Roll 5445
Photographer
Vasyl Grega
Date1950
Object number00056078
NameFilm
MediumCellulose (nitrate or acetate) negative, monochrome
Copyright© Karen Grega and Anna Grega
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum Collection Gift from Karen Grega
DescriptionThese photographs depict Czechoslovakian displaced person Vasyl Grega's life as a cane-cutter in Tully, Queensland, after World War II.HistoryVasyl (aka Vasil/Vasyel) Grega (1926–2007) was an artistic, creative man and avid photographer who spoke Slovakian, Polish, Russian and German. He came from the village of Nizna Pisana in Czechoslovakia (now north-eastern Slovakia). Nizna Pisana was situated near the Polish and Russian borders, at the crossroads of Europe, and was known as the Valley of Death as it was the site of heavy fighting and tank battles during World War II.
Vasyl, who had served with the Czechoslovakian Community Army during the war, escaped Czechoslovakia, as did his brother Mikulas, who remembers wading through a river of dead bodies. The two brothers were reunited in a Displaced Persons camp in Ludwigsburg, located in southwest Germany.
After about a month in Ludwigsburg, they were transferred to Delmenhorst Displaced Persons camp near Bremen. Vasyl and Mikulas migrated to Australia in 1950, embarking from Bremerhaven on ANNA SALEN on 26 June and arriving in Melbourne on 29 July. They were sent to cut sugarcane on an Italian cane farm in Tully, Queensland. Vasyl later worked as a packer/storeman for a chemical company in Queensland. During his holidays he would take on building and construction work (such as roofing and guttering) for the close-knit Russian community in Brisbane, where he lived for 53 years in the same house.SignificanceThe films provide a rare personal insight into the lives of European cane-cutters in rural communities in north Queensland and their role in developing the Australian sugarcane industry.
