“A
Place to Call Home?” is a current exhibition at the National Archives of
Australia in Canberra. The exhibition, from May 30 to September 14, 2014, is a
photographic display of migrant hostels, predominantly in Victoria and New
South Wales in the 1950s and 60s.
Hostels,
especially Nissen huts, were often the first homes when migrants came to
Australia in the late 1950s. Nissen huts were corrugated steel structures in
the iconic shape of a half-circle. The sheet metals were left unpainted.
Inside, the floors were often concrete or wooden planks. Doors and small
windows were added. The Nissen huts were generally about 5 metres (16 feet) or 7.3 metres (24 feet) for housing, and
larger ones of 9.2 metres (30 feet) were erected as canteens (food halls) or
recreational areas and offices.
Nissen
huts (developed in 1916 by Canadian engineer Peter Nissen in the British Army)
could be erected quickly to house migrants temporarily. They were portable and
could be installed quickly – the world record for erection is 1 hour and 27
minutes. They were used in World War I (1914-1918) but were used more
extensively in World War II (1939-1945) and post-war as migrant homes, especially in Australia, England, Canada and America – usually erected by the government as ready-made
temporary housing.
After
WWII there was a large-scale migration program to Australia, mainly from
Europe. Hence from 1947 there was a “government-assisted passage” scheme to aid
immigration. By 1950, almost 200,000 people arrived in Australia. One million
more migrants arrived in the next ten years to 1960, with a million more each
year for the next three decades.
My
time in a Nissen hut in Pennington, 10 kms (6 miles) from Adelaide in South
Australia, although when I was exceptionally young, has left many memories –
not all of them positive. Certainly as children we had lots of friends and met
many families, all starting new lives in Australia. I remember the huts as cold
and dark, or hot, humid and dark. The land was not landscaped, and I remember a
lot of couch-grassed areas, but also a lot of dry hard dirt patches. The toilet
and shower blocks were like those of ancient camping grounds – damp and smelly.
The Pennington Nissen huts are no longer there, and Pennington is now a suburb
of Adelaide. Pennington Junior Primary School still had a New Arrivals Program
funded by the Commonwealth for children of families who have recently arrived
in Australia, with a focus on teaching English as a second language.
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