 1990s, settler arrivals began to decline and the growth in the Philippines-born population slowed. The 1991 Census recorded 73,673 living in Australia.

Although there was some Latvian migration to Australia in the aftermath of the abortive 1905 revolution against Tsarist Russia, the most significant wave of Latvian emigrants arrived after the second world war. During the war Latvia was under Soviet occupation and the Latvian people were subjected to oppression and mass deportations. By 1945, 156,000 Latvians had escaped to western Europe. They were among the 12 million war refugees awaiting resettlement in Displaced Persons camps. Approximately 20,000 Latvians arrived in Australia between November 27, 1947, and the end of 1952.

Between 1970 and 1980 and beyond, Dzidra Knochs studied arts and crafts, education and art history at Flinders University and the South Australian school of art. Having some knowledge of Russian and Italian, she worked for many years as a journalist in the area of the Arts for the Melbourne newspaper Australijas Latvietis (Australian Latvian) as well as freelancing for overseas journals and newspapers. She has exhibited her visual artwork in all Australian capital cities and also in Canada, and has organised many art exhibitions. Knochs is a member of the Royal South Australian Society of Art, Contemporary Art Society and secretary of the Latvian art society of South Australia (A.L.M.A). The most well known of her exhibitions is the Forgotten Immigrants and Australians exhibition, held in the Old Parliament House, Adelaide in October 1988, which showcased photographic images of immigrants from the late 1940s.

The first branch of the Ukrainian Women’s Association was formed on September 13th, 1949 in Cowra migrant camp. Mrs. I Polensly was the inaugural president. Ukrainian women were holding meetings in all the migrant centres across Australia, however Cowra is always considered to be the cradle of the U.W.A in Australia

Ukraine is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea in south-eastern Europe. The area of present-day Ukraine was populated only by Scythian nomads until the 6th century AD, when Slavic people begin to settle in the area. An organised political entity, known as Rus, evolved around Kyiv. (Russia, which later evolved around the principality of Moscow, did not yet exist).

In the fifteenth century Ukraine became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and then of the Polish-Lithuanian ‘Commonwealth’ (Rzeczpospolita), until the eastern half of the country was finally annexed by Muscovy in the seventeenth century. With the annexation of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth by Russia in 1795, the whole of Ukraine came under Russia’s rule until 1918.

Ukrainians managed to establish an independent Ukrainian state in 1918, but it could not withstand simultaneous attacks by Poland from the west and Russia from the east. Ultimately the fighting ended in the partition of Ukraine between Poland and the USSR. Ukrainians suffered greatly under Stalin’s repression during the inter-war period. An artificially-induced famine, in which Ukrainians estimate about six million
people died, was used by Stalin to forcibly implement the collectivisation of agriculture in Ukraine. Ukraine remained occupied by the USSR until 1991, when the latter was dismantled.

It is believed that prior to World War I up to 5,000 Ukrainian workers had settled in Australia. Ukraine was a major area of conflict in World War II and many Ukrainians fled to Western Europe, where they were interned as Displaced Persons (DPs). The first Ukrainians began arriving from the refugee camps in late 1948. They came to Australia on assisted passages which included two-year work contracts with the Commonwealth Government. Among the migrants were priests, lawyers, doctors and engineers, but the vast majority were people from a rural background.

The 1947 census did not list Ukraine as a birthplace, but the 1954 Census recorded 14,757 Ukraine-born. After that the number of migrants from the Soviet Ukraine was negligible, apart from some Ukrainian Jews. There was also limited migration of Ukrainians from communities in Poland and
Yugoslavia. Migration from Ukraine has only been significant since independence in 1991. The 1996 Census recorded 13,460 Ukraine-born people resident in Australia (up from 9,051 at the 1991 Census). Most live in Victoria and New South Wales.

The review of Post Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants was established by Cabinet decision and announced by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Malcolm Fraser, on August 31, 1977. Established in order to ensure that the changing needs of migrants were being met by available resources, the review was conducted under prime ministerial authority in order to circumvent some allegedly obstructionist senior bureaucrats in the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. The first meeting of the Review Group, which was chaired by Mr Frank Galbally, C.B.E, was held on 1 September 1977. The committee of review consulted widely, seeking submissions from individuals and organisations, government and non-government. Advice from migrant community groups was actively sought.

The report brought down by the review group, Migrant Services and Programs, was submitted to
the Prime Minister on 27 April 1978 and tabled by him on 30 May 1978. It was made available in Arabic, Dutch, English, German, Greek, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese. In it, the Review Group came down with a total number of fifty-seven recommended improvements to
programs and services involving expenditure of about $50 million in such areas as initial settlement and education, especially the teaching of English, with emphasis placed on the role of ethnic communities themselves, and other levels of government, to encourage multiculturalism.

Of particular significance to migrant women was recommendation number 43, which stated ‘the implementation of the general recommendations of the Report, which have been framed in recognition of the special problems of migrant women, should take particular account of their needs’.

Conducted at a time, according to the committee, when Australia was ‘at a critical stage in the development of a cohesive, united, multicultural nation’, the Galbally review of Post Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants marks an important development in the evolution of Australian official policy towards settlers from one of assimilation to multiculturalism. Its pointed reference to the needs of women also marked a moment when ethnic and gender politics connected.

