Moments in migration: exploring the immigrant experience in images

A significant milestone in many family histories is when the family leaves the country of origin and takes a passage to a new life on the other side of the world.

Tracking the journey

There are wonderful images that trace this experience. The resources of State Library of Queensland and the National Archives of Australia can be brought together to see a record of these powerful moments over time.

19th and early 20th century

The population drive in Queensland produced a range of illustrations to encourage and record immigration. Immigration agents, posters and advertisements were some ways potential emigrants learnt of the opportunities in Queensland. Images of the emigration depots, the various classes of travel, food and sleeping conditions, entertainment and hazards brought the 19th and early 20th century sea voyage alive in the new, challenging and even hazardous world migrants negotiated.

Sources of images

State Library has images donated and collected from private and public sources, as well as newspapers and magazines in databases. We also have access to images and articles delivered through the portal Trove, from many libraries and other repositories. These trustworthy sources provide high quality images with valuable information, unlike randomly sourced images from the Internet with unknown origins, or many commercial image providers that sell inadequately sourced images often with inaccurate descriptions.

Illustrated newspapers: Illustrated London News (ILN)

State Library of Queensland’s free membership provides the opportunity to use the first illustrated British newspaper, the Illustrated London News 1842-2003 at home or onsite. It has early sketches of ships and stories about them. At State Library, this newspaper can be found online, on microfilm with good image reproduction and in an incomplete run of hard copies.

In the case of the Artemisia, the images were matched with text about its farewell and an overview of Moreton Bay described as an ‘El Dorado’ (p 94). It is interesting to read this and compare the description of what their arrival was like in the Moreton Bay Courier of 16 December 1848, p 2. In this case, State Library also has digitised the original Illustrated London News images and made them available through our One Search catalogue.

Illustrated Australian newspapers

Australia published such newspapers as Illustrated Sydney News 1853-1889 and Australasian Sketcher 1873-1889. Together with Illustrated London News 1842-1891 they are indexed in the  Maritime illustration index / compiled by Vaughan Evans. Those illustrated papers and others, such as the Queenslander, are freely available in Trove historical newspapers. In the 20th century, Australian newspapers published photographs of activities on immigrant ships, which could make the travel experience seem like a tourist’s delight.

National Archives of Australia (NAA)

By contrast, National Archives records are principally from 1946 when the then Department of Immigration had the task of resettling thousands of displaced persons located in camps throughout Europe. Their records are, therefore, more modern, photographic, reflect a more diverse migrant population, and look in greater detail at the lives of immigrants in their new country. They include:

• passenger lists
• naturalisation case files
• alien registration forms
• migrant selection documentation
• certificates of exemption from the dictation test (CEDTs), and
• alien investigation/internment files.

As shiploads of migrants arrived at places such as the Yungaba Immigration Hostel and what became the Wacol Migrant Centre, Department of Immigration photographers recorded their arrival and their daily lives in these new communities. They covered a range of events, including the arrival of settlers under special schemes like ‘Bring out a Briton’, citizenship ceremonies, English classes at migrant centres, the opening of new churches, and the movement of migrants into the workforce and other areas of the community. These photographs were published widely overseas to stimulate interest among prospective migrants. Australia was actively seeking migrants until the early 1970s, both to increase population and to satisfy employment needs in a variety of occupations.

Chinese immigrants

Some groups, and particularly Chinese immigrants, experienced severe restrictions under the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, which was an ‘Act to place certain restrictions on Immigration and to provide for the removal from the Commonwealth of prohibited Immigrants’. Exemption documents, with records of their fingerprints and photographs reflect this and, in some cases, provide a record of family members over time if they moved back and forth from China or their country of origin.

There is a great collection of illustrated material to capture the immigrant experience.

Explore:

• State Library’s One Search catalogue using the images option
• Trove, including:
  • Trove Newspapers & Gazettes for 20th century Australian newspaper images pre-1955
  • Trove Images, Maps & Artifacts for images and maps from many Australian libraries and repositories
• The Illustrated London News historical archive (1842-2003) online for State Library members
• National Archives of Australia catalogue RecordSearch, including specific image searching in PhotoSearch
• National Archives of Australia The Immigration Photographic Archive
• Google Arts and Culture, which showcases treasures and stories of cultural organisations, providing free images of good quality.

Using images

Under Australian copyright law, photographs taken prior to 1 January 1955 are out of copyright and you are free to use them without seeking permission. Be sure to attribute your images correctly to provide others with important information about the source of the image.

In-copyright images with a Creative Commons licence enable you to use the image in accordance with the copyright licence that has been assigned to it.