We read that 100,000 displaced persons will arrive in Australia in the next eighteen months. Is there no way that the people of Australia can have some control over these sweeping invitations to displaced persons. Surely there is no room in Australia for hordes of foreigners …’ reads a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. Does it sound familiar? However, the date is 18 November 1948, a time when aggrieved readers were bombarding the papers, protesting against the influx of postwar refugees.

Diane Armstrong and her parents were among that influx. They sailed to Australia in 1948, along with more than five hundred other refugees from various parts of Europe, on the SS Derna. In The Voyage of Their Life, Armstrong tells the story of the Derna’s troubled crossing, as well as the lives, both before and after Derna, of many who sailed on her.