Adam And Arek Romaniuk: A Short Story

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There have been thousands of migrant stories over the years, of people who have come to Australia for a new life. This is the story of Adam and Arek Romaniuk, who travelled from Krakow in Poland to Australia in the 1960s.
World War two had raged through Europe in the 1940s, Poland was perhaps more affected than any other country. It was decimated and lost its independence. For 20-year-old Adam, a farmer from Krakow in the south of Poland, it meant witnessing much horror and despair at home and on the streets. Adam and his brother Arek are a team, always together, watching each other's back.
Poland no longer feels like home for us. We have no family here, in fact, our only family we have is our grandparents who live in Melbourne, Australia. Here in Poland, all the buildings are destroyed and many people and animals are now homeless. Our house is almost destroyed there are only a couple rooms left, and our farm is obliterated, crops pulled out, animal blood everywhere. I went to go and gather resources for myself and my brother Arek to feast on. When I was in the city I noticed a billboard, I could barely make out of what it said, but it read ‘come to Australia, where freedom is the first priority' I saw this and got excited but realised I couldn't afford it. So I ignored the advertisement. Eventually, I came home and cooked dinner for myself, my brother and the dog. When I was eating I was thinking about the ship that the Australian billboard was showing, maybe I can still go on it. It was late at night approximately 23:00. I tried to leave the house without my brother noticing, but while I was packing my clothes the dog came and started barking, I was telling the dog "shh" he eventually calmed down and my brother came out of his somewhat destroyed room which had no door, "what are you doing?” he asked? "I saw a billboard and it said that you can go to Australia, this might be our chance!" I replied. I told him to pack your most valuable items. Once we were packed we left the house and walked towards the city. Usually, there are high-security guards patrolling the whole city and if one of the guards caught you, you will be shot on site. Arek started coughing from all the dust, one of the guards came stomping in a fully armed vest, he saw us and pointed a rifle at us, I screamed not to shoot us he didn't say a word, just stared us. He grabbed both of us and threw us in a truck. He got in the front seat and drove to a prison. Once we were in the prison, there were many people in their cells screaming and begging to be let go. The guard threw us in a cell by ourselves. Inside the cell there was mould everywhere, water dripping from the ceiling. We saw a window at the back and there was enough space for us both to escape through the iron bars. So I made Arek jump on my back and he jumped out onto the soft grass where I joined him shortly. Our goal was to get to the docks where apparently there was a ship waiting for people to get on and it would depart for Australia in exactly 2 hours. We silently tipped towed around the city, well what's left of the city, we were dead silent not to make any sound. eventually, we saw the boat, it was a flat grey army boat and had
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We arrived in Sydney, it was very crowded and saw so many people. we reached the dock and was greeted by police, everyone was screaming due to fear. We were all captured and put on another boat which took us to Melbourne. When we were in Melbourne Arek and I jumped off the boat and swam to the other side of the docks. We ran towards the train station and hopped on a train about to depart for Melbourne, inside there was barley no people so the train took us to Geelong and we were greeted by a relative, our grandparents, they took us in and let us live in her single story old

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