Bonegilla at the ‘deep waterhole’ on the Murray River: first it was a resource-rich tribal country, then came the explorers and the squatters and the mixed farmers and the Australian Army – a procession of occupants for over 100 years.

Arthur Calwell, Australia’s first Minister for Immigration, changed Bonegilla again in 1947 and made it the first Australian home for 320,000 migrants mostly from war-ravished Europe.

Ann Tündern-Smith is the first of the Australian-born children who resulted from Calwell’s pioneering post-war population programs. Her mother was one of the Estonians selected for the ‘General Stewart Heintzelman’, which brought the first Displaced Persons here in November 1947.

For nearly a decade she has been researching and writing about the importance of the Heintzelman’s arrival and of the lives its passengers found in Australia.

This is a significant addition to our understanding of the development of the ‘new’ Australia which followed the end of World War II.