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Mark your calendar

5 Jun, 2019

Get excited - we have the date for the next Bonegilla Reunion at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience.

Mark November 2 and 3 in your calendar now!

Discover Bonegilla 2019 will celebrate food and entertainment that cultures who passed through here brought with them to enrich the Australia we know today.

If you can't wait until the reunion, why not visit Bonegilla this June long weekend? There's plenty to do including guided and self-guided tours and even bicycle hire.

Last year we heard from Janine Arkinstall from Mildura, a daughter of a Czechoslovakian, who had travelled almost eight hours to be a part of the reunion to learn more about the place her late father had once called home.

Mrs Arkinstall attended the reunion with her husband Shaun and her sister Elizabeth.

"We talked to everybody and the stories we walked away with were just unreal," she said.

"Shaun and I are in our forties and we were talking to people in their eighties who have experienced it and the stories we heard were just hard to imagine.

"We met and made a connection with a man from Czechoslovakia who came out two years before Dad.

While Mrs Arkinstall, pictured first on the left, did not find anyone at the reunion who had met her late father, Milos Tvrznik, she has walked away with a better understanding of the place which offered him a new life.

"We connected with people who came out the same year as Dad and they talked about what they experienced," she said.

"It was well worthwhile coming down to have a look.

"Just to see where they would have slept and what they ate and I didn't realise that Bonegilla was actually a community, I just thought it was like a detention centre like what you might see on TV but it was quite the opposite."

Mrs Arkinstall admitted to becoming very emotional and teary during the event.

"There was so much to see and do - from the great people we met to the ladies that ran the walk - it was just a great weekend," she said.

Stay up-to-date with the reunion at Bonegilla's Facebook page.

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