Photographic exhibition on postwar migrants

A photographic and archival exhibition reflecting life during the post-World War Two refugee and migrant resettlement program at Northam has opened in the Fremantle Museum.

Entitled 'Postwar Immigration and Resettlement: The Northam Camps', the exhibition is the work of Nonja Peters who has spent five years researching the subject.

Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Minister Judyth Watson, who opened the exhibition today, said it portrayed the initial adjustment and resettlement experiences of post-war non-English speaking refugees and immigrants who arrived in Northam.

"At least 30,000 migrants from war-torn Europe entered Western Australia via Northam between 1949 and 1957," she said.

"The intake included refugees from the Balkans and eastern Europe and immigrants from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Greece, to name but a few.

"Northam was the third largest immigration camp in Australia.

"It provided training and interim accommodation until jobs and alternative living arrangements were found.

"The multi-ethnic composition of this migrant influx imposed new influences on the township of Northam.  Their cultural diversity and the inter-ethnic relations this fostered was the beginning of the cosmopolitan and multicultural society we have today in Australia.

"It was the migrants of this period who were responsible also for putting in place the infrastructure which launched Australia, and particularly Western Australia, into the boom days of the 1960s - we owe them a particular gratitude."

Dr Watson said the post-war refugee and migrant influx to Australia was largely an unrecorded chapter in the State's social and economic history, and the museum exhibition was a means of redressing the information gap.