The First Wave - Beyond a White Australia

[connaust]

On April 20, 1947, the Egyptian-registered SS Misr docked in Melbourne with its multicultural human cargo: 624 men, women and children from 26 different countries, plucked from ports in the Mediterranean, Middle East and East Africa.

 

It was a voyage that began amid scenes of almost unimaginable chaos, as hundreds of thousands of migrants, refugees and displaced persons scrambled for berths on ships heading out of an area ravaged by war and now being painfully redrawn along new boundary lines. At the same time, thousands of pre-war European migrants, especially from Greece and Italy, were trying to reunite families separated by war.

 

It was a voyage that ended in unprecedented controversy as the SS Misr sparked a bitter wrangle over dire on-board conditions, and allegedly "animal-like" behaviour by steerage-class migrants.

 

And a voyage that sailed deep into the national psyche, exposing widespread fears that the very future of White Australia was suddenly threatened by the arrival of so many Jews, of so many swarthy dark-skinned southern Mediterraneans. Un-British, un-Australian, "unsuitable" aliens.

 

SS Misr - 1947 journey to Australia

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Andrew

 

Thanks for the link. It is a fascinating story.

 

Cheers

 

Gill