Operacionalización de las variables

In 1958 -5 9 w hen the D epartm ent ol D efen ce w as transferred from M elbourne to Canberra, alm ost the entire suburb o f C am pbell w as reserved for them , w ith som e new houses standing empty for quite som e tim e, aw aiting their new occupants. BG Interivew .

SI

It took me two years to find out that you could 1 get a house from the Government!. Nobody told me - we were out in the bush, and everyone else there was Australian, and they weren't going to move. They liked forestry work, so they would stay.-6

This is one example of the way in which the experiences of European migrants in Canberra differed from that of anglo-Australians. Others will be referred to later.

Most people seemed to accept the need for priority listing, but at times the overall fairness of the administration of the waiting list was called into q u e s t i o n . I n 1948 the Federal Public Service Journal observed that being on the waiting list 'bears a close resemblance to a fat man on a greasy pole: today an applicant may be near the top - tomorrow he may be near the bottom.'28

Finding a place to stay in the meantime was a problem. Hostels for public servants and camps built for labourers on construction projects were designed for single people only, and were sex-segregated.29 Many families contemplating the move to Canberra from elsew here were forced to consider a period of separation, with the wife and children staying where they were (or perhaps moving to a town close to Canberra) while the husband took up accommodation in a camp or hostel.30 Some contemporary writers presented this phenomenon in a way that shows wives as having very little control over the situation. For example, one journalist wrote:

There are still many people separated from their wives - one I know commutes every weekend between Canberra and Goulbum where he has installed his wife in a hotel: another maintained his wife for a long time in a hotel in Cooma.3 1

20 MS Interview. ->7

Ev en priority housing was criticised at times. The husband ot one interviewee claimed it used to 'annoy' him a little. [KK inlerviewl See also Linge 'Fifty Years' p478; Linge Canberra p30. The bitterness was particularly apparent in the big move o f Defence Force to the suburb of Campbell in 1958- 59. One Campbell resident, not a member of the defence forces, claimed: They got all the choice houses and every thing else and we g o t. . . one that Defence had turned down.' BG Interview',

x_{Federal Public Serv ice Journal Jan 1948. See also Wigmore Long View p i54.}

2 0

Gibbncy Canberra p232; KK and RA Interv iews. 30 Gibbncy Canberra p233; also KK Interview'.

' 1 ' Letter from Canberra' Focus vol 1 # 10 Nov. 1946 p24. See also Rea Canberra (no page numbers). Secondary sources reflect a similar attitude (i.e. that it was the men who decided w hether the wife would be left in the city of origin or 'installed' somew here close by), for example, Gibbncy Canberra p233; Wigmore Long View p i52.

Married women who had recently arrived from Europe were often expected to stay in the migrant receiving camps set up in various parts of the country while their husbands took advantage of the accommodation entitlements associated w ith the ample opportunities for employment in Canberra’s construction program.32

Late in 1949. the plight of some migrant women became the concern of the Canberra Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA). The Association was asked by the Immigration Department to find accommodation in its single women's hostel for two migrant mothers-to-be. and to extend the hostel to allow for this arrangement on a more permanent basis. Although the YWCA did find room for the two pregnant women, it declined to make any permanent arrangements, requesting that 'the whole subject of providing married accommodation for New Australians be referred to the National Council of Women.'33 It would appear from this that while the Government was prepared to provide accommodation for males engaged in building the capital, it was not prepared to extend its responsibility to their dependents.

One migrant family, faced with the prospect of separation (mother and 18 month old daughter in Bathurst migrant camp and father in Canberra) decided instead to set up home in a tent on the riverbank in Queanbeyan, the NSW town just over the border from the ACT and out of reach of Department of the Interior regulations.34 This family and two others, one Ukrainian and one Latvian, lived like this for a year until they got Hooded out.3''

- 'The men came lirst trom the camps - the women were left behind.' RA Interview. Petronella Wensing ('Southern Stitches' p28) talks of how she and her children continued to live in Scheyville Migrant Hostel in NSW for a while after her husband got work in Canberra. He was prov ided w ith accomrruxiation in a men's hostel in the capital; there was no place for her and the children. See also T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslakc Angus and Robertson, Australia 1953. This novel, based on real-life experience, depicts the isolation of the all-male construction camps as well as the bad feeling displayed by some anglo-celtic Australians to the 'Balts', a term they reserved for migrants.

33 YMCA Board of Directors meeting 15/8/49; 19/9/49; 21/11/49 (copies in YWCA archives). In 1952 the YWCA also took in two young married couples until they could find a home. YWCA Annual Report 1952.

34 Queanbeyan was very much a dormitory town for Canberra at this lime, with about 1000 workers trav elling in to work each day in 1954. H.W.H. King The Canberra- Queanbeyan Symbiosis' American Geographical Review vol xliv, 1954 pi 18. The tent in question had a wooden floor, half walls of fibro- cemenl and a canv as roof which was lied to a big tree. Inside there was a stov e for cooking and heating, so it was 'very warm, and if you walk in, you think it's a house.' DK Interview.

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Another family, after a period ot separation, defied the Canberra convention of waiting for Government housing and

borrowed four hundred pounds to buy an old house on Russell Hill: the house was due to be demolished in a few years to make way for suburban development. . . The house was really old and the weeds were growing above the w indowsills, but it had plenty of space and the main thing was we were finally together as a family.36

This house was considered 'unsatisfactory' accommodation for her family later, not because of its state of repair, but because it was on ground that was to be developed into the new suburb of Campbell. Accordingly, she received a Government house instead.37

Other migrant families found refuge in some of the pre-war suburbs like Ainslie. w here older Government houses had brick garages. These

proved very popular with the migrants, many of whom turned them into comfortable homes. The Australians in the house were quite happy to let the garage for a little income even if it meant sharing bathrooms etc. The migrant families would often look after the garden and grow vegetables. They went to bed early, so the kitchen could be used in shifts.3^

'Borrow ing' the bathroom and kitchen of a family of the dominant culture and going to bed earlier might not have been the ideal situation for the migrant family and. although families 'fitted out these garages beautifully, dividing them with a curtain into living and sleeping accommodation,' the conditions often caused health problems such as 'terribly bad rheumatism'.39 Sometimes the results were worse, as the following newspaper report reveals:

A man, believed to be a New Australian, was burned to

room in a Queanbeyan house with a shared kitchen. 36 P. Wensing 'Southern Stitches' p28.

3 See the previous discussion of housing list pnonties.

R. Arndt Helene Bator Canberra, July 1989 (unpublished biography written for Helene Bator's