Enoggera

Frazer’s Paddock before the centre

The ground was army land long before the migrants came. Photographs in the State Library of Queensland show soldiers sharing a meal in tents at Fraser’s Paddock, Enoggera Army Camp, about 1914, a large group of recruits there in 1916, and a training camp in 1917. In May and June 1940 the paddock held the reception depot from which Lieutenant-Colonel Radford selected men for units of the 7th Division. A 1920s subdivision plan filed under the same name places the paddock at Ashgrove, and the library catalogues the holding centre itself under that suburb.

A home while families found their footing

The Department of Immigration’s holding centres were intended principally for dependants while working family members earned enough to secure housing outside. Enoggera was one of four Queensland centres planned in 1949. It had a standard capacity of 515 places in 1952, covering residents of all nationalities.

Families could move between centres after reaching Australia. A Polish family’s oral-history catalogue records residence at both Wacol and Enoggera following migration from a displaced-persons camp in Germany in 1949. Such movements connected the Brisbane centres, without making them a single facility.

One of four Queensland centres

In June 1949 the Department of Immigration was planning four holding centres for what it called New Australians in Queensland. Wacol opened on 9 November 1949 on army land; Stuart, on RAAF land south of Townsville, on 30 March 1950; Frazer’s Paddock at Enoggera on 14 April 1950, also on army land; and Cairns on 19 August 1950 on acquired land. Thirteen holding centres were still active across Australia in 1952, when the standard capacities of the Queensland four were listed. By April 1960 Wacol was the only one left in the state.

Children, school and celebrations

A photograph taken in 1953 shows children presenting a play at the centre. Costumes, a painted backdrop and a gathered group of performers give a glimpse of activities organised within the migrant community. The image belongs to a collection of migrant-school photographs preserved by the State Library of Queensland.

Another photograph, dated around 1955, shows children on a parade float bearing the words “New Australians”. These public performances formed part of children’s lives alongside the practical work of settling into unfamiliar surroundings. The collection also records school activities at Wacol and elsewhere in Brisbane.

The National Archives holds a separate photographic record of coronation celebrations at Enoggera in 1953. Together, these images document the centre as a place of organised social activity as well as temporary accommodation.

The school photographs

The photographs of Enoggera come from a small collection assembled by Nancy Mossman, who taught at both the Enoggera and the Wacol immigration centres. The six prints show children welcoming the Queen Mother at the Exhibition grounds, planting trees at Ballymore Park with Mossman herself, performing a play at Enoggera, running a race, breaking up for the holidays at Wacol and riding the New Australians float at Enoggera. They are the closest thing to a record of school life at the centre that has been found.

The caption supplied with the running-race photograph names twenty-four children, among them Helena Prokopuk, Walentyna and Ludmilla Kwitnycka, Krystel and Edgar Nasarenko, Nicolai Kramarenko, and Paska and Walentyna Kuzewicz, which are Ukrainian surnames, alongside Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Hungarian and Italian ones. The library records that this photograph was possibly taken at either the Enoggera or the Wacol centre, so it cannot be assigned to Enoggera with certainty. It does show that children of Ukrainian families were in the Brisbane centres’ schools in the middle of the 1950s.

Religious life

Enoggera Camp appears as a preaching point of the Brisbane South Lutheran parish between 1950 and 1956. This identifies one religious connection serving the camp’s diverse population; it does not describe a specifically Ukrainian congregation.

How long it lasted

The centre’s closing date has not been established, and the three indications available do not agree. A local study by Desley Drevins, held by the State Library, is titled for the years 1949 to 1953. The Lutheran parish index lists Enoggera Camp as a preaching point of the Brisbane South parish from 1950 to 1956. The parade float photograph is dated to about 1955. What can be said is that the centre was working in 1953 and probably still in the middle of the decade, and that Wacol had absorbed the role by April 1960.

Leaving the holding centre

Enoggera’s role belonged to the early postwar network of holding centres. By April 1960 Wacol was the only such centre remaining in Queensland. Families leaving the system moved into the wider housing and employment landscape of their new country.