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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 53| October 2001


Operation Safe Haven Photographs

Participants in the school program for children

On Monday 6 August 2001 at a handover ceremony, Helen Zimmerman, Managing Director of acl (Australian Centre for Languages) donated a series of photographs documenting Operation Safe Haven to the National Library of Australia. The photographs will be added to the Library’s Pictorial Collection.

Operation Safe Haven began on April 6, 1999, when the Federal Government announced that it would accept 4000 Kosovo Albanians into Australia for ‘a temporary period’ to help alleviate the suffering taking place in the Kosovo region of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. All of those accepted would first go to the East Hills Reception Centre, where they would have their health checked and be given information about their stay, before being transported to safe havens at Singleton, Puckapunyal, Bandiana, Portsea, Brighton, Hampstead and Leeuwin. The first group of evacuees arrived by plane on 7 May, and by 26 June, eight groups, each comprising about 400 people, had all passed through the East Hills centre. The last two groups—another 880 people—arrived in the second half of June and stayed on at East Hills, which became a safe haven itself after the initial processing period.

The offer of safe haven—a humanitarian operation never before undertaken in Australia—posed a huge challenge. Under the lead of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA), and with the assistance of the Department of Defence, a number of organisations such as the Red Cross, the NSW Departments of Sports and Recreation, Community Services and STARTTS (Services for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors) sought to cater for the needs of people badly traumatised by recent experiences, many of whom arrived with little more than the clothes they were wearing.

Participants in the school program for children at
the East Hills camp. Photographer Penelope Iredell

acl was given responsibility for providing orientation, information and education services at East Hills. They set up a Resource and Information Centre open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which provided a place for the Kosovars to gather and talk, to get news, to watch TV or videos and use the computers. They were also responsible for providing school programs for children to age 14 and young adults classes for 15 to 25-year-olds, English language classes for adults, a play centre for children up to 5 years and a Women’s Centre.

By the end of September there were only 100 Kosovars remaining at East Hills as a result of family members being unable to travel due to health reasons. In October the whole process began again with the arrival of 700 people from East Timor, again in need of safe haven. acl commissioned photographer Penelope Iredell to document some of the events and activities at the safe haven at East Hills, and to prepare a memento for each family of their stay there. The photographs are a tribute to all who were involved in the process of building the East Hills safe haven, and those images donated by acl will be digitised and mounted on the Library’s web site.
—Michelle Hetherington

Margy Burn,  Annie Sturgess, Heln Zimmerman and Judy Lumsden

From left to right: Margy Burn, Assistant Director-General Australian Collections
and Reader Services; Annie Sturgess, Assistant Director Adult
Migrant Education Program (DIMA); Helen Zimmerman, Managing Director acl
and Judy Lumsden, Manager, Employment Programs acl

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