Australian Lithuanian History

Petras BIELSKIS   Petras was born March 23, 1927 in Biržiai, Lithuania.   There he attended high school, as well as business college. In 1944 he moved to Germany, and after the war, he finished Lithuanian High School, and belonged to the Lithuanian scouts and the Christian Youth (Ateitininkai) groups. In 1948, Petras arrived in Australia on the General Sturgis, landing in Sydney. He joined the Sydney Australian Lithuanian Draugija. In 1950, after finishing his compulsory work requirement, he arrived in Adelaide in March. In 1952 he married Valė Jureviciutė.   After that, four daughters were born – Rūtą, Dalė, Audrė and Ireną. Over the years, he became very involved in Adelaide and Australian Lithuanian community activities: Firstly in 1950 – Petras became an Australian Lithuanian Community member and started fundraising funds to build the Adelaide Lithuanian House in Norwood. In 1962-63 he joined the ALB Weekend (Savaitgalio) Lithuan...

Julija & Algimantas GRIGONIS As is true for most of us, the biggest influences in my life as an Australian born Lithuanian, were my parents Julija and Algimantas Grigonis. Most of my generation typically started school in Australia with no English but went on to become very articulate in English and to do well academically. Mum and Dad's generation were all bilingual as a minimum, but many were multilingual before they even came to Australia with English becoming their 3rd, 4th or more language. Hearing a variety of languages from an early age may well have sparked my interest in later language study. Going to Lithuanian school on Saturdays at Lithuanian House was not always what we wanted to do as some of the classes were not easy and we needed help with homework which was often very hard especially for History as I struggled to understand what we had to read. How Lithuanian grammar works did not fall into place for me until I started Latin in high sch...

Vytautas Vencius In 1949 after WW2, at the age of 22, Vytautas arrived in Adelaide Australia. He became separated from his family Lithuania, yet he wanted to keep his precious Lithuanian heritage alive within him. In 1955, he married and became actively involved with the fledgling Lithuanian community in Adelaide. He felt a need to help establish and renovate the Lithuanian Catholic Centre and Church at St Peters.   This was a huge property that required extensive renovation and Vytas was there to work and help create the Adelaide Lithuanian Catholic Centre “Taryba Caritas Inc”. The Catholic Centre has proven to be a focus of his life. In the early 1970’s, his focus turned to dancing group Zilvinas at the Lithuanian House in Norwood, which was starting to attract many children and teens.    He first joined the Parents Committee and soon took on the role as manager/organiser to ensure the dancing group was running smoothly and more importantly, to keep ...

A+A Regina BAJORUNIENĖ My earliest memory of Mrs Regina Bay is from my childhood when I was about 8 or so. She had just married Andrius Bajorunas and they came to visit my parents. Mum and Dad congratulated them on their recent marriage. Their surname was changed to Bay which was easier for Mr Bay in his work as a pharmacist when he often took on weekend shifts in addition to his usual weekday work. We came to call them Mr and Mrs Bay. Regina became Pirmininkė/President of the Adelaide Lithuanian Women's Committee (Adelaidės Lietuvių Moterų Sekcija) after having been a member for a few years. Among many activities, these women provided morning tea for all of us who attended Saturday Lithuanian School and prepared Christmas Eve supper/Kučios at Lithuanian House. They also catered numerous other events.   Among popular events were the fashion parades which started in the early 1960s and the annual Kartunų Balius or Cotton Ball also a fancy-dress event, which was...