Any migrant knows what a daunting task is to wrap up everything in one country in order to start a new life from scratch in another country.
First of all I needed an exit visa. Russian citizens were not free to leave the country without permission. Exit visas were abolished in 1993, but in 1992 they were in effect and people got banned from traveling abroad for all sorts of reasons. No exit visa meant that I could forget about Australia.
My mother, father and ex-husband signed notarized statements that each of them did not have financial claims against me. Besides that my ex-husband had to confirm that he allowed our minor son to go with me. Their written statements were attached to my exit visa application. Apparently nobody at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cared if we left and the visa was granted. It was August when my passport with the required stamps was ready. Russia did not have time to design and print its own passport and it continued to use passport books of the USSR, the country that no longer existed. My passport bore a stamp across the first page with the correct country name. My 11-year old son did not have a passport. His photo was glued into mine. The exit visa was good until the 10th of February 1993 which left us with less than 5 months to prepare for the departure.
With all papers in order I could start working on other things and, oh boy, there were so many of them. My next priority was tickets to Australia. The departure date would be a firm deadline for everything else. My friend mentioned something about going by sea. I did not pay much attention to this part and did not ask for details. During my second expensive night call he explained that the Baltic Sea Shipping Company (BSSC) ran freighters between St. Petersburg and Australia and that I needed to contact their headquarters if we wanted to be passengers on one of their ships.
I called the BSSC office. The next ship was going to leave in early November. A female clerk wrote down my name and phone number; she would get back to me sometime in October. Now I had only 2 months to get everything done. The most important was to sell our apartment.
At a real estate agency in the city center on Nevsky Avenue that widely advertised its services a polite man listened to me attentively while I described my situation. I priced our apartment at $8,500 – a ridiculous amount now, but back in 1993 it was only slightly below the market price. The polite man promised that it would not take long to find a buyer for a 2-room apartment in a St. Petersburg historic old suburb. I left reassured that my matter was in good hands. Weeks passed and nobody from the agency contacted me. I began to worry. Having this money was crucial for us to start a new life in Australia. My savings in rubles converted to Australian dollars were going to be pennies.
One day someone brought to work a 2-page newspaper that published all sorts of ads. I saw that newspaper before and distrusted it. What self-respecting paper would print ads like “Will buy a sick leave certificate”? My eyes fell on a short ad in it that read “Will buy a centrally located apt”. I contemplated over the ad, decided that I had no time to lose and called.
On the following day two impeccably dressed gentlemen in early 20’s showed up at my door. They turned out to be co-owners of the said newspaper and were looking for a new office for themselves. My apartment suited them perfectly. I told them how I felt about their newspaper ‒ they laughed. It was not illegal to print ads about illegal actions and the paper was not responsible for the content of ads, they explained. These guys knew ins and outs of Russian bureaucracy; they did everything with confidence and smooth efficiency and did not mind to wait until we vacated the apartment.
I marveled at how proactive these two young men were with any issue. For instance, our contract of sale required approval from a government agency that was recently created to protect children’s rights. Cases with parents lured by crooks into selling their properties were on the rise. The agency could do nothing to help adults, but it was supposed to ensure that kids would not become homeless. The agency’s committee met once a month to review all contracts of sale that involved children. Their last meeting was days ago and I could not wait until the next month. The newspapers guys arranged an appointment for me with the head of the agency. I showed him the documents that proved that my son was going to Australia with me and the whole affair was settled in a matter of minutes.
The apartment was sold to the newspaper and the money was paid in full. Our belongings were sorted into 3 piles: what to take with us, what to sell and what to give away. Since we were going by boat we could take onboard any baggage. The fee was nominal.
Our family never owned anything of value like artwork. A few pieces of jewelry that I had went to my female colleagues who were only too glad to buy them from me. I did not want troubles with the customs and diligently studied their policies. I even attended a free consultation with customs officers to make sure that I was not unwittingly breaking any rules.
My biggest asset was the library. We carefully selected the books that were traveling with us to Australia and packed them into neat cartons. According to the policy any book printed prior to 1940 needed a certificate from the National Library of Russia that this book was not a rarity and could be taken out of the country. I carried several heavy books by public transport to the National Library and waited there in line together with the others. A quiet and pleasant lady checked my books, her fingers gently touching them, and issued the required certificate that showed the amount of customs duty that I should pay at the border.
The St. Petersburg Society of Philatelists purchased my collection of stamps that I started as a child. I was sad to part with it, but it was easier to rid of the stamps rather than to get appraisal and other paperwork needed for taking the collection with me.
Friends, acquaintances, friends and acquaintances of friends and acquaintances came to our apartment and left it carrying household appliances, furniture and books. The rooms looked bare; the cardboard boxes with baggage were stacked up our long hallway.
