As Mr Albanese cleared the way to repatriate jihadi brides, National Archives opened access to my mum’s naturalisation records. In 1943, the Nazis deported Konstancija Brundzaite from Lithuania to a forced labour camp in Germany. When ALP Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell started recruiting refugees after the war, she got a job working with the Australian authorities there.

Mum arrived in Australia on the first shipload of second world war refugees in November 1947. In Melbourne, wearing Lithuanian costume on the deck of the Kanimbla, she presented Mr Calwell with a gift. Sometime later, there was another presentation in the migrant camp at Bonegilla, which was also photographed for the newspapers. This photo was republished in 2001, on the 100th anniversary of the first ALP caucus.

The twelve-page record of mum’s naturalisation process shows that she stayed at Bonegilla until January 1948. She started to fulfil her work contract with the government at Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital and then Dunolly District Hospital before moving to Sydney’s Concord Repatriation Hospital in May 1949. She nursed there for three years before being married at Christmas in 1952. Mum applied to be naturalised on 4th January 1953.

It was a long and involved process. She had to obtain certificates from two ‘householders’ and a person of standing, in this case a medical practitioner, who’d known her for two years. She was required to advertise her intentions which she did in the Glebe Observer and the Sydney Morning Herald in December 1954. The basic paperwork was completed in January 1955 and referred to ASIO on February 3. Their report was received on July 27, 1955.

By this time dad was working on the Snowy Scheme at Adaminaby Dam, now Eucumbene Dam, and mum was close to term with her second child. Konstancija was required to renounce her allegiance to any other State before she could become an Australian. She did this at Berridale in March 1956 before the President of Snowy River Shire.

Times have certainly changed, as have ALP values…

Vic Jurskis (connorcourtpublishing.com.au)