The Last of the Bonegilla Girls

by Victoria Purman

  Elizabeta glanced at Frances, her face pale. ‘I’m sorry. What is “passed away”? Is she leaving das Krankenhaus? The hospital?’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mavis shuddered.

  ‘Oh, Elizabeta.’ Frances felt a pit open in her stomach and her head spun as everything inside her body plummeted into it.

  ‘She has died, Elizabeta.’ Mavis lifted her chin and her eyes glanced to the ceiling. Frances could tell she was trying not to cry, but Frances couldn’t control her own sobbing. It filled the kitchen and echoed back at her.

  ‘She has died?’ Elizabeta repeated.

  ‘Yes. She was so very sick from the measles.’

  ‘Oh.’ Elizabeta sat in almost total stillness.

  ‘You do understand, Elizabeta?’ Frances asked gently, trying so desperately to stop crying. How dare she when her friend was dry-eyed and calm? When she was so stoic in the face of such heartbreaking news?

  Elizabeta nodded. ‘I understand. My mother. I must go to her.’

  Mavis filled Elizabeta’s water glass. Elizabeta drank it down in one gulp.

  ‘Your mother is still in hospital,’ Mavis said slowly and deliberately. ‘The doctors are looking after her. They have given her some medicine so she will sleep.’

  Elizabeta stood abruptly, pushing the chair back with a scrape on the linoleum. ‘Please. I go to my mother. My father. I must tell him.’

  Mavis nodded. ‘Mr Burley is doing all her can to get word to your father. We know where he is working in South Australia. Someone will tell him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Elizabeta said.

  Mavis stood and Frances followed. ‘We’re so very sorry. You and your mother and father will be in our prayers tonight and forever.’ She walked around the table and put an arm around Elizabeta’s shoulders, pulling her in close. ‘The doctors think it’s best if you wait until tomorrow to see your mother. It’s been decided you will stay here with us tonight, in our home. We will look after you, dear.’

  Frances held Elizabeta’s hand. ‘Come with me. You will sleep here tonight. I’ll show you your bed.’

  There wasn’t a funeral. At least not one that Elizabeta and her mother were invited to. Luisa was laid to rest two days later in the Albury Cemetery, in the Roman Catholic section, near the graves of the twenty-one children who were buried there in 1949 and 1950 after they died of malnutrition soon after arriving at Bonegilla.

  Plans had been put in place, Frances told Elizabeta. Mr Burley had arranged for her mother and father to talk to each other on the telephone and then Mr Burley arranged for the Schmidts to be reunited as soon as possible. In a week, they were to go to Adelaide.

  ‘On compassionate grounds,’ Frances explained. ‘My father says that people in the immigration department are very sorry about what has happened. We will get you to your father as soon as we can. You need to be together at a time like this.’

  Her mother had buried two daughters and she wasn’t yet forty years old. One in Hungary, a place that was never really home for them, and the other here in Australia, which wasn’t home yet either. Luisa would remain in Albury, sheltered by the long spindly arms of the gum trees in the cemetery, serenaded by songs every day from the magpies, and warmed by the brown earth. Her sweet little sister, who loved nothing more than her mother and father, her sister, school and climbing trees, would be always have a home here on the Murray.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the week after Luisa’s burial, Elizabeta found offerings on the doorstep of their hut every day. A bunch of silver gum leaves tied with a string. A handwritten note. Oranges. Three tins of peaches. A bag of sweets. Elizabeta had arranged everything on the small table in their hut, alongside Luisa’s peg doll and a painting she’d made at the Bonegilla school.

  Her mother didn’t leave the hut except when she was called for meetings with one of the camp staff; the Austrian man, who spoke German, Italian, French and Spanish, had been charged with arranging things for their departure. The doctor at the hospital had given Berta some medicine to help her sleep and she was often in bed.

  Elizabeta had kept herself busy. She packed up Luisa’s few clothes and took them in a bundle to the schoolroom, where the young Australian schoolteacher had taken them in her arms with teary eyes. Surely another child could use her almost-new winter coat with the tan buttons, and her black shoes, even though there were scuff marks on the toes. Elizabeta kept Luisa’s peg doll and stored it and her hair clips in a wooden box that she had carried with her all the way across the world from her other life.

