I would like to thank you for the warm welcome I have received in my first months as the Centre’s new manager.

Now that the Centre is at the Powerhouse Museum, we have enhanced access to new media, exhibitions, movable heritage expertise and regional services to support our work.

Andrea Fernandes, the Centre’s Project Officer, and I have been visiting communities in Sydney as well as those in rural and regional New South Wales to build on the Centre’s existing partnerships and record of achievement.

This fifth edition of MHC NEWS highlights some of the Centre’s current partnerships with community,

government, education and cultural organisations to identify, record, preserve and interpret New South Wales’ migration heritage.

The featured projects reflect our commitment to working with community groups. I am impressed by the depth of community spirit across New South Wales and by the passion and dedicated work of volunteer and paid staff alike.

These projects are great examples of how working together in partnership can enrich our research and assist in presenting more representative accounts of Australia’s history.

John Petersen
Manager

The Hon Bob Carr MP, NSW Premier, Minister for the Arts and Minister for Citizenship launched a new book Golden Threads:The Chinese in Regional New South Wales 1850-1950 at the Powerhouse Museum on 13 September 2004.



Golden Threads:The Chinese in Regional New South Wales 1850-1950

Golden Threads tells the story of the Chinese people who came to, and sometimes settled in, New South Wales, from the first arrivals in the early 1800s, through the turbulent goldrush years and into the 20th century.

This new book by historian Janis Wilton, was supported by the Migration Heritage Centre and published by the New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale in association with the Powerhouse Museum. Golden Threads is also supported by the NSW Ministry for the Arts and the NSW Heritage Office. Golden Threads can be purchased for $34.95 through Powerhouse Publishing.

PURCHASE INFORMATION:

Powerhouse Publishing

Address: PO Box K346
Haymarket NSW 1238

Tel: 02 9217 0129
Fax: 02 9217 0434

The Migration Heritage Centre is supporting NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) initiatives for strengthening the interpretation and tourist experience of Trial Bay Gaol (5kms from South West Rocks, near Port Macquarie) commencing with a project to develop new interpretative and promotional material for visitors to the Gaol and its museum.

WORLD WAR ONE

About 7,000 people were interned in Australia during the First World War. All German and Austrian subjects had to report to their nearest police station and many were sent to live in internment camps. Some were naturalised British citizens including second or third generation Australians of German or Austro-Hungarian background. In NSW the main place of internment was Holsworthy Camp. Women and children were interned at Bourke and Molongolo. Men were also interned at Berrima prison and Trial Bay.

The 550 German men at Trial Bay Gaol were under continuous guard and their mail was censored. To fill the day, the men worked to run the Gaol and they fished, swam, played cards and tennis and held over fifty theatrical performances in costume. Trial Bay Gaol even had its own symphony orchestra and newspaper.

Trial Bay Gaol closed in 1918 and the internees were transferred to Holsworthy after it was feared that internees might make contact with passing enemy vessels by radio. After the War, many internees were voluntarily repatriated to Europe, with some later returning to Australia.

 

COLLECTIONS WORKSHOP

The Centre attended a workshop on 28 July 2004 organised by NPWS and Friends of Trial Bay Gaol with Macleay Area Ranger, Cath Ireland, Hastings Shire Council's Regional Museums Curator, Liz Gillroy and Regional Museums Adviser, Kylie Winkworth.

Model aeroplane built by internees on display at Trial Bay Gaol

 

Trial Bay Gaol and its museum collection are of national cultural heritage significance for their association with the history of internment and are open to the public. The local community, people of German and Austrian background and descendants of the internees feel a strong personal attachment to this place. The workshop looked at how to research and interpret Trial Bay's on-site collections. These include a model aeroplane and intricate dolls furniture made by the internees and a major collection of photographs.

Recognising that the recent phases in the Gaol's history remain in living memory, the Friends would like to hear from people who donated collections to the Gaol over the years or those who remember the placement of equipment around the site . The Friends of Trial Bay Gaol can be contacted through NPWS.

