A community archive that grows with the people it serves
When the expanded Bonegilla Migrant Experience permanent exhibition opened at its 75th anniversary commemorative event, the digital centrepiece was a searchable database of more than 300,000 identity cards, each recording a person or family group's passage through Australia's largest and longest-operating post-war migrant reception centre between 1947 and 1971.
Delivered by AOM in collaboration with exhibition designers Convergence Design, the project also included oral history videos, an interactive kiosk and a Make Your Own ID Card exhibit. It won the 2023 MAGNA Award for Permanent Exhibition or Gallery Fit-out and was Highly Commended in the AMaGA Victoria Medium Project of the Year.
The response from the community was immediate and sustained. With around 1.5 million Australians connected to Bonegilla, families from across Australia and internationally began reaching out, wanting not just to find their family in the records but to add their own stories to them.
It was clear the collection had more to give. The challenge was finding a way to accommodate that interest without creating an unsustainable publishing burden for the Bonegilla team.
Supported by the Local History Grants Program and Public Record Office Victoria, Wodonga Council engaged AOM to expand the features of the original microsite, which was renamed the Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection to reflect its broader purpose.
Families can now contribute their own migration stories directly via a simple web form, linking memories, photographs, documents, and video clips to one or more existing identity cards in the collection. The new workflow was designed specifically to keep the approval process straightforward, with no technical burden on families or staff. Submissions are reviewed and published by the Bonegilla team with minimal effort.
Stories can be as brief as a single memory or as detailed as a full family account and include photos and videos. Once published, they appear alongside the relevant identity card records, visible to anyone who searches that family name.
The result is a collection that deepens organically over time. As more families contribute, the archive becomes a richer repository of lived experience - a community-curated record of Australia's post-war migration story that grows more valuable with every passing year.
We invite you to visit Bonegilla Migrant Centre and in the meantime, you can view the Identity Card and Memory Collection via the link below.
