h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The USS 'General R. M. Blatchford' entered Sydney Harbour on 11 November 1949 with a cargo of the dispossessed. Among the hundreds of 'displaced persons' – refugees – was a petite blonde woman who stood at the rail looking at this strange place that might come to be her home. She'd gladly boarded the ship in Naples, knowing that there was nothing for her in Europe except more years in refugee camps. Her town had been shattered and her country had been swallowed by another. Now, on the other side of the world she was looking out at another country of which she knew absolutely nothing.

Her widowed mother was on board with her, and her widowed sister with her two surviving sons. Her daughter, just short of her seventh birthday, was beside her. Her father, her two brothers, her brother-in-law, her eldest nephew and her own son were all dead, all but her father and her son murdered. She chose to let people assume that she was herself a widow – it stopped awkward questions.

She had a tea chest which contained everything she owned. Her clothes, her daughter's clothes, a saucepan, a sewing kit, a few photos, documents gathered along the way in Tartu, Riga, Danzig, Dresden and eventually at the camp in Geislingen*. There was a doll and a pair of children's books, gifts from the Red Cross and the UNRRA.

In her pocket she had a 10-pfennig piece from an obsolete currency, and no other money.

She knew that she'd soon be leaving the ship and that she'd be sent by train to a place called Adelaide, but she didn't quite know where that was. Her daughter would have to start school, in a foreign language. She was trying to teach herself that language and wondered if she'd ever learn something with such illogical spelling.

Mostly, though, she stood at that rail thinking of everything that had happened, all the people who'd disappeared, all the places she'd never see again. She was at the end of the world with an unknown future and she felt herself to be an old woman. She was 31.



My grandmother told me all of this over the years and much more besides. She made a living as a seamstress, then married and became an Australian citizen in 1958, a 'stateless person' no longer. My mother became a teacher, correcting the spelling of native speakers of English. Mum will have gone to lunch today in Adelaide with her cousin, the other surviving member of the family group on that voyage.

I found the tea chest in my grandmother's shed after her death. Mum chose to dispose of it.

I have the 10-pfennig piece.

It's Remembrance Day.

Ivan.


* Geislingen camp: http://www.eesti.ca/?op=article&articleid=21731

Lest we forget.

What wonderful women.

no words as such, except that it brings us YOU Ivan

31 is old to be starting a new life. How very very hard for them all.

I think so often that our generation doesn't have a bloody clue, really.

Thank you for this, Ivan.

B

What a sad but beautiful journal.

Deb

Thanks for sharing, Ivan.

That's beautiful, cheers Ivan.

The worst part, for me, is remembering that my mother and my grandmother were only two people among the millions who were 'displaced' at that time. There were 1215 refugees on that single ship, which was designed to carry about 350 troops. The scale of the postwar migration is hard to take in.

"I think so often that our generation doesn't have a bloody clue, really."

Well said, Ben!