Having read "Perplexed" email , I would like to add my thoughts. My 1st German ancestor to migrate was Ernst A Schrader from Osterode am Harz . He came to Australia on the Beausite in 1866 into Morteon Bay and then he settled mostly in Sydney - he married Lydia Douglas of English/ Scots heritage.. My own Grandmother ,May Ellis of Echuca ,who was his grand daughter ,didnt really know of her German ancestry even though she married a German in 1919.!!- Carl Waldemar Brachmann from Halle Westfalen- a nat. citizen by April 1914. I always wondered why she was allowed to mix / marry a German so soon after the terrible events of WW1, and she was not 21 when she married , therefore needing permission.. After I uncovered all the details of my Aussie ancestors that question became clear - her own mother Etti Schrader -mrs Edward Ellis of Echuca , [ who hid details of her own German background by using her maiden name as a blind ] -was the daughter of a German migrant and probably didnt have any real "angst" about Germans. When my own mother was "tracking square" with my father Edward F C Brachmann , her Irish / English heritage parents liked him but asked her several times if she really wanted to marry a man with a German father - because her own Irish heritage father was Gassed and 80% blinded in the trenches of the Somme in WW1 by Germans. Tricky eh? I would also suggest that if these migrants from Germany were ready to give up all their future in their homeland , maybe they were just willing to be subsumed into the new and evolving nation of Australia with all its people from so very many backgrounds and cultures. I have also been told of the awkward position that people with Germanic surnames were in during both 1st and 2nd wars.- my Brachmann grandfather still had to report to the police each week during WW2 because of his background - he left germany in 1910 and never went back either. He was still regarded as an Enemy Alien in 1937 when he applied for a home loan in 1937-9 . Very invasive questions were asked in the documents applied for and sent to me last week from NAA in Canberra. My father and his brother changed the spelling of their surname during WW@ even though they were serving in the Airforce and Navy. Need I say more ? Their friends and neighbours were losing their menfolk in horrific circumstances due to Germanic agression. Lastly - I feel that my heritage has been taken from me as a result of all this- didnt know i had so much German in me . Yvonne in Melbourne.