CROWDED HOME

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 57, 9 March 1942, Page 3

CROWDED HOME

CHINESE EVACUEES

WOMEN AND CHILDREN

(0.C.) SYDNEY, March 4. A hundred and twenty-five Chinese women and children are living in one house in Burwood, the Chinese Evacuation Home. All are evacuees from New Guinea. There are 21 bedrooms in the house, with one family or more in each room. Mattresses on the floor are the only furniture. Three generations of Chinese are living in one room. In another, a mother lives with her five children.

Plans have been made to convert the double garage into a boys' dormitory, but the mothers are resisting. They will not break the Chinese custom of keeping the family as a unit.

The matron of the home (Mrs. Miller) said the Chinese mothers consider Australian milk bad for their babies, and insisted on feeding them on condensed milk. "But I am slowly persuading them to change to fresh milk," she said. "They prefer Chinese food, too, but it is expensive and difficult to get."

Each day the matron issues a work roster, which is translated into Chinese by one of the women, and pinned on the wall.

"The children have not taken long to pick up our language," the matron said. "Okay is now their favourite expression. The women are settling into our western ways quickly. The first thing they did when they got to Sydney was to have their hair 'permed.' "