The event will feature tours, displays, exhibitions, film screenings, food and music.

Historian Bruce Pennay will host a talk, sharing the many memories and photographs depicting how Bonegilla operated and what it was like to be there as a migrant or refugee.

There will also be a presentation that will help with tracing your family tree, and an author talk by Annette Janic, whose parents and older brother passed through Bonegilla after arriving in Australia under the International Refugee Organisation program following World War II.

A Mildura woman plans to attend the reunion to uncover more about her Czechoslovakian father’s early life, which was spent at the Bonegilla camp.

The reunion will be an emotional journey for Janine Arkinstall, whose late father Milos Tvrznik arrived at the camp in 1950 and, ultimately, began a new life in Australia.

Arkinstall knows little about her father’s early life in Czechoslovakia or his time at Bonegilla, but hopes to uncover more on her upcoming visit that she is planning to attend with her sister Elizabeth.

“I had been planning to visit Bonegilla on Father’s Day but I can’t get there then, so I am determined to attend the November reunion,” she said.

The Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre is an important part of Australian history.

The Bonegilla story began in the years following World War II, when millions of people seeking a new start and peace departed for Australia.

An army camp at Bonegilla was transformed into a migrant reception and training centre, where new arrivals lived while they were processed and allocated jobs.

Bonegilla became the largest and longest operating reception centre in the post-war era.

In fact, it’s estimated that one in 20 Australians is a descendant of migrants who spent a stint at Bonegilla.

More than 300,000 migrants passed through its doors between 1947 and 1971, with most of those originating from non-English speaking European countries.

During the years in which Bonegilla operated, over 350,000 Italian migrants came to Australia, about 42,000 of them under the Assisted Passage Scheme signed by the two governments. 

Alongside these economic migrants escaping poverty compounded by the effects of the war, several thousand Italian refugees came to Australia during that time, displaced from areas annexed by Yugoslavia after the war.

Many of these migrants and refugees transited through Bonegilla.

For more information, head to the Bonegilla Migrant Experience website.