Heinz Stepanek
| First name | Heinz |
|---|---|
| Last name | Stepanek |
| Country of Origin | Austria |
| Date of Birth | 7/6/1937 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1958 |
| Submitted by | Erika Stepanek |
Story
I was born in Vienna in 1937, my father was a baker and he and my mother owned a bakery in a Viennese suburb, which had been in the family for generations. I have a sister who is four years younger and we were part of a large extended family Ð our life was comfortable and good.
The Second World War changed everything. My father was killed in action in 1944 and the building that contained the bakery and our flat was destroyed later that year during an Allied bombardment of Vienna. We sheltered in the cellar of the building from the air raid and were buried in the rubble for eight hours until rescue arrived.
Everybody tried to rebuild their life when the war was over in 1945. I finished my school education and completed an apprenticeship in cabinet making. By joining the Boy Scout movement I was introduced to outdoor life and travel, I loved both and hitch hiked together with a friend around Europe whenever we had holidays.
In 1958 an advertisement to immigrate to Australia caught my attention. I was restless in Austria, economic recovery after the war was incredibly slow and the future didn\’t look very promising to me. The terms in exchange for assisted passage and assistance on arrival, were to stay in Australia for a minimum of two years. I thought this would be a great adventure and as I could speak some English, I applied, was accepted and left Europe from Genoa in Italy on the Migrant ship ‘Flaminia’ in May 1958 to travel to Australia via the Suez Canal. I enjoyed the trip very much, there was Italian food and wine, a variety of entertainment on board, exotic locations along the way and I was never seasick. We arrived in Melbourne in June 1958. Some of the new migrants were met by relatives or friends, all others (including myself) were transferred by train to the Migrant Centre at Bonegilla near Albury.
After spending four days in Bonegilla, I was recruited to work for Karl Schreiner, a well known builder in Canberra together with a group of other young tradesmen. We were very excited to move to the capital city of Australia! Couldn\’t wait to get there, bright city lights, social life, entertainment The trip by railway took 14 hours and was cold and miserable. The arrival a great disappointment; we didn\’t know Canberra is the ‘bush capital’ and had imagined it to be like any big city in Europe. The city was rapidly growing and many houses were under construction so there was an urgent need for carpenters. With some on the job training, I soon switched from cabinet making to carpentry. It wasn\’t hard with my background as a cabinet maker and my preference to work outdoors rather than in a workshop. I continued to work as a carpenter from then on gathering experience over the years to eventually become a self-employed licensed builder.
In January 1959 I got a job on the Snowy Mountain Scheme in Cabramurra and stayed there until July 1960. After a weekend ski trip to Thredbo, which was then a very small ski village, I gave notice, packed my few belongings and spent the rest of the winter working in Thredbo. When the winter was over, I decided to travel to Vienna to visit my family for Christmas 1960.
It was during that visit that I made up my mind to return to Australia permanently and live and work in Thredbo where development had started to change the village into the ski resort it is now. I returned to Australia in February 1961 and was joined in the following May by my future wife Erika – whom I had met in Vienna that Christmas. We got married in 1962 and stayed in Thredbo until 1965, before we moved to the new township of Jindabyne where I worked as a builder until 1981. Our son Marcus was born in Cooma in 1973. In 1981 we moved to Narooma on the South Coast where we lived for five years. We enjoyed life there, but work for builders locally was scarce in those years, so I had to travel out of town to work.
As soon as Marcus was due to start high school in 1986 we decided it would be better for us to move to Canberra and maybe one day return to Narooma to retire. I got a job as a building foreman, my wife joined the Public Service and our son became a mechanic, he now has his own mechanical workshop in Canberra.
When my wife and I retired in 2004, we decided against moving back to the South Coast initially for health reasons, but mainly because our son and his family are based in Canberra, however we still enjoy our holidays in Narooma as often as we can.
Australia has changed in many ways since I arrived in 1958, adapting to life in a new country with a different culture and language wasn\’t always easy and there were challenges to overcome, but we are very happy to live here and have become proud Australians.