The genres of autobiographical writing and utopian writing have little in common. While an autobiography is an account of the life of an individual written by that individual, utopian narrative offers a vision of an ideal place and social system for a collective. In fact, according to Robert F. Sayre, autobiography and utopia indicate polarities: between experience and prophecy, self and society, private and public or emotional unity and rational order (Sayre 1972, 21, 23). Both forms have firmly marked their presence in the culture and history of Australia. Autobiography, as Joy Hooton writes, has always been a prolific genre in Australia (Hooton 1993, 1), with the country's distance from the ‘old world’ being a major factor in inspiring travellers and immigrants to record their stories. At the same time, utopianism has played a major role in Australian history.

While New Zealand is viewed as ‘unique in the way that utopian projects became part of the normal course of political debate’, and the core of that country's identity as a nation (Sargent 2005, 1), Australia has also been a site for utopian visions. From the fanciful depictions of antipodean creatures that amused eighteenth-century readers, through pastoral ‘myths’, to stories of streets paved with gold, Australia has displayed utopian aspirations as part of its nation-building. In her book To Constitute a Nation, Helen Irving argues that, for Australia to become a nation, its people had to imagine a nation first:

Thus, what drives the process of creating the nation, as documented in autobiographical and semiautobiographical writing, can be understood as ‘the attempt to bring the imaginary and the real together’ (Irving 1999, 25).

The aim of this chapter is to examine the relationship between the imaginary and the real in autobiographical and semiautobiographical writing of Polish post– World War II migrants to Australia through their use of utopian ideas and themes. The main argument is that migrant writing, usually autobiographical and hardly ever formally utopian, can connect these concepts of utopia and autobiography in a productive way.