  Her friends Iliana and Vasiliki and Frances came by every day, bringing an orange or an apple for Elizabeta’s mother, and some cold milk and Milo for their friend. Five days after Luisa was buried, Elizabeta allowed herself to be coaxed out for a walk. She had news to tell them.

  ‘We will walk. It is a sunny day.’ Iliana held Vasiliki’s hand tightly. Vasiliki reached for Elizabeta’s hand and then Frances’s and the four girls walked together, linked to each other, and took in every sight there was to see. Elizabeta simply nodded. She didn’t want to talk—it took too much effort and she had spent most of the energy she had taking care of her mother. And anyway, she didn’t want to have to think hard about the words she wanted to say, but wanted to take in everything about this place so she could remember it as the last place she had had a little sister.

  Bonegilla felt like a big paddock in the middle of nowhere, a town plonked in an empty country. This would always be her first memory of Australia. She took in the grey hills in the distance, the apple-green paddocks with lazy cows grazing, the pale blue sky above with wisps of cloud strung out like spun sugar. Then she closed her eyes and tried to imprint those memories there instead of the ones she had brought with her on the boat. There was the tree Luisa had loved to climb, a lonely presence in the grassed area near the mess. The ablutions block, which had scared Luisa so when she’d told her about the snake. The mess in which she’d first tasted corn flakes. The school Luisa had loved so much.

  Their meandering walk led them to the weir. They clambered over a small embankment and once they made it to the top, they took in the view across the blue-grey water.

  ‘I swim in the water,’ Iliana said. ‘In summer.’

  ‘We have lakes in Germany,’ Elizabeta answered. ‘But I cannot swim.’

  Vasiliki mimed swimming, bringing her hands together in front of her chest, pushing them outwards, and sweeping them around in a half circle. ‘Swimming. The sea.’

  Iliana laughed. ‘Fish.’ She rubbed her stomach and grinned.

  It was quiet. There was no breeze to speak of and the only sounds were the gentle lapping water at the edges of the weir and the birds flying overhead, the strange caw caws that were just a little bit familiar to Elizabeta now. The girls walked to a fallen gum tree and sat on it so they could remove their shoes and socks. They ran to the water’s edge, dancing across twigs and dried leaves and stones, and dipped their feet into the frigid water.

  Iliana gasped and laughed and Vasiliki bent down and flicked an arc of water into the air. Frances squealed and Elizabeta watched from the water’s edge. She would never have a sister again but she had friends. She had these three girls. They had not left her alone in her grief, but had come to her every day with what little they had. Iliana and Vasiliki knew what it was like to have left everyone they knew to come to a strange, unknowable place, and they wouldn’t let her feel adrift and alone. And Frances? Elizabeta knew she had a big heart. She had room enough in there for three girls so different from herself, from parts of the world she had only ever seen on a map.

  Elizabeta turned back and sat on the fallen tree. Before long, Frances was on one side of her, Iliana and Vasiliki on the other. They were laughing and shivering.

  Elizabeta breathed deep. ‘On Sunday, I go to Adelaide.’

  The laughing ceased.

  ‘Oh, no.’ Frances was the first one to speak. ‘To be with your father?’

  Elizabeta nodded. ‘My mother is
very sad when he is not here. We must be all together.’

  ‘That is good,’ Vasiliki nodded. ‘A family must be together.’

  ‘I don’t know where I go to.’ Iliana’s bottom lip began to quiver and Vasiliki threw an arm around her and pulled her close.

  Frances leapt to her feet, picking her way on her toes through the stones, and stood in front of her three friends. They looked up at her as if she was their teacher. ‘We will always be friends,’ she announced. ‘From Bonegilla to wherever we go. Do you understand? Friends?’ She linked her two pinkies together and pulled. They remained firmly held.

  ‘Freunden,’ Elizabeta explained.

  ‘Amici,’ said Iliana.

  Vasiliki thought on it. ‘Kalliteri fillie.’

  ‘Friends.’ Frances nodded. ‘The Bonegilla girls. Friends forever.’

