Australia: A Seventy-Year Love Affair: From Hungary to Australia, from Post-War Refugee to Patriotic Australian

The twelfth of January 2021 was the 70th anniversary of Susan Bardy’s arrival in Melbourne - when she first stepped on Australian soil. Her years in Australia have been a ‘70-year love affair’! In this book she explains why.

This is an honest but loving story of how, after losing her Hungarian national identity and becoming a refugee in Austria, Australia was the country that became her helper, uncoverer of latent abilities and a precious homeland.

World War Two refugee stories have common threads of escaping invading armies, death and