Newport 1951

Description

Five men walking along an unmade road with a vacant block alongside to the left. There are several houses in the distance. This photograph shows Ivan Kucan and friends walking along Blackshaws Road, Newport, 1951. This photograph shows Ivan Kucan and friends on Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, 1951. According to his family, in 1949 the Kucan family migrated to Australia as displaced persons after the war. They had stayed in a displaced persons camp in Austria for four years but their country of origin was the Ukraine. The first two years in Australia, they lived in migrant camps in Bonegilla and Benalla. The men had to work off the cost of their passage in a contract to the government. After two years of working off their passage a group of five migrant men came down to Melbourne to purchase land to build homes. They eventually all bought land on this street and helped each other build their homes.