Butterflies and Demons. Eva Chapman

white socks. Mildred’s attempts to make him to look like Prince Charles had failed miserably. The back of his head was suitably shaved but that was where the resemblance ended. Instead of a princely smooth top, a gingery unkempt frizz sprouted haphazardly to defy his mother.

      ‘Why are these reffos coming to this neighbourhood?’ was the burning question on all lips, as Guthrie started the meeting. All welcomed British migrants heartily. In fact, Mildred had enjoyed sending parcels to the beleaguered mother island during the war. She took pride in being a British subject, and in the fact that she and her husband were direct descendants of early settlers. Albert Taplow’s great-grandfather and namesake had come over on one of the first ships, and Mildred’s great aunt, Mildred Fowler, followed soon after. Mildred Taplow felt behoven to maintain South Australia’s clean Anglo-Saxon heritage. These refugees from Eastern Europe were an entirely different prospect. It was fine to send them up to the Leigh Creek coalfields or to the army barracks at Woodside or even up to Mildred’s hometown Gawler, to work on the little Para reservoir; the first lot of Displaced Persons had been sent to these places. And rightly so. Premier Playford was to be commended for bringing South Australia into the 20^th century. But they were not wanted here; not in this bastion of Britishness. Not in Hendon. These Displaced Persons were well and truly aliens. They did not speak the language. They just would not fit in.

      Barry Guthrie took a deep breath. Even though he went along with the mood in the room, his big task was to persuade his truculent audience that reffos were here to stay. The Phillips factory really needed them, as did the large new General Motors Holden Plant, just the other side of the Port Road.

      ‘But why can’t the British do these jobs?’

      Barry didn’t really like to say they wouldn’t put up with the long hours and inferior accommodation; nor that it was easier to herd the aliens into the unskilled dirty jobs Brits and Aussies refused to do. Instead he explained that these reffos were among the lucky few to escape the bloodbath in Eastern Europe; they were homeless, rootless, and grateful to be working and to have food in their bellies. Mildred and the others shuffled and coughed. Tales of hardship did not move them. They had all been toughened by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deprivation of the war years. Rations for petrol, tea, and butter had only recently ended. And anyway, there was still a war on. Australian forces were keeping back the commies in Korea.

      ‘How do we know these reffos aren’t a bunch of commies? How do we know who, or what, we are letting into our own backyards?’ Murmurs of ‘too right!’ spread about the room. Lynette shooed the flies off the lamingtons.

      ‘All foreigners are suspect,’ was the underlying conviction. The goodly people of this area remembered their outrage when the giant 64-acre Hendon site had been bought by foreigners. Wasn’t Tom Playford selling them out? Mildred had felt proud to contribute to the British war effort at the Hendon Munitions plant. For the first time in her life, she had received a wage to bolster the measly pounds her husband brought in from his job at Coles department store. The new Hendon railway station, built on the road at the back of her house in Pudney Street, had increased the value of their home. Big puffing trains spewed out workers for the munitions factory every morning and swallowed them up every evening. Now Mildred saw a different kind of people stuffing up the carriages. They wore ill-assorted clothes and gabbled in uncouth languages. She didn’t like to enter the compartments with ‘them’. They smelt awful and slurped soup out of filthy looking containers. She even saw one gnawing on a chicken leg! They were downright disgusting. At least they didn’t live in this neighbourhood – yet! What would happen to the value of her house if they did?

      In between swatting flies Lynette Taplow took notes. Barry Guthrie wearily fielded the barrage of questions and complaints and threw back the answers:

      ‘No. These reffos are not commies. They’re running away from commie regimes.’

      ‘No, we aren’t bringing in any enemies. No Nazis. A few Austrians and Germans maybe, but they all hated Hitler.’

      ‘Jews? No, they are excluded from the Displaced Persons’ programme.’

      ‘No, there are no more Greeks or enemy Eyeties.’

