Attila Ürményházi

Story

PART 1

I was born in Istanbul, Turkey, on the 9th September, 1938 from ethnic Hungarian Roman Catholic parents originally from Budapest. My father was a tradesman hat maker, later an industrialist in that field, a pioneer who had established the local hat manufacturing industry in modern Turkey rising from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. He was specifically invited by the Turkish government under their founder-first president Kemal AtatŸrk when in 1928, through sweeping legislation head-gear reforms were introduced, banning the fez and the turban for adoption of the Western world\’s trilby or fedora hats made from rabbit fur and worn universally at the time.

My birth was registered with the Hungarian authorities in Budapest as a Hungarian national. My Hungarian Birth Certificate states that I was born in Turkey. My Turkish Birth Certificate states that I was born from Hungarian national parents in Istanbul. With 3 children born between 1934-1938, the family plan was to return for good to Hungary for our education and upbringing there in the homeland, however the outbreak of World War II, the misery afterwards in ravaged Hungary and the onset of tyrannical communism in a Soviet style repressive regime, made our stay in Turkey permanent. We were living there as tolerated foreigners in a secular but Moslem country with widely differing culture, customs and lifestyle. Particularly grateful that during that War, neutral Turkey offered us a safe haven, a secure life and the chance to maintain a reasonable livelihood, we nevertheless retained and nurtured our own European-Hungarian culture, language and the Christian heritage both in family and within our own small expatriate community. As children and later as teenagers we attended bilingual French-Turkish private schools to complete our secondary education in Istanbul becoming fluently multilingual youngsters.

Officially we were registered as ‘Stateless Hungarian’ aliens, renewing every year our residency permit, by the grace of the authorities. Upon reaching adulthood, when Turkish citizenship was formally denied to us siblings born in Turkey where, ‘Turkey is for the Turks’ culture of chauvinism and blatant discrimination both at law and in society prevailed, we had to face migration to a welcoming, multiethnic-pluralist ‘New World’ country offering Western values, equal opportunity and rewarding hard work. After completing a college course in accounting, I applied for and managed to obtain the official sponsorship of the ‘Australian Catholic Immigration Services’ then run by the Roman Catholic Arch-diocese in Adelaide, South Australia.

As a hopeful 21 years old young man, I boarded a Turkish passenger ship from Istanbul to Genoa, fully paying my own way to Australia. I took along 3 big steer hide suitcases crammed with clothing, Turkish rugs (for sale at hard times) and my prized books with an absolute resolve to succeed in promising Australia no matter how hard, difficult or long my initial years in the new country would be. An ocean going Italian liner named ‘Sydney’ with many hundreds of Southern Italians and about one hundred odd other European migrants on board, set sail from Genoa to go through the Suez Canal. We stopped at its entry point, at exotic Port Said for a long while, waiting for our turn to proceed in the very narrow concrete-and-stone waterway. Most of the migrant passengers were then involved in a unique experience, in lively ‘hand sign’ haggling with local Arab traders in their flowing white goolabiyah garb, selling their mainly camel theme kitsch souvenir wares from row boats. After 20 days of cruising towards seemingly endless horizons, and rough seas we arrived at Fremantle, our first port of call in Australia. Our very first impression upon setting foot on that sun scorched seemingly lifeless town in the midday sun of January 8, 1960 was disheartening. We all likened it to a ghost cowboy town without the horses or the booted cowboys, as the overhang awnings, supported by poles on edge of the footpath, entirely covered the footpath in front of the row of mostly tacky little shops along the deserted main street. To get there, the only access from the waterfront was strolling through tin roofed large storage warehouses. We all knew that, after all, sleepy Fremantle could not be an Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney, the worldly destinations of most of us who by then had formed friendships on board.

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