In Australia (1926)
Émigré’s letter
We landed in Brisbane harbor. The city is located 20-25 miles away from the ocean, on both banks of the Brisbane River. All the buildings are on stilts, up to 3 meters high, to resist the termites and fungus. Only the downtown has reinforced concrete buildings. There are three or four skyscrapers, 8- to 11-stories high, which look funny rather than imposing. The buildings on the central streets all have continuous canopies, which offer shade and protection from the rain. All the streets are smooth; even suburban roads are covered with asphalt. It is clean everywhere. Nobody spits or throws the trash into the street, because this can lead to a fine.
All the buildings - homes or establishments - are completely without the locks, even when the owners are gone for a few days to visit their farms. Some stores have no personnel: each item has a price tag on, and you serve yourself. Same goes for the trains: you have to search for the station master, which is often a woman, who if the station is small does all the jobs: she is the cashier, station master, clerk, warehouse keeper and guard. If it’s Sunday and the office is closed you just ride without a ticket. There is no need to make up stories - people just believe you. Same goes for the trams in Brisbane, which are numerous. You name the kind of ticket you need and you stop the tram by ringing the bell when you need to get off.
Credit is widely used. If you pay your electricity bill on time, you are rewarded with a discount. This works everywhere. If you need some construction materials, you receive it first at your address and get the bill a month later. Only small retail purchases are for cash.
People work 44 hours a week, five days a week. Sundays are free. People relax at their gardens and farms, or put their families into their automobiles (which almost everyone owns), sometimes taking also the gramophone, and drive to the woods, to the seaside or to the fields for the whole day.
I remember my Harbin friends warning me: “Are you going to Australia? They have a proletarian government. White people there are unemployed and oppressed.” I did not trust these warnings and always replied: “Any kind of government is better than the one in my homeland”.
And finally I am here, at the customs in Brisbane. I have many possessions, including 100 kilogram of books. When the young inspector noticed my boxes with books, tightly tied with wire, he started to open one of them. Other inspectors came to watch the censorship procedure. The young inspector asked me: “Do you have any Trotsky’s writing? Any Bolshevik literature?” I said no. The first thing they got out of my box was the portrait of the Grand Duke Nicolai Nicolaevich, which satisfied everyone: “Oh, very good!” The inspection was finished; nothing else had to be searched.
It’s become rather difficult to obtain the Australian entry permit. The person who is inviting you must be employed or well-off, otherwise you’ll have to demonstrate your own finances, and a rather large amount. You’d better know some English: it leaves a bad impression when the émigré does not respond to questions. Language courses are not expensive, but when you start working you barely find the interest in eating your dinner, let alone going to a class. With time, though, things get easier.
Nowadays, many industries are in stagnation. As soon as the new issue of The Telegraph comes out - twice a day, on 14 or 16 pages - people crowd at the typography gate to grab it fresh from the press; they read the job ads and run to the indicated addresses. Everyone is trying to get there first. Many told me: “You’ll never be idle.” But it’s not easy to get a position, although it is easier when you speak the language. Women’s jobs pay less, but if a good seamstress or hat-maker organizes her business with the help of her language and her connections, she can earn quite well.
You cannot get an intellectual job without the perfect knowledge of English. Here no one shirks from hard work. I know an engineer’s wife, a graduate of women’s courses, who used to be a landlady; now she works as a laundress and earns 15 shillings a day. Her husband manages a garage and earns 6-7 pounds. Factory work, work at the mines - those jobs pay well, 4 to 8 pounds, but it is hard and dangerous labor. The employers prefer the experienced workers; few will take an apprentice or a student. Engravers and watchmakers earn 6 to 8 pounds, but these jobs are scarce.
Translated from a letter published in Rossia: Russkiy emigrantsky almanach (Shanghai, 1926).
Image: Wikimedia Commons.
