Wolfgang Frick, Dr.

Story

In 1945 having experienced the almost daily allied bombing raids and seeing the destruction, the dead and injured and the futility of war, I decided that I never again wished to go through such a period in my life.

After graduating from a commercial high school in 1953 I joined the airlines and having learned a number of languages other than German, I found myself transferred to Egypt where I married for the first time and upon my return to Austria decided to migrate to Australia with my wife and 1 year old daughter.

In June 1961 we embarked on the ss. Roma of Flotta Lauro lines in Genoa, Italy and on 16 June 1961 we first set foot on Australian soil at Fremantle, where we crossed the rickety old footbridge that is still in existence some 48+ years later. We visited Perth with which I fell in love from the very first moment. It was a quiet town then, and people moved at a very slow pace down St. George’s Terrace, compared to the Sydneysiders racing down Castlreagh Street.

After a short stopover the ship sailed on to Melbourne, where we disembarked and were transferred to Flinders Road Railway Station for our journey to Bonegilla, which in those days held most of the new migrant arrivals to Australia. However, an unusual experience was to follow. The train stopped in the middle of the night and was shunted onto a spur line in the middle of a sheep paddock. Nobody knew where we were nor what had happened. We sat there for some 8-10 hours without food, water or news as to what had occurred or caused the holdup. As we found out much later, members of the migrant community had rioted in Bonegilla, because of the inability to find jobs during the 1961 credit squeeze. — After the train began moving again, we pulled into a small railway station where the station master in full ceremonial uniform ran a big bell. The station sign read “Benalla, Victoria”. We disembarked with our hand luggage only and were loaded onto the back of trucks that took us behind an 8 foot high barbed – wire enclosure with a great number of metal nissan huts. This experience was traumatic, to say the least.

It turned out that this place was a disused WWII air force camp alongside the Benalla aerodrome. The starving migrant arrivals were soon offered lambs fry and mutton chops. However, hardly any of them felt that the food was to their liking. The lambs fry and chops all wandered into the rubbish bins and so it went on day after day. — We settled in well in a tiny 3×3 m room with toilet and shower facilities across the yard, shared by some 300 people. I taught English at the camp, whilst my first wife became secretary to the camp manager, a retired colonel, jokingly referred to as the camp commandant. We explored the beautiful Victorian countryside around Benalla, mostly Ned Kelly country with a teacher friend from Benalla high school.

After traveling to Sydney and Melbourne, I secured an airline job with Trans Australia Airlines (TAA),

later a part of Qantas, at the old Essendon Airport in Melbourne, where we moved in September 1961. Divorce followed a year later, as my first wife and daughter could not adjust to the initially spartan living conditions. They returned to live overseas. In 1965 I remarried an Australian girl from Perth, where we moved to in 1966. There, I worked as customer services manager for British Airways, whilst studying during my spare time to gain a BA(hon, MA and eventually PhD degree. I also undertook translations and in 1974, together with the late Carlo Stransky, OBE, (from Italy) founded the Western Australian Institute of Translators and Interpreters (WAITI), which still exists 35 years later and which lobbied the government to found a National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) on whose first board I sat and one of whose chairpersons I was to become later. In 1986 I began to embark on an academic life, teaching German and Mandarin Chinese at Edith Cowan University in Perth until retirement. In 1970, the Austrian government had appointed me as their honorary vice-consul for Western Australia, a position I still hold 40 years later. I also held positions on the Immigration Review Panel and the SAPTI (state advisory panel for translators and interpreters), as well on academic boards and committees, enjoying an eventful life until retirement.

Australia has proven to be a very positive experience for me and after some early adjustments that every migrant has to make, I came to truly love and treasure this great country, where my wife, my 4 Australian born children and 5 grandchildren also live and which has truly become my new homeland to which I long to return after every trip abroad.

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