      Guthrie was tired. It was nearly four o’clock. Time for lamingtons and a nice cup of tea.

      ‘No, you’ll be pleased to know this influx of people mostly have fair skin and many have blue eyes. As Calwell has said, it is up to us to ‘Australianise’ them as quickly as possible.’

      ‘And dark-skinned people?’

      ‘Good God no!’

      Barrie Guthrie and the RSL were 100% behind the White Australia Policy. As he gratefully pounced on the lamingtons Guthrie shuddered, remembering the dreadful incident when an Aborigine man, fresh back from fighting, tried to join the RSL.

      ‘I am a returned serviceman. I defended my country. I dodged bullets alongside my white mates,’ he argued, before being unceremoniously escorted from the hallowed chambers.

      While Ivan was Playford’s ideal migrant, Tatiana was Playford’s worst. This was probably not surprising, since Playford’s great-grandfather was a fiery Baptist minister who, in the early days of the colony, took it upon himself to stamp out wicked and frivolous behaviour. And Tatiana was wicked and frivolous. She wanted to have fun; to drink vodka; to dance; to paint her nails; to wear mink. She hated the drudgery of being a domestic. She also hated the prejudice she felt from ordinary Australians, especially every time they moved house. The Pleznowskis always seemed to be the first reffos in any new area but also the last to be served in shops. The neighbours of the semi they rented in the respectable suburb of Payneham were decidedly hostile. Tatiana was close to blowing point. She was volatile already, but a past where she had always been the underdog weighed heavily on her pretty brow. One stifling afternoon when she and Svitochka had waited a long time to be served, Tatania exploded. To Svitochka’s mortification, Tatiana started screaming at all the people in the shop. The trouble was she couldn’t stop. It was like she had unleashed a bag of demons. She fell to the floor thrashing violently and sobbing hysterically. A doctor and then an ambulance were hastily called. Svitochka stood miserably in a corner as her mother was taken away.

      A lady in a large hat covered in grapes took her by the hand and led her up Payneham Road to an imposing house, Wanslea Home, one of many philanthropic institutions in Adelaide. This one had been set up in 1941 to support the war effort, and was now dedicated to looking after children whose mothers were seriously ill or hospitalised. Svitochka was the first refugee girl they had ever seen. The ladies were kind enough, but Svitochka felt miserable as she pushed the baked beans around her plate. The taste reminded her of disgusting Rosella tomato sauce. She was worried about Tatiana, who seemed to flip alarmingly from being a laughing, sunny mother to a demonic, wicked mother. She would subject Svitochka to vicious beatings with seemingly little provocation. However, the demon you know is better than the one you don’t, and Svitochka wiggled the cherries which adorned her straw hat to comfort herself. Tatiana, the good mother, had bought it for her, and she now refused to take it off. She didn’t like this place. Not one bit. She didn’t like the way ladies with forced smiles looked down at her as if she was an exhibit in a jar. She hoped she didn’t have to stay here forever. Thankfully, she was saved by a very worried-looking Ivan; who took her home immediately. Tatiana was gobbling tablets, which seemed to calm her down.

      Lady Norrie was arranging flowers in one of the upper bedrooms of Government House. She had just returned from accompanying her husband Sir Willoughby, the Governor of South Australia, on a visit to schools and mines in the outback. The Norries believed that their duty in the postwar years was to keep the ‘empire spirit’ alive. And they did so with gusto. Lady Norrie supported many charitable and patriotic causes, but there were limits. Like her husband, Lady Norrie criticised the ‘misguided sentimentality’ of Dr Charles Duguid. This goodly doctor kept harping on about Aborigine rights. He even had brought (would you believe!) Aborigines back from the missions, and allowed some to live in his house in the affluent suburb of Magill. She shuddered at the thought.

      Lady Norrie preferred to direct her attention to worthier causes, like the ‘Food for Britain Appeal’, or assisted