The multitude of things to do left me with no time to go to work and I quit my job. One day in the whirl of my preparations it occurred to me that I should learn at least some basic facts about Australia. My knowledge about our adoptive country was limited to the fact that it had two cities ‒ Melbourne and Sydney. I wondered which of them was the capital of Australia. By the way, we were going to Melbourne.
My first resource was the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GSE). The article on Australia contained boring tables and diagrams with average monthly temperatures and amounts of precipitation in different regions of the country. Its history section was mostly about the Australian Communist party, how many members it had and what international congresses it attended. I did learn one thing from the GSE. The capital of Australia was Canberra! I never heard of this city before.
In search of more information I went to the local library that had nothing about Australia except for a book by Daniil Granin “A Month Upside Down”. Granin wrote it after he and several other members of the Union of Soviet Writers went to Australia at the government expense to spend Down Under a whole month, an unbelievably long business trip in the Soviet times. The official pretext for the trip was meeting with two Australian writers ‒ Katharine Susannah Prichard, a co-founder of the Communist Party of Australia, and Alan Marshall, who was engaged into communist activities, but did not join the Party. Granin’s book was not particularly informative for me; however it explained the thing about Canberra.
When the Commonwealth of Australia was created in 1901, two major cities Sydney and Melbourne fought to become its capital. After a long debate Canberra, a small and sleepy village at that time, was chosen as a compromise because of its location somewhat in between Sydney and Melbourne. That’s how Australia got its capital.
After reading the GSE and “A Month Upside Down” all available sources of information were exhausted. I gave up on learning about Australia, having decided that first we needed to get there.
In mid-October I finally got a call from the real estate agency on Nevsky Avenue. They offered me to buy the apartment for much less than the asking price having figured out that I was in a time crunch and probably would be glad to get any money at all. The agency would resell the apartment at the market price and pocket the difference. I smiled when I listened to them.
‘The apartment is sold’, said I. This was not the expected response.
‘Erm… What?’
I knew they heard me and remained silent.
‘Well… okay, thank you.’
‘Bye!’ I did not want to think badly of them. At the same time I congratulated myself for not relying on this agency to act in my best interests.
On the 21st of October I made the last trip to the Australian consulate in Moscow, this time to get their entry visa. A young girl glued in a visa sticker into my passport. I was about to leave the consulate when I noticed that the visa was valid to the 28th of November 1992. Our papers said that we had until mid-April of the next year to enter Australia. I returned to the girl. She apologized, cancelled the visa and issued a new one with the correct expiration date.
Gradually everything fell into place. Only one thing was missing ‒ the tickets, and the clock was ticking. The BSSC office had not contacted me. My guts were telling me that something was wrong. I hesitated to call them and waited until it did not make sense to wait any longer.
‘All tickets for the November ship have been sold,’ said the woman who was responsible for ticket sale. ‘You may be able to travel on the next ship in January’.
I listened to her in disbelief. Waiting until January while I had no job and sitting on our packed baggage was not an option. I had a feeling that something more substantial than a simple “thank you” was expected from me in return for the tickets. Although bribery was common, I never used it to achieve anything and had no idea how to approach the ticket woman with a bribe. I also realized that if all tickets were “sold out” for the November ship the same could happen again in January. I automatically thanked the ticket woman, hang up and burst into tears.
Somehow it never occurred to me that we could fly to Australia. My mind was set on going by a cargo ship. Still crying, I called my mother to break the news. She was brief, ‘Give me the office address and the name of that woman.’
Mother called me back later in the evening and said, ‘Go to the BSSC office tomorrow and pay for the tickets.’ She offered no explanation of what she did to get those tickets. I knew that my mother, a pensioner, had no money or anything else to bribe the ticket woman. My guess is that she spoke with her as one mother to another and managed to touch the woman’s heart.
Next morning I stopped by at an expensive shop and bought French perfume in gift wrapping. At the BSSC office I paid the cashier for the tickets. One ticket cost $400. My son was under 14 and his ticket was half-price. The total was $600 for two of us plus a few extra dollars for the baggage that was $2 per 100 kg (220 lbs.). I returned to the ticket woman with the receipt and while she was finishing her paperwork I took out the package with French perfume out of my purse and held it in my hands.
‘What’s this?’ demanded the ticket woman in a stern voice and pointed at the package.
‘Perfume…’ breathed out I.
‘I love perfume!’ With these words the woman grabbed the package from my hands and in a flash stuck it into her own purse. My eyes followed the package; I was relieved that the woman accepted it and I did not need to do much to make this happen.
The last days before the departure were hectic. My friends and I had a farewell party. Nobody knew if we would see each other again.
All ties with Russia except for the citizenship were severed. We were ready to leave.
