ABSTRACT
Australia was an ‘accidental destination’ for Nathalie Baitch and her husband. Vladimir Gantimurov (an engineer!) settled on Australia rather than the United States after his brother went to America and wrote back that it was over-mechanised. The voyage from Europe, which took about a month, was often awful. Veterans of refugee voyages noted the lack of mutual aid and goodwill among the passengers, especially in the women’s quarters, where there were constant quarrels over turf and noisy children. The Balts rather shamefacedly disclaimed any wish to live better than their Australian workmates, but demonstrated their cultural pre-eminence by broadcasting a program of choral singing over the local radio. Even the Russian-Australians were a comedown after the cosmopolitan, cultivated world she had inhabited in Harbin: her cousins, for example, children of a marriage between a bride-hunting Cossack and a well-brought-up harbinka, had grown up on a farm near Darwin, spoke only a primitive Russian and looked askance at Natalia’s make-up.
