Lithuanians in Queensland

The previous post about Harry ALEXIS/ALEKSIUNAS who had lived in the Atherton area of far north Queensland for over 30 years until his death in 1950 prompted me to revisit what we have discovered so far about early Lithuanian settlers in Queensland.

Much of what we know about individuals was published in two blog posts last year, imaginatively titled Queensland #1 (7 September 2015) and Queensland #2 (14 September 2015). The following are some more general observations:

Census records

The Australian Census of 1933 - the first one to specify "Lithuania" as a place of birth - recorded 15 people in Queensland who had given that as their place of birth (12 males and 3 females), while the 1947 Census recorded 21 people (13 males and 8 females);

• by 1954, with the influx of post-WW2 migrants, the number of people in Queensland giving Lithuania as their place of birth had jumped to 405, although males continued to predominate approximately 3:1.

These census records provide us with a minimum number for the Lithuanian-born, as some people who had been born before independence in 1918 would likely have recorded their birthplaces as Russia or Germany.

Geographical dispersal

Many Lithuanian-born migrants appear to have settled in regional Queensland, not in the capital city of Brisbane. Metraštis (the Lithuanian Yearbook, 1961) reported EC Phillule's advice that by 1938 there were only two Lithuanians living in Brisbane, although there had been more previously.

• Other localities where settlers put down roots included Rockhampton, Mackay, Proserpine, Charters Towers, Ipswich, Chinchilla, and Mt Isa;
• in contrast, Lithuanian-born migrants to most other Australian states appear to have preferred settling in the capital cities.

Migration patterns

Usually the Lithuanians arrived as single men. Some remained single, others married Australian-born women, for example Edward Charles PHILLULE/PILIULIS married Lydia Annie Klatt in 1915 and William KALIN/KALINAUSKAS married Clarisse McFeeters in 1924.

However there were also some examples of family and chain migration:

• Josephine RUCKMAN, a Pole from Kaunas with Lithuanian citizenship, arrived in 1923 with her two sons and daughter;
• Sigismund ROMASZKIEWICZ, a Pole from Krekenava, arrived in 1910 with his wife and children;
• David BECKER - also known as Alex GRAY - a Jew from Kaunas with Lithuanian citizenship, had arrived in Australia from Palestine in 1927 and was later joined by his wife Hannah (born in Kaunas) and children (born in Sebastopol and Jerusalem).    

Arrivals on the SS Haitan

In the early part of World War 2 (1940) a group of 32 Lithuanians with British citizenship arrived in Brisbane as part of a larger group of evacuees following a journey from the Baltic States across Siberia to Vladivostok, Hong Kong and finally Australia. Theirs is an epic story which has been researched by one of their descendants, Eve Puodžiunaitė Wicks.

The evacuees remained in Brisbane for the duration of the war, but largely dispersed once hostilities had ceased. The Courier Mail of 18 February 1941 included this story:

Social and Dance: Lithuanian national dances were a feature of the programme at a social and dance held in the Danish Hall, South Brisbane, last night by the British-Lithuanian evacuees. Lithuanian songs were given by a mixed choir, and others who contributed items were Mrs Balcunas, Mrs K Puodziunas, Misses Lena Ruskey, M Massey, F Kdesnikas [sic], A Grey, and F Kolesnikas. 

Brisbane's Sunday Mail included the following on 26 November 1944:

Party for Evacuees: Nearly 600 guests ... were entertained yesterday at the New Settlers' League's Christmas party for migrants and evacuees, at the Railway Institute. The oldest guest was Mr G P Page, who is 78. He formerly lived in the Baltic States. ... Other guests were from Great Britain, Poland, Latvia, Esthonia [sic], Lithuania, Roumania, China, Malaya and Darwin. Each child received sweets from the Christmas tree. 

Reverse migration

Alice Blanch CHEHOVSKI was born in Brisbane in 1921 to a Polish father and Russian mother. Her father died soon after and her mother took Alice back to Europe: she lived in Lithuania from approximately 1924 to 1981, studied art in Moscow, and returned to Australia in 1981. She was an active artist in Australia, with several of her paintings (including works completed in Lithuania) collected by the National Gallery of Australia. Alice died in Victoria in 2015.

A Lithuanian old-timer in Far North Queensland

A few days ago I came across this story:

In 1948 the first post-war Lithuanians, working as sugar cane cutters in Far North Queensland, met a bearded and white-haired 83 year old man at Redlynch, near Cairns. His name was Aleksiunas, and he came from Rusonų village in Žiežmarių county [central Lithuania, between Vilnius and Kaunas]. He had left his father's home when he was 15 years old because of a wicked stepmother, secretly crossed the German border, and strayed into the wide world beyond. Having over many years sailed all the oceans of the world, he eventually grew tired of the seaman's life and started looking for somewhere to settle.  He chose Australia and stopped here, at 63 years of age.  He bought a chicken farm and only sold it when he became quite aged, supporting himself through basket weaving.  [By 1948] he remembered only his prayers in Lithuanian, and no longer understood the meaning of the words. But he loved the newly-arrived Lithuanians and stayed close to them.  He died 8-9 years ago (Metrastis No 1 (1961) p 183, my translation).

A preliminary internet search for someone called ALEKSIUNAS who was born around 1860, lived in Queensland during the 1930s and 1940s and died there in the early 1950s, failed to provide any corroborating matches. That is, until my research associate (my wife Phyllis) got to work on this and uncovered the outlines of his life.


Harold (Harry) ALEXIS seems to be the name that this man consistently used through a long maritime career and also while living in Queensland.  He comes up on Ancestry.com's shipping lists many times over as a crew member on sailings from Europe or North America to Australia as well as on Australian coastal shipping, particularly in the period 1913 to 1922 (see for example the listings for H Alexis in the NSW Australia Unassisted Immigrant Passenger Lists 1862-1922 on Ancestry.com):

• Harry's country of birth is variously given as Russia, Sweden or Poland.  He was born in the days of the Russian Empire so it is not surprising that he recorded Russia as his country of birth. He may have lived or been based in Sweden, and certainly sailed with Swedish crews, so he may at times have chosen to denote Sweden as his country of birth for convenience.  After the collapse of the Russian empire he appears to have preferred to denote his place of birth as Poland (his place of birth was by the Lithuanian-Polish border during the interwar years, during which Poland dominated the Vilnius region);

• his maritime occupation was shown as fireman, trimmer or able bodied seaman;

• he appears to have often understated his age by up to a decade.

In 1947 The Cairns Post carried the following naturalisation notice, indicating that Harry Alexis had been born at Vilnius (or in the region of Vilnius) on 18 March 1861 and had been resident in Australia for 34 years:

Advertising (1947, June 7). Cairns Post (Qld. : 1909 - 1954), , p. 10.
Retrieved May 14, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article42562832 

At that time Harry states he was living at Wright's Creek, near Yungaburra.  He died in May 1950 and was buried at nearby Atherton in June 1950.