Nueva Australia

Day 26 – Three countries in one day

After wandering around the (mostly closed) shops we hopped on the international bus, a local bus that runs to the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este via the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguazu. As the locals don’t need to stop at Paraguayan immigration we were unceremoniously dumped at the end of the bridge. They were busy dismantling the building as we arrived and we had some reservations about it remaining upright long enough for us to be processed. Ciudad del Este is basically a shopping town where residents of neighbouring Brazil and Argentina go to get cheap (bootlegged or stolen) goods. It being Sunday everything was closed, so we were saved the temptation of doing any shopping.

High rise shopping malls in Ciudad del Este

From Ciudad del Este we headed to Colonel Oviedo from where we hoped to be able to visit Nueva Australia (I’ll explain later). The bus was continuing onto Asuncion and didn’t go via the terminal in Colonel Oviedo so we opted to walk into the centre of town in search of the terminal (Lonely Planet don’t make a guidebook for Paraguay, only about 30 not particularly useful pages in the South America on a Shoestring guide, which we don’t have a copy of). It turned out to be quite a distance, it was stinking hot, and when we found the terminal it turned out that the town has two and we were at the wrong one.

At this point in the day it was too late to go further anyway, so we found ourselves a little hotel for the night. The guy who ran the place seemed a bit strange at first, but when I talked to him further he turned out to be quite friendly, and ultimately quite helpful. In discussion with him and his wife we determined that visiting Nueva Australia by colectivo would be quite time consuming and visiting by taxi would be too expensive. Instead they suggested they knew somebody who might be interested in taking us for an intermediate price. So he pointed us in the direction of dinner and said he’d get back to us.

As everything was closed dinner turned out to be empanadas and beer sitting on the pavement Colonel Oviedo’s main street. Thankfully the empanadas were quite nice and available in a couple of types compatible with Erin’s tastes. Our entertainment was provided by the locals who apparently spend Sunday evenings cruising up and down the main street in their cars, utes, scooters, bicycles, whatever. Each vehicle was packed with the maximum number of occupants and stereos were set to the ‘deafen’ setting. Where there was a couple involved, on a scooter for example, the man would always drive. Some vehicles must have gone past a dozen times in the hour or so we were sitting there, and Erin and I soon had a commentary running relating to various vehicles.

When we got back to the hotel room Love Actually was on the television dubbed into Spanish, as Erin seems to know all the words this made quite a good Spanish lesson!

Day 27 – In search of New Australia

We awoke to the news that the hotel manager had arranged a reasonably priced driver for us for the morning, so where were we going?

In 1893 a ship left Sydney bound for Paraguay holding members of the New Australia Movement whose intent was to form a socialist utopia in rural Paraguay (Paraguay was giving away land in an attempt to solidify its hold over its territory).  By 1900, due to numerous disagreements, they’d split into a number of separate colonies, including nearby New London.  I was curious to see what was left of New Australia, hence the unusual stop in rural Paraguay.  More information about the New Australia Movement  can be found here.

First we headed to Nueva Londres where the municipality is based. At the municipal office we were ushered into a small library (apparently funded by the Australian government) with a big map of Oceania on the wall. One of the ladies found us a short printed history of the settlement and went to make us a copy. Meanwhile we made enquiries about the descendents of the original settlement. We were sent to a house on the outskirts of Nueva Londres where were told a Mr Smith lived, everyone knew him as Pepe. Pepe by all accounts was the only full blooded Australian left in the area, being the son of two of the children born there. Pepe apparently also spoke excellent English. When we arrived at the house we were told by his wife that he was out working at one of the estancias and would not return until evening.

The road leading to town

Instead we were pointed to the general store where we were introduced to the lady proprietor. Of 50% Australian and 50% Paraguayan decent she laughed when I suggested that she was half Australian. She spoke no English and explained to us that the locals know very little of their history. Because the settlement failed at a fairly young age the settlers mingled with the locals quite quickly, setting them apart from Paraguay’s Mennonite community which nearly 100 years since its arrival in Paraguay still speaks German and keeps itself quite separate from mainstream Paraguayan culture.  As Nueva Londres and Nueva Australia are quite poor communities many young people leave at a young age to seek work or education elsewhere in Paraguay, further diluting the original culture. She was sad that she did not know more about her origins, but did seem to enjoy telling us about what life is like for her and her community now.

Nueva Londres’ ‘half’ Australian shopkeeper

As we were preparing to move on another local wandered in, and when he found out what we were doing there he proceeded to give us an abridged history of the settlement. His Spanish was quite difficult to understand, but with some background knowledge he was not impossible to follow. A further distraction was that he was a dead ringer for a friend and colleague back in Australia (except Paraguayan dental hygiene standards unfortunately do not match Australia’s).

Back on the road we headed across to Nueva Australia. Not much remains but we had hoped to visit the school where we were led to believe some historical photos might exist. But of course the school was closed for Christmas and we were left with nothing to do but grab a photo with the town’s sign. So we hadn’t really managed a reunion with our distant relatives (unlikely anyway seen as 75% of Erin and I’s combined heritage arrived in Australia 50 years or more after after the settlers left for Paraguay) but I had satisfied my curiosity and we’d gained an interesting insight into modern Paraguayan life in the Pueblos.

‘Welcome to New Australia’

When the driver dropped us back at the correct bus station it turned out that we had been only across the road from it the previous day when we started our lengthy march through Colonel Oviedo’s baking streets. No matter, we found a combination of buses to take us north to Concepcion.

By the time we arrived it was getting dark and we had intended to make it a further 16km out of town to El Roble, a fish farm slash eco-accommodation venue run by an expatriate German and his Paraguayan wife. The last bus in that direction had left but it looked as though we had found a horse drawn buggy and driver willing to take us for a reasonable price. Alas when the buggy driver discovered how far away it was he lost interest and were forced to take a room in town for the night. When the bad karaoke next door finally pulled the plug some time after midnight we actually managed to get some sleep.