Day 95 - The Immigration Museum, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

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Friday 21st February 2014. The Immigration Museum, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

After breakfast we made our way down to the immigration museum using our Myki passes which allowed us to go on all the trams and buses. This is a card the you pre-load with dosh in order to use the public transport in Melbourne. We made our way to The Immigration Museum which is a museum displaying Australia's immigration history. It is located on Flinders Street in the Old Customs House and was founded 1998.

We bought our tickets (D got a seniors price) and went immediately to the records office. M went online and went searching for some relatives - D did the same. M found out when her second cousin, Colin Turnnidge, arrived in Oz. D looked for some Gleaves but came up empty handed. There were a few other Turnnidge's who M didn't know about who served in the Australian Air Force. She took down all the details so she could research them later. By the time we had finished in the records department it was lunchtime. We used or MyKi passes and went back to the YH to have lunch at Glen's cafe.

After lunch we returned to the Immigration Museum. It was on 3 floors. We spent a while looking around the Long Room, the museum's most famous space, which is a notable piece of Renaissance Revival architecture. In here there were exhibitions explaining not only how humans arrived here, but also how mice, dogs, rats cats and other non native (and undesirable) animals came to be here.

After the 19th century immigration surge, immigration slowed until after the Second World War. Between 1946 and 1972 there was 'Room for Millions More'. Nearly 3 million immigrants arrived in Australia during this period. Australia's immigration program became the second largest in the world, relative to its population (the largest being Israel). Almost every 2nd immigrant came from Britain; immigrants were also accepted from throughout Europe in a drive to increase national security and post -war economic development. By the early 1970's Asian immigrants were accepted in increasing numbers. The 1958 Migration Act finally removed reference to race, opening the door to non-discriminatory policy.

However, there were still ways that immigration could be controlled and decisions influenced, despite the new laws. One of these was the "Dictation Test". This test was intended to conceal the fact that Australia had a policy of outright racial discrimination, which would have been diplomatically unpopular. It aimed to stop non-European immigration in an indirect way - by refusing admission to those who failed to pass a test given in a European foreign language. Dictation tests were intentionally confusing, even when read in English. About 50 words long, they had to be written down in a prescribed language. If an applicant did manage to pass the test, it could be conducted again in other European languages until the applicant failed. M had a go at this test in English. M can take shorthand and, although a little rusty, it took her two hearings to get the text word perfect. How would she have done in French, German? We both knew we would have failed if given the test in any language other than English. To keep out 'unwanted' applicants the Australian authorities would give Maltese applicants a test in Dutch, French in Greek whatever they felt like - and there was no limits to the number of tests that could be given to an applicant. There was one story about a political activist who spoke several European languages but he failed when eventually he was tested in Gaelic!

The next floor had exhibitions where we could learn about where we had come from. Lots of passports and old documents and dialogues from people who had made new lives in Australia. These included stories from Greek taxi drivers, Vietnamese Boat People, Somali refugees and many other people. There were stories of divied families being reunited.

We ran out of time in the end but had enjoyed what we had seen. When we got back to the YH M looked up her second cousin Ian (Collin's son) in the phone book. She gave him a call but he was out so M left a message. She will try again tomorrow. We ate at Glen's cafe, fish and chips with mushy peas for M and risotto for D.

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Comments

[Colin Stuart Turnnidge, II]

What's this then?
y father emigrated to the US after two years in Canada, 1960.