On his 20th birthday, Andrea (Andy) Andrighetto left his homeland of Italy. He travelled on the ship Oceania, alone and in search of a better life. Andy came from a large family: his parents, four boys and three girls. His family owned little land and their one cow could not provide for the family of nine. As Andy recalls, ‘there wasn’t enough to feed all of us’. Prospects of employment in postwar Italy were poor and Andy decided to emigrate from war-ravaged Europe. There was, he recollects, a choice of three destinations—America, South Africa and Australia. Leaving his family, Andy sailed to Australia in February 1952.
Andy was one of the guests at a reunion day on 5 October 2003, organised by the Immigration Museum in Melbourne. The reunion focused on migrants who travelled on one of four ships: Neptunia, Oceania, Australia and Fairsea.
These vessels, operating over two decades, carried more than 200,000 postwar European emigrants to our shores—changing the lives of many, and helping to build a multicultural Australia.
In encouraging former emigrants and their families to share memories and rekindle shipboard acquaintances, the reunion days celebrate the spirit of a life-changing journey. Maria Tence, Manager of Public Programs, reflects on the role of the reunions: ‘Through these gatherings, we are able to collect personal stories, and fill in important gaps in our knowledge of Australia’s immigration history—which, after all, is the history of many thousands of individuals.’
At the reunion day, I had the opportunity to speak with passengers like Andy, postwar emigrants on board the four vessels. Their narratives are filled with hope and anecdotes, personal yet representative.
Andy Andrighetto left for Australia with the tantalising promise of jobs that paid ‘four times the wage in Italy’, only knowing of Australia as ‘a big country’. He brought no luggage, just youthful optimism, hope and ‘a lot of dreams’. His abiding memories of the voyage are of the food. As a boy he had a rapacious appetite and shipboard life offered a boundless supply of ‘biscuits, butter and jam’.
Food played a less significant role in the memories of Akos Kerekes, only a young boy when his family fled Hungary after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The Kerekes family carried ‘one little suitcase, and the clothes on our back’. Akos was a passenger on the motor vessel Fairsea, which, according to Keith Stodden, a guest speaker at the reunion day, revolutionised ship travel. It