Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Nicholas had been brought up by his well-to-do stepfather in Harbin, and had already begun work there as a Chinese interpreter with an American company: 'He could speak Chinese, Russian, German, Polish and English. He worked, lived, and dressed as a Chinaman ...'. Arriving in Brisbane in 1912, Nicholas found work labouring on the railways and also, using his languages, as a shipping clerk meeting the boats in Brisbane. 'He did not like the work on the railway line and decided to go back to Russia. He came down to Brisbane to send a letter to Alec [his brother Alexis] and went to meet a boat and found Alec on that boat.' So, instead of returning to Russia, where both their parents were now dead, the brothers remained together, finding rural work in Queensland until they enlisted.

The only way some Russians, especially those with families, could survive was by supplementing their wages with back-yard 'farming' and Nicholas Tupicoff's story, as told by his family, is a good example of this. After the Tupicoff brothers walked off their blocks at Coominya soldiers' settlement, Alexis moved to the Atherton Tablelands and worked in the timber industry there. Meanwhile, in 1919, Nicholas had married Alexandra Muller, who was from a Russian German family that had migrated to Australia before the war; by 1930 they had six children. Alexandra had two years of schooling in Australia, as she relates in the family history: 'I left school when I was 14. There was nothing else I could do, so I did domestic work. This hurt Father, that a daughter of his had to be a servant when he had always had servants working for him.' Nicholas, on the other hand, 'was educated but he spent most of his life as a blacksmith striker; that was the only job he could get'. They settled in Ipswich (Queensland), where Nicholas went back to working in railway workshops, and in 1932 bought a house in Hopetoun Street. Courtesy of Russian Anzacs.