Maiden voyages

Boatloads of 'proxy brides' brought a civilising balance to postwar Australia, writes Sonia Harford in The Age:

Tonina Farrugia remembers her wedding day as "weird" because on her big day, a man she didn't wish to marry joined her at the altar, and the real groom didn't show up at all. Ted Farrugia was far away in Australia, while Tonina got married in Malta.

Tonina was one of thousands of young women who came to be known as "proxy brides" in the 1950s and '60s. Demand for wives was so great among postwar migrants in Australia that the men sent home urgent letters of proposal to childhood friends, sisters' friends, any young women they could contact.

After World War II, the influx of men from Italy, Greece and Malta arriving to labour on major projects in Australia created an imbalance, with too few women. Public opinion at the time feared the men might become "an unruly force without the tempering influence of women", according to By Proxy, a study of migrant brides by Susi Bella Wardrop.

So the search for a mate gathered strength through a formal, pragmatic scheme, organised by the Catholic Church, and accepted by the Australian government. In a defining decade for Australia, and particularly Victoria, huge transport ships brought young women from all over southern Europe to balance the male migrants. It was unthinkable for young women like Tonina to travel alone, unwed. Respect lay in being married..

The proxy came in the form of a ceremony, in which another village man would stand in for the groom, as a priest performed the wedding in his absence. Ring on finger, the girl would then board a ship bound for Australia as a married woman, due to be collected by her husband at journey's end.

Australian newspapers welcomed the exotic female fleet with colourful headlines and photographs. "Proxy grooms storm a bride ship" summarised a scene of men crowding onto a pier and actually clambering up the ship's hull to claim their bride, as shy girls looked down from an upper deck..

Now, after 52 years of marriage, Tonina considers herself lucky to have migrated as a teenage bride to a country she has loved since her first glimpse of Station Pier. Her union was a success, as were many others. Tomorrow, at a reunion organised by the Immigration Museum, many Melbourne couples like the Farrugias, who married at a distance, will share their stories.

Tonina was just 16 when she took a huge leap of faith in accepting Ted's proposal. She'd known him as a childhood friend in her village of Floriana but hadn't seen him for two years. They'd corresponded a little, then he outlined an ambitious plan: marriage and migration. For a girl who'd never left home, she was surprisingly open to the future...