Imre Schnierer

Story

I was born in Rajka in the north-west of Hungary near the Austrian border next to the Danube. My father, Istvan, was a farmer, fisherman and timber trader and he served in the Hungarian army in WW1. I grew up with my brothers and sister – Istvan, Anna, Gyula and Sandor all working on a small farm near our home town. We were exposed to the savagery of WW2 and my eldest brother, Istvan, was believed to have died in a POW camp in Russia. At the end of the war many Hungarians with German names in my hometown were deported to Germany. My family was allowed to stay; however I decided to leave Hungary and slipped across the border into Austria in 1948, initially to the Russian zone and then into the American zone. I initially tried to get to France by joining the French Foreign legion while in Linz. I got as far as Offenbach in the French zone which was the staging post for the foreign legion but failed the medical because of my eyesight. I was placed in a refuge camp in Bregenz and then a camp called Schwarz near Innsbruk. I worked on a farm near Bruck for awhile before heading to Munich where I was able to register with the IRO (International Refuge Organisation and I obtained a passport. I then applied to migrate to USA, Chile and Australia. While I waited for his application to be processed I was put into a holding camp called Winze near the Czechoslovakia border. I was eventually interviewed by the Australian consulate in Schweinfurt and they ok’ed my visa to travel to Australia. In the June 1950 I boarded a ship called the ‘SS Goya’ docked in the Bremmer Harbour.

It took 36 days to sail from Bremmer harbour to Newcastle and while on the boat I volunteered to act as an interpreter because I could speak 3 languages. The ship broke down in the Bay of Biscay, the Suez Canal and the again in Aden. While they repaired the boat at Aden the heat of the day was intense but no one was allowed to leave the boat so instead many of us stripped off and dived into the sea. I remember the trip across the Indian Ocean as being very rough, but eventually the ship berthed in Newcastle. I then was placed into a migrant camp called Greta where I spent several weeks before moving to Cudgen in far northern NSW to cut sugar cane. I was put in a cane gang of 9 others and we cut cut cane for one season before getting a job and working for 5 years with a sand mining company called Cudgen RZ. I married Phyllis Watego and settled in Byron Bay where I worked as a builder’s laborer for several years. We had 4 children Stephan, Peter, Larry and Karen. In the early 1960’s my mother, Maria, who had escaped to Sweden from Hungary after the Russians invaded in 1956 came to Australia to live with me. My older brother Gyula who had gone to England after the war also came to Australia with his family in the early 1960’s.

My impressions of Australia were that the climate was good, the life style was easy but they were referred to us as the ‘new Australian bastards’. However I never regretted coming to Australia. In the early 1990’s I went back to Rajka in Hungary where I met my older sister after 40 years and her family as well as many of my cousins. I also ran into boyhood friends still living in the same village and we could still recognize each other. Since then I have been back several times along with my eldest son who has established family contacts which he maintains on a regular basis.

< Back to the Stories