 

PROJECT CONTACTS: Cath Ireland, NPWS Macleay Area Ranger, Trial Bay Gaol

Address:
Arakoon State Conservation Area
Cardwell Street
Arakoon NSW 2431

Tel: 02 6566 6621
Email: cath.ireland@npws.nsw.gov.au

German migrants from South Australia and Victoria were attracted to the Riverina’s free selection policies in the mid-19th century. Did you know in 1858 the town of Holbrook was locally known as the Germans and officially changed to Germantown in 1876?

Germantowns, Germanstories is a thematic study of German places, collections and associated histories in the Museum of the Riverina’s local areas of Holbrook, Jindera, Ganmain, Lockhart, Milbrulong, Temora, Trungley Hall, Tumbarumba, Wagga Wagga and Walla Walla.

The study is designed to support the Museum’s work in documenting local heritage collections associated with people of German backgrounds.

Stage One includes an illustrated short history of German migration and settlement in the Riverina from the 1850s to the present - the development of local commerce, agriculture and wool industries and the local impact of internment and post-Second World War settlement through Uranquinty migrant hostel. It will be managed by the Museum with advice and assistance from the Migration Heritage Centre.

PROJECT CONTACT: Annette Brown,
Researcher, Museum of the Riverina

Address:
PO Box 20, Wagga Wagga NSW 2650
Tel: 02 6925 2934
Email: brown.annette@wagga.nsw.gov.au

THE MENNEKE BELL

August Menneke was born in 1838 in Bakenem, Germany and arrived in NSW around 1858. One of the hundreds of German migrants who made the Riverina home in the 19th century, he established his own blacksmith business in North Wagga immediately af?er his apprenticeship.

August Menneke (1838-1904)

By the 1870s Menneke had won fame, particularly for the goods he manufactured for bullock drivers. He had a perfect ear for the sound of a bell. They were used on a leader in a bullock team or on other stock so they could be easily located.

A bullock team on Fitzmaurice Street, Wagga Wagga

According to legend, a test was carried out on top of Mount Kosciusko to find the best bell maker in Australia. Menneke won when his bell could be heard ten miles away.

Menneke Bell donated to the Wagga Wagga & District Historical Society in 1970 by Fred Menneke (son of August Menneke)

August Menneke died in Wagga in 1904 and is remembered as a legendary bell-maker and fine blacksmith.

In the 1940s, Dame Mary Gilmore immortalised Menneke in Australian folklore through her poem Bells and Bullocks:

Once in a while we ask if he hears
The sound of Mennicke's (sic) bells
Deep in the pits of his ancient ears
Repeating their olden spells

'Mennicke's bells?' … Then he'll say
Never heard none like 'em
Mennicke, he had the way
No one else could strike 'em

Photographs courtesy of the Museum of the Riverina

Fishing is a popular and democratic recreational activity for many Australians. Men, women and children from all ethnic groups enjoy this activity.

Fishing practices and experiences enable people to recall the past of their homeland or childhood through the fishing skills they learned from older generations. These memories, and the adaptation of skills ?o a new land, mean that there is a strong heritage element to what we may sometimes consider a recreational pastime.

The migration experiences, history and heritage legacies of various community groups will be explored through Fishing the Georges River: A Pilot Project on Migrancy, Adaptation and Conservation - Using Old Skills to Learn New Environments.

The case study area for this research project with University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and NSW Department of Environment and Conservation is the Georges River estuary in south-west Sydney, between Casula in the east and Lugarno in the west, with a focus on Indigenous Australian, Anglo-Celtic, Vietnamese and Arabic-speaking communities.

PROJECT CONTACT:
Associate Professor Heather Goodall, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS

Address:
PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007

Tel: 02 9514 2284

Email: heather.goodall@uts.edu.au

Hugh Gilchrist’s Australians and Greeks Volume 3: The Later Years was launched by the Hon. John Hatzistergos MLC, the Minister Assisting the Premier on Citizenship, on 10 February 2005 at the University of Sydney.

This volume, supported by the Migration Heritage Centre, covers an age of war and migration when world crisis brought Greeks and Australians into close contact. It completes a three part set which also comprises Volume 1: The Early Years and Volume 2: The Middle Years.

The trilogy will be of enduring benefit to the people of New South Wales and it provides students of migration history a scholarly context for researching the Greek heritage of many Australians.

PURCHASE INFORMATION:
Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens

Price: $69.95 plus p+p

Tel: 02 9351 4759