Almost everyone’s Bonegilla: An expanded digital archive on the reception of newly arrived migrants

Many new arrival registration cards and official administration records drawn from the Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre when it closed were digitised and placed on a National Archives of Australia website in 2020. This expansion of the digital archive is important to family historians and to immigration scholars from a variety of disciplines. Now online, both these sets of records trigger further investigations into reception arrangements and newcomer arrival experiences. They extend the ways onsite and online visitors to Bonegilla look for family and personal connections and try to make sense of place and time. This expansion of the digital archive illustrates how Bonegilla has developed as both a designated National Heritage Place and a public memory place.