The Last of the Bonegilla Girls by Victoria Purman captures what life was like in Australia in the late 1950’s through the lives of four friends from different cultural backgrounds.

The newly arrived migrants are Elizabeta who is German-Hungarian, Greek girl Vasiliki, Iliana who has Italian heritage, and Frances, the Australian daughter of the camp’s director.

From 1947 up until 1971 Bonegilla was a temporary home to some 320,000 European post-war refugees and migrants who came to Australia. At times up to 8,000 people lived at the camp in cramped accommodation and while the majority of Greek migrants were sponsored, there were still between 15,000 and 30,000 that passed through. Overall, one in 20 Australians are related to, or are descended from someone who went through the migrant camp.

One such person is Purman. Of German-Hungarian heritage, it was her family’s experience at Bonegilla that was the main inspiration for writing the novel.
“The stories of these people that came to Australia are disappearing,” Purman told Neos Kosmos.

“It made me think about my own family’s journey. I had to put myself in my mum’s and my grandparents’ shoes and that was emotional. My mum was 14 when she came and the idea that they packed everything they had in one trunk and five suitcases and crossed the world to this place where they couldn’t speak the language and had no idea what was going to happen to them must have been a pretty scary thing.”

Over the years, Bonegilla has been described as a detention centre; a little Europe; a concentration camp; the birthplace of multiculturalism; a place of no hope; an Eden and a first home.

Purman believes having an accurate portrayal of what Bonegilla was like for families who stayed at the camp was essential in telling the whole story.

“I tried to make the section of the book as realistic as I can,” she explained.

“With the memories of the food and the activities, the open space, how cold it was in winter and how boiling hot it was in summer. I wanted to show what people did, such as swimming in Lake Hume and walking into Albury which was over 23 kilometres away. Not everyone had a good time there, my family where there for a few weeks so it was like a holiday camp. But a lot of other people were there for months and months, and a lot of the adults found it very hard living in very small accommodation, so I wanted to respect that as well.”

One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the book is when one of the main character’s younger sister passes away, an unfortunate reality for a number of families. During her research, Purman discovered that in the early years of the migrant camp 21 children died with all of them buried at the Albury cemetery.

“Many were sick on the boat coming to Australia after years of malnutrition after the war and they died soon after they arrived, from dehydration and other things,” she says.

“That sparked a big review of food and treatment at the camp. I tried to reflect that in the story line of having to leave behind your country and then you leave one of your children behind in a strange place that you never go back to.”

Purman grew up in the Adelaide suburb of Grange and worked in the South Australian media for nearly 30 years as an ABC television and radio journalist. At Seaton High School she was friends with many Greek girls and that helped her shape the character of Vasiliki.

“I grew up in the 70’s and my friends were Greek and Italian,” she says.

“I’ve seen what they and their parents went through when they were younger and I tried to absorb all those experiences. A lot of people wanted to leave the battles and the tribalism behind when they came into Australia and in a way to bring the best of their culture and start afresh. They would see other people on their own, and they would scoop them up and make them feel welcome too.

“I certainly had that with my Greek friends, that beautiful sense of family and community that you see with Greeks, that’s why I loved writing about that.”

The multicultural friendship of the four girls is not unlike many that existed in Australia during that time. Purman revealed that the friendship of Elizabeta and Vasilki can be traced back to her mum and a relationship she had with a Greek migrant she worked with in Adelaide.

“My mum’s first job in Australia was at Holden. She used to sew the car seats and she worked with a Greek woman called Connie,” she says.

“I have this photo of the two of them standing outside Holden in the beautiful 50’s, flared skirts … and I just thought ‘I can’t tell the story of migration to Australia with Bonegilla and not mention a Greek character’.”

After leaving Bonegilla, Vasiliki is attempting to navigate life, love and work in Melbourne. But while Australia represents new opportunities, the oppressive nature of family tradition gets in the way of the true happiness she yearns for.

“It was really important I captured that in the book,” Purman says.

“The country was changing and the cultural and social norms were changing as well. So how does a young person in the middle of all that make sense of that? It’s interesting to look back on it with an 18-year-old head set. Why couldn’t those girls do what they wanted? Because at that time you didn’t go against your family, it was everything.”

When Vasilki has an arranged marriage and has children Purman is again able to capture the conflict that many first generation Greek Australians felt – of being torn between family obligation and living an independent life.

“Towards the end of the book you can see how Vasiliki treats her own children, how her life experience has shaped her and how she raises her daughters,” she says.

“I really wanted to highlight that because I think women in particular had that pressure on them to be the good Greek or Italian wife. I tried to as much as I can, to tell a thousand stories in one character. I’m sure there were Greek women who came out and married someone they liked without having an arranged marriage. But I can understand how people wanted to maintain their language and culture.

“I knew that the pressure from the 50’s just doesn’t go away. It doesn’t disappear in one generation, perhaps it’s two generations.”

While travelling around regional Victoria and Adelaide as part of her book tour, Purman has met many families who had a connection to Bonegilla and sharing those experiences with her readers has been quite profound.

“I’ve had Greek people in the audience crying as they tell me their stories,” she says.

“For a lot of people it was a part of a history that was never thought to be important. I really wanted to put it in context that this was a huge part of Australia’s social and cultural history.
“That previously we only had the White Australia Policy but then we opened our doors and these people have made Australia, for all its faults, the country we enjoy living in today.”