The morning of the 8th of November 1992 was freezing. It already snowed in St. Petersburg. We were wearing all our warm clothes. I kept the bare minimum of them just enough to get us out of the cold climate. Winter overcoats would not be needed in Australia. The roads were icy. My uncle’s minivan skidded on the way to the cargo port. All our baggage fitted into his car.
My mind was preoccupied with the formalities at the port. It was the first time in my life when I was about to cross the border. What was going to happen there? As for everything else I was like an empty shell of myself. Emotions and feelings were left behind in the 2-room apartment that was no longer ours. I could not think about Australia either. Since I never was outside of Russia I found it impossible to imagine how our new life would look like and stopped worrying about it. The trip would take one and a half months, plenty of time to prepare myself mentally for Australia. My approach was “first things first” and the most important thing at that moment was to get us successfully out of the country.
We were told to be onboard by 10 am. My uncle drove around the cargo port until we found the freighter named the Academic Gorbunov and parked the minivan. The Academic Gorbunov was a ConRo vessel, a hybrid of a roll-on/roll-off and a container ship. Her ramp was lowered; forklifts and trucks carried cargo directly into the hold while a crane was stacking up containers on the deck.
I went to see the captain. He was about 50 years old, courteous and soft-spoken, but something in his voice and manners indicated that he was the absolute authority on the ship. The captain checked my passport and told me where to find our cabin. It was on the main deck, spacious and divided into distinct areas for sleeping and resting. Two single berths were in one corner that a curtain separated from the rest area where stood 2 couches and a coffee table. A closet for clothes was along the wall. There were also a closet for clothes, a small desk and a refrigerator. Everything was securely attached to the floor or walls. The washroom contained a shower. For a freighter it was not bad at all.
We brought in our baggage and unpacked. My mother hugged me and my son, wished us a safe trip and left. A long parting would be too painful. After that there was nothing to do. We went down to the hold to see what was going there.
One crew member was putting something into a crate. A middle-aged woman in an old-fashioned coat with a purse in her hands watched him working. Thinking that the woman was a fellow passenger and the crate was her luggage I moved in her direction to introduce myself.
‘Are you going to Australia too?’ I asked.
‘I am the customs inspector!’ said the woman curtly and gave me a superior look. I hastily retreated from her.
The crew finished loading the cargo and the ramp went up. We returned to our cabin. Soon three uniformed customs officers came in. One was a man in mid 40’s; the other two were a girl and a youth who looked barely 20. The older man smelled of alcohol. He was obviously the senior officer and started speaking first. He asked me where our baggage was. Since we did not have much all the boxes were in the cabin. I expected the inspection and prepared for it. The boxes stood open. It was easy to see that they contained books, kitchenware, clothes and bedding. The senior officer glanced at them without touching anything. The youth eager to show that he was worth his salary warned me about exporting antiques, paintings and Persian rugs without permit. I said that we had nothing of this kind. I held the certificate from the National Library of Russia and waited for an opportunity to pay customs duty on my old books. That opportunity did not present itself. The senior officer decided to cut the crap and without wasting everyone’s time went straight to the most interesting subject.
‘How much money in foreign currency do you have?’
The then-current rules allowed to take out of the country up to $1,000 in cash. I had $990 and handed the banknotes to the senior officer. He counted the money and returned nine 100-dollar bills to me. Out of the remaining $90 he took a $50 and put it into his pocket. The young generation of customs officers got a $20 either. The senior officer was beaming. He enjoyed the payoff and mentoring the inexperienced staff and he was drunk. The youth was slightly embarrassed. He probably intended to do this inspection by the book. Nevertheless he took the money. The girl never said a word and had a blank look on her face during the whole thing like a dummy, but she took the money too.
This was corruption in action, disgusting and amusing at the same time. I silently wondered how the senior officer would have divided the money if there had been 100-dollar bills only. Later the crew told me that a departure day like this was always a huge payday for the customs.
The formalities had not been over yet. We were told to go downstairs. Three very young men in the military uniform sat at a table. They were border patrol agents. A box with the passports of everyone on board was on the table in front of them. The superior air of the female customs inspector whom I encountered before was nothing compared to how these guys held themselves. They were kings and behaved like ones. I gave them my name. One agent briskly compared our photos with the originals and threw the passport on the table. Did this mean that everything was okay and we passed the border control? Could I take the passport? If not who would keep my passport? All these questions went unanswered. The border patrol agents ignored me as if I had not existed. They just sat there with arrogant faces that expressed nothing. I decided that I had enough for one day, left the passport where it was and we went back to our cabin.
It was after 5 pm when the ship was finally ready for departure. Everyone who was not going to Australia left her. The ship’s engines were already working and we felt their vibration. The heavy mooring ropes were let go. The Academic Gorbunov blew the horn. At first we did not see anything, then gradually the enormous ship moved away from the pier. The gap grew wider and wider. We were sailing!