The first contact between Poland-born people and Australia occurred in 1696, when several citizens of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth were included in the crew of Captain Willem Vlamingh’s Dutch expedition which explored the Western Australian coast. The first Polish settler in Australia was a convict who arrived in 1803 and became a successful wheat farmer in Tasmania.

Later arrivals included a group of Poland born people who established a community in South Australia which grew to about 400 people by the 1880s. Some Poles joined the goldrush to Australia in the 1850s. The 1921 Australian Census recorded 1,780 Poland born residents and by the 1933 Census their number had almost doubled.

Following World War II, many Polish refugees came to Australia and during the period between 1947 and 1954, the Poland born population increased from 6,573 to 56,594 people. Many refugees worked under a two-year contract in unskilled jobs and continued in similar work for a period after their contracts ended. There was further emigration from Poland to Australia after the Polish government relaxed its emigration laws with almost 15,000 Poland born people coming to Australia between the years 1957 and 1966. By the 1966 Census, the Poland-born population had reached 61,641 people.

In the early 1980s there was further Polish emigration from Poland to Australia. The emergence of the Solidarity trade union movement and the declaration of martial law in Poland at the end of 1981 coincided with a further relaxation of Polish emigration laws. During the period 1980-91 Australia granted permanent entry to more than 25,000 Poland-born settlers, many arriving as refugees. The Poland-born population of Australia peaked at 68,496 at the 1991 Census. Since then the improvement in living conditions in Poland, as well as more stringent migration criteria, have significantly reduced the levels of Polish migration to Australia from the high levels of 1981-85.

Dorothy Buckland-Fuller was a sociologist and social activist of some longstanding, with a distinguished career in ethnic and multicultural politics, particularly as they impact upon women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She was a peace activist, an environmentalist, a feminist and committed to the cause of reconciliation with indigenous Australia.

Of Greek heritage, Buckland-Fuller had a long involvement with the Greek Community of New South Wales, and her valuable contributions were acknowledged in 2001 when she was granted Life Membership to the Council of the Greek Orthodox Community of Sydney and New South Wales. In 1974, she established the Australian-Migrant Women’s Association, an organisation designed to bring together immigrant and Australian-born women.

She was active in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, serving as president in 2002-4. As a sociologist, she taught and conducted action research. Her life has been a case of putting that theory to practice. In her own words, she was an ‘action oriented person’.

Dorothy Buckland-Fuller passed away in Sydney on 5 July 2019. She will be remembered for her words resounding in the ears of all those who knew her over her great life: “I will continue to work for equal rights for all and the betterment of our society for as long as I live”.

The Australian-Migrant Women’s Association was established by Dorothy Buckland-Fuller in 1974 to bring together immigrant and Australian-born women to discuss matters of common interest. Buckland-Fuller, who had some influence within the Greek community in New South Wales, was concerned that Greek women were often too inward looking. She wanted to expose them to new ideas and open lines of communication between them and other women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Buckland-Fuller was assisted by International Women’s Year funding in 1975 to promote the initiative. She received a small grant to assist in running a program of monthly meetings as the premises of the Greek Orthodox Community of New South Wales in Sydney. These meetings brought together about one hundred women at a time from different ethnic communities, as well as Buckland-Fuller’s friends from the Women’s Electoral Lobby and academic circles.

The Greek Orthodox Community is one of Australia’s oldest organisations representing Greek migrants. Apart from operating churches, it provides a wide range of migrant related social services, including afternoon Greek schools, kindergartens and aged care hostels. In more recent times, it has taken on board the need to meet its members’ cultural and artistic aspirations. This has involved a shift in emphasis towards promoting and supporting cultural initiatives not only of Greek/Australians of New South Wales but of all Australia.
In the 1970s and 80s the organisations premises were used to host meetings of the Australian-Migrant Women Association, an organisation established by Dorothy Buckland-Fuller with the aim of broadening the horizons of Australian-Greek women.

On June 2, 1976 the newly elected Australian Labor party Premier, Neville Wran, announced his cabinet’s decision to establish an Ethnic Affairs Commission. Under the Ethnic Affairs Act, 1976 ( Act No. 76, 1976) (3) the Ethnic Affairs Commission’s initial work involved the research and investigation of ethnic affairs with special emphasis on promoting the integration of different ethnic groups. The constitution and functions of a Commission to implement policy decisions in this area was also examined.

The Ethnic Affairs Commission interacted with a number of new government bodies all concerned with equal opportunity issues in society. These included the Anti-Discrimination Board which came into operation in June 1977 to address racial discrimination, the Review of New South Wales Government Administration which dealt with recruitment, promotion and equality of opportunity and the Women’s Coordination Unit of the Premier’s Department which had responsibility for creating opportunities for migrant women.

In 1978 the Ethnic Affairs Commission submitted its report, Participation, which outlined a concept of multiculturalism that went beyond preserving cultural heritage to a society where minority groups would achieve total participation in the New South Wales social and political system.

To implement this philosophy of equal opportunity Participation recommended that a Commission should be established as a strong and stable body to ensure that all elements of the New South Wales Government Administration come to regard ethnic affairs as part of their ordinary, day to day attitudes and thinking.

A new Ethnic Affairs Commission was established as a permanent government authority on 1 December 1979. It was established under the terms of the Ethnic Affairs Commission Act, Act No. 23, 1979. (7)