The full story

Station Pier is one of Australia's longest-operating passenger piers. It holds iconic significance in Victoria's heritage, and is particularly significant to Victoria's post-war immigrants for whom it is an ongoing symbol of their arrival and the start of their new life.

Station Pier was Melbourne’s most important arrival port for migrants. Since 1854, the site has welcomed and processed millions of anxious and excited new arrivals.

Immigration Museum invited contributions from the public to be involved in this exhibition. The following account is from an Italian woman who migrated to Australia with her husband and two young children in the 1960s.

‘Friends told me that condoms couldn’t be bought in Australia, so before leaving Italy my husband and I stocked up on them. Imagine how embarrassed we were when customs opened our bags to find 750 condoms.’

From little things like vegetable seeds, olive oil or salamis, to larger household items such as carpentry tools, coffee makers and blankets, expectations about life in Australia were reflected in what migrants brought with them. People knew little about life in a distant country they were making their new home and made assumptions about climate, food and employment – sometimes correct, sometimes misinformed.

New arrivals were often guilty of bringing in items that had to be confiscated by customs. Unfamiliar foodstuffs could be deemed contraband, suspect to a predominantly British cuisine culture. Plant seeds were a threat to the Australian natural environment. Doonas did not appear on lists of taxable goods and were seized. So migrants sometimes smuggled things in.