The Navy, the World and Australia: one Swedish woman's contribution to Australia's immigration experience

Abstract

The 175th 'birthday' of South Australia during 2011 had been the impetus for the OHAA (SA) to create a web gateway containing the oral histories of a diverse group of twenty South Australians and Northern Territorians. The website is a first for the Oral History Associations within Australia. It will showcase the significance of oral histories and their contributions to the historical record. A call for participants for the project led me to revisit, and ultimately to contribute my very first oral history to the website. During 2006, I recorded the recollections and migration experiences of Swedish woman, Anna-Karin Fredin-Bladh (Karin), who had made the journey to Australia, not because of political or economic circumstance, but because of love and adventure. The purpose of my interview was to obtain an appreciation of the differences and the similarities in what is essentially the same process - leaving one's homeland, family and familiarity and starting life over again in a new country. The completed project however, revealed silences in the literature regarding the lot of those whose migrations were not intended. Karin's journey was never actually intended to be a migration; her stay in Australia was meant to be short term. Circumstances changed, and her life changed, and she accepted these changes without question. The addition of Karin's personal story to the OHAA (SA) web site has ultimately provided an additional, significant layer to the vibrant mosaic of history, events and people that comprise the history of South Australia.