So this is where the story starts. Lucyna Kaczynska was born in Makow Mazowiecki, Poland in around 1909 to Stanislaw Kaczynski and Franciska Buksicka. She had three brothers and three sisters. Pre 1940, she was working as a teacher in Warsaw.

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In February 1940, while visiting family in the hamlet of Ostrow (now part of Belarus), she was sent packing from Poland with her mother, sister Zofia, Zofia's husband and Zofia's two children Alicja and Bogdan.​Lucyna met Krzysztof Lukasik in Czok Pak camp in USSR. The family moved on.

 

They arrived in Tehran, where Włodzimierz was born in January 1943. ​From Tehran, Lucyna and Włodzimierz travelled by boat to Tanganyika in East Africa where they lived in Tengeru camp until 1950.  Here, Lucyna taught kindergarden.​

 

In 1950, she and Włodzimierz arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia on board the General Langfitt. After some time in the migrant camp at Cunderdin east of Perth, they moved to Subiaco, Claremont and then Embleton.​

 

Lucyna married Michal Keller at St Brigid's Church, West Perth on 26 December 1951. Włodzimierz was naturalised and became Vodek Keller, taking Michal's surname.​Between 1952 and 1956, Lucyna was a teacher at the Kelmscott Polish School, catching the bus from the city out to Kelmscott each weekend to do so.  The school was set up to teach new migrant children Polish, history, geography and Polish dancing - all in very cramped, dusty and humid conditions inside a nissen hut.​

 

Lucyna was a member of the Polish Community Radio and the Polish Association of Western Australia.​In 1977, Lucyna was awarded the Bronze Krzyz Zaslugi (Cross of Merit) for her contributions to Polish society in Perth. Lucyna died in 1989 in Perth, Western Australia.