  On Sunday, Frances, Iliana and Vasiliki walked to Elizabeta’s hut to say goodbye. They’d found a trolley on which they loaded Elizabeta and Berta’s luggage, and they took turns in pushing it to Bonegilla’s front gate where the chugging blue bus was waiting.

  ‘You will write to us,’ Frances said. It wasn’t a question.

  Elizabeta nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’ She thrust an envelope towards Frances. ‘You will read it?’ she asked.

  Frances opened the flap and slipped out a form. Iliana and Vasiliki were by her side and together they stared at the words.

  ‘It says you’re going to a Department of Immigration holding camp at Woodside. That’s in South Australia. Near Adelaide, I think.’ Frances tried to keep a brave face as she slipped the notification back inside the envelope and passed it back to Elizabeta. ‘I’m sure it won’t be long until you can be with your father. Now I’ll know where to send my letters. You’re off to South Australia on a new adventure.’

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeta said, but she didn’t smile.

  ‘I’ll still be here at Bonegilla,’ Frances said. ‘I will think of you every day.’

  ‘I will think of you every day also,’ Iliana said.

  ‘I too.’ Vasiliki sighed.

  ‘Elizabeta,’ Berta called. ‘Komm. Wier gehen.’

  Frances had promised herself she wouldn’t cry but her promise was of no use in that moment. Elizabeta and her mother were leaving behind something more precious than anything she could name. They would only have the memory of Luisa to take with them. She suddenly stepped forwards and reached for Elizabeta’s hand. She leaned close. ‘I will put flowers on Luisa’s grave, I promise.’

  Elizabeta nodded quickly and cast her eyes to the ground. ‘Thank you. And goodbye,’ she whispered.

  The four girls became a huddle as they threw their arms around each other and held on. Then Elizabeta wriggled herself free and stepped up onto the bus. Frances watched through the windows as Elizabeta walked down the aisle and settled in a window seat near the back. Berta sat next to her and Elizabeta lifted a hand to wave.

  ‘Ciao,’ Iliana called out. ‘Ciao!’ She linked an arm into Vasiliki’s.

  Vasiliki waved and waved, and her hand became a blur of motion in the crisp air.

  Frances watched as the bus moved off. The boom gate lifted and it only took a moment for Elizabeta and her mother to disappear out of sight.

  Chapter Twenty

  1956

  ‘Hello!’

  Vasiliki Mitropoulos raised her arm high as she called out over the noise of Flinders Street Station on the bustling corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets in Melbourne. It was a sea of people, of hats and well-tailored suits and men in overalls and flat caps and women wearing gloves and children in school uniforms. This was the beating heart of the city; where trains disgorged passengers from all over the suburbs only to be filled again in minutes by people on their journeys out of the city. Diagonally across from the station, the twin spires of St Paul’s Cathedral reached for the sky. A block away the muddy Yarra flowed on its journey to Port Phillip Bay.

  The whole world passed you by if you stood at the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets. And this was her world now. Vasiliki was part of Melbourne’s life and energy and meeting him here only made that feeling more profound.

  The green trams swept up Flinders Street and Vasiliki lifted her gaze. She could only laugh now at her confusion the first time he’d said ‘Meet me under the clocks’.

  She’d blamed her English at first, even after nearly three years of living in Australia. But the more English she knew, she more she realised that some Australian expressions still made no sense at all. Standing there on the corner, looking up at the copper dome, tinged green in the sunlight, the clock tower, the archway and the clocks that indicated the times of departure for all the suburban lines, Vasiliki once again practised saying the destinations: Box Hill, Mordialloc, Williamstown, Oakleigh, Brighton Beach and Essendon. Oakleigh was her train. She knew that route off by heart.

  They had taken to meeting under the clocks on Saturdays after her shift at work had ended. It felt so romantic to her that she didn’t care if they weren’t the only ones in Melbourne who met there. The clocks was their place, their time together, their secret. It seemed like a dream to Vasiliki to have a boyfriend. And an Australian boyfriend—one she’d chosen for herself, not any old boy from the village her parents had arranged for her to marry, as if they’d never left Greece and the rules of that old life still applied.

