Teaching Migration Experiences (1945-present): a free virtual reality 3D history tour & inquiry-based site study

There is no majestic Statue of Liberty looking over the former Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre on the banks of the Murray River. There is no stone inscription: ‘Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.’ Yet, like America’s Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Bonegilla has come to represent the importance of immigration to the nation. Bonegilla, too, was once a noisy, crowded place tha was bustling with new arrivals displaced from post-war Europe. But unlike New York’s Ellis Island, it was in‘the middle of nowhere’ and only rarely caught public attention. Nowadays Bonegilla is a place where people come to reflect on the impact of migration on Australia –and, perhaps even more importantly, on what it was like and is like to be a migrant. Teachers and students can find out more about this once busy migrant reception centre that had such a significant impact on Australia’s post-war immigration history