Summary

Seven seamans' allotment notes or pay slips (originally pinned together) which lists Agapito Castillo as the allotter payable to the amount of $150 US dollars. It lists Agapito on board the ship SS Stan Durban and the payee as Socony Vacuum Oil Company, New York, USA. The notes record monthly payments from 8 October 1951 to 8 April 1952. Around this time Agapito was trying to gain permission to re-enter Australia to visit his wife and children in Melbourne. Since Agapito was unable to catch a freighter back to Australia, the payments were all given to Aileen who saved them, and when Agapito finally was able to return home they used these savings to purchase their first home in Carnegie where the family still reside.

Philippines-born Agapito Castillo had married Aileen McColl in Melbourne while he was working for the British Phosphate Company and was detained there during World War II.

This item is part of a collection of material relating to the migration and settlement experiences of seamen from the Philippines during the post World War II era in Australia; and the experiences of the local Anglo-Australian women they married.

Physical Description

Black typed text on cream paper, red star stamped bottom right hand corner.

Significance

This collection and story represents an important narrative in Australia's migration history, regarding the challenges faced by seamen from the Philippines caught in Melbourne during the outbreak of World War II and unable to return home, trying to settle in Melbourne and marry locally-born women of Anglo-Australian background. It also shows the prejudice these women themselves faced. The collection reveals a community of these men and women and their families, connected through family relationships; and it demonstrates the vagaries of bureaucracy, and the influence of the White Australia policy, still officially in force at that time.

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