“Multiculturalism” — if there is such a thing — ought to end with the first-generation immigrant. The only honest alternative is to depart.
I came to this wonderful country from Hungary, fleeing my homeland one jump ahead of the Russians. Cricket, inedible bread, the bizarre ‘football’ codes — they were the negatives but didn’t amount to much cause for complaint. Australia, though, how much do I love you?
All the current controversy concerning immigration, multiculturalism and integration stirred in me a compulsion to share my firsthand experience with all and sundry. Having set foot on Australian soil just over 60 years ago as an unaccompanied 17-year-old refugee without a word of English should suffice as my qualification to do so.
When the Red Army of the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian anti-communist revolution in the European autumn of 1956, tens of thousands of us fled to Austria, the only non-communist country bordering my homeland. As I was leaving, my wonderful father, with tears in his eyes, put his hands over my head in a gesture of blessing and after a brief pause said, “Go to Australia, it’s a young country”. I remain forever grateful for that propitious advice. He passed away some years ago, as did my mother, but both very much alive when I and my young family visited and stayed with them for nine months in 1971.
Having grown up under the brutal oppression of Soviet communism, I was woefully ignorant of the world at large. Even now it is difficult for me to recall that I didn’t know English was the language of the country I would make my new home until I was aboard the ship bringing me here. My introduction came in the language classes for beginners offered to us by Australian immigration officers. The only non-Communist history I had been taught was a bit of ancient history, a little about the French Revolution and some Hungarian history. The rest was all about the glorious Soviet Union. I realised only later, a little at a time, just how extremely ignorant I had been. I continue realising it to this day.
I can’t recall a single unpleasant experience after disembarking in Melbourne on the February 10, 1957, but it sure was a strange place. Nice and good but strange in myriad of ways, and some things were outright wrong. Nothing serious, mind you, more in the way of being amusing, although occasionally annoying and frustrating.
Like most New Australians – a very proper and fashionable term at the time – most of my social life for the first few years was within the expatriate community, in my case Adelaide’s, where I ended up courtesy of family friends already established there. I spent some time at the Bonegilla immigration camp and picking grapes in New South Wales, later boarding with Hungarian families, working for a Hungarian boss, playing in a Hungarian basketball team, barracking for my Hungarian soccer team and dancing at the annual Hungarian ball.
Even though we were happy and satisfied in our new country, amongst the favourite pastimes of the Hungarian fraternity was knocking Australia and Australians. Not in a viscous, nasty manner, just ridiculing their ways. Rugby, the carrying of an elongated ball under the arm and kicking it only occasionally yet calling it “football”, was the most hilariously ridiculous of all. Football was played primarily with the feet and the ball was round. All sensible people knew that! As for golf, the hitting of a tiny white ball, then walking after it in order to hit it again, was absolutely barmy. We called golfers the harmlessly insane. (Golf had been designated a degenerate pastime of the bourgeois by the Comrades). As for cricket, the inanity of that was beyond comprehension.
And, oh, the short-back-and-sides haircut! Wasn’t that risible? We only went to European barbers who knew how to cut hair properly. As for bread, you could have any sort as long as it was a white tank loaf inedible after 24 hours. No wonder it had to be freshly delivered every day. We got our bread, Vienna loaves, as well as many other food items, from the handful of specialty delicatessens selling “continental food”. The cuisine at the boarding house was strictly Hungarian, no greasy lamb and mutton for us. And we drank wine with dinner, supplied by a Hungarian wine merchant who home-delivered it in flagons. Australians called it “plonk” and considered it fit only for winos who then slept it off in the park. There was also the matter of imperial measurements and currency, topped off by traffic running on the wrong side of the road. Need I go on? I could, but no need. Suffice to say that Australia was a good country with good people who had an awful lot of strange ways about them. They had a lot to learn and we were here to teach them.