  Her life had changed completely since she and her family had left Bonegilla two years earlier. Sometimes she looked at her life and decided she was Elizabeth Taylor in a Hollywood movie. He’d taken her to the pictures to see The Last Time I Saw Paris and Vasiliki had instantly fallen in love with the actress. At home that night, she’d posed in front of the rusty mirror in the bathroom, looking back over her left shoulder, staring at her reflection, pouting her lips. There was definitely a resemblance. She’d been inspired to cut her long hair short and had begun to wear it the same way, short and full, swept back from her forehead with a curl. Lots of girls wanted to be Grace Kelly but Vasiliki knew that wasn’t realistic for a Greek girl.

  She felt like a young woman in love. He was coming. Her palms grew clammy inside her gloves. She hoped her red lipstick was still unsmudged. She hoped he thought she looked beautiful.

  And then he was right there in front of her, grinning, and Vasiliki felt a glow deep inside her, as if someone had lit a fire in her chest.

  ‘Vasiliki.’ He stopped short before he came too close. He tipped his brown hat to her.

  ‘Hello,’ she said again, looking down at her shoes and then up to his happy caramel-brown eyes. She fought the insatiable urge to grab his lapels, stand on her tiptoes and kiss him on the lips. But she knew not to. Girls shouldn’t be seen kissing their boyfriends in public. She had learned those rules already, had absorbed them from magazines and the other girls working in the cafe and the customers she served every day. There was the added complication of having to be careful in case they were seen by someone either of them knew. Someone who might know her parents. Just in case that happened, they had been rehearsing their story for months and months.

  ‘This is someone I met at Bonegilla, where my father is the director. She is my sister Frances’s friend,’ Tom planned to say if he were ever called on to explain.

  ‘I know him from Bonegilla. My friend’s brother,’ Vasiliki had practised.

  He stood before her now, tall, smiling, so handsome. ‘You made it,’ he said, almost sighing.

  ‘Yes, I am here.’ Why was it suddenly so hard to breathe?

  ‘Was it busy at the milk bar today?’

  Vasiliki laughed. ‘It’s always busy.’

  They were secret lovers making small talk in the middle of a crowded street and every time they met, Vasiliki heard Doris Day’s ‘Secret Love’ in her head. It had played on 3AK late one night and she had known in that moment that it was her song. Their song. Vasiliki wasn’t supposed to be with an Australian boy, and especially not with someone who wasn’t Orthodox, she knew that. It was her obl
igation to honour her parents’ wishes but she had met all the young Greek men at their church, had been paraded before them like a mannequin, but none of them made her feel the way Tom did with just a smile. She had managed to convince her parents to keep searching on her behalf for just the right Greek man, and her father had taken on the challenge with renewed vigour. Her mother continued to buy and store things Vasiliki would need in her new home: new sheets, lace tablecloths, crystal sherry glasses, pots and pans, a dinner set. They were stacked in her wardrobe and she had learned to shut the door quickly so she wouldn’t have to think about who they were for.

  She knew she would have to respect her parents’ wishes but she had bought herself some more time. And they were all in a new country now. She wasn’t brave enough to raise it with her parents, but she wished so hard for herself that different rules might apply.

  ‘You look very pretty.’ Tom took in her pale pink dress, belted at the waist and full in the skirt. It was new, something she’d picked out just for today. She wore a matching cardigan slung over her shoulders, and a clutch purse was tucked under an arm.

  ‘Thank you.’ She wanted to take his hand in public but stopped. ‘You are very handsome, too.’

  Tom laughed. ‘That’s a new word for you. Handsome.’

  ‘Yes. I learn that a boy is not pretty. A boy is handsome.’

  ‘And a girl is perfect.’

  My, how she loved Tom Burley more and more every day.

  Working in the milk bar had been like studying an intensive English lesson every day. Serving customers was excellent practice and her work friends had been kind and considerate too. She was smart and all those lessons with Frances at Bonegilla had given her an excellent grounding. When she had begun working at the Majestic, her father and his brother, Uncle Theodorous, had wanted her in the kitchen, not out the front waiting on customers. The told her it was better for business if they found pretty British-Australian girls to wait on customers out front. They wanted to create a successful business, her uncle said, which they wouldn’t be able to do if customers thought it was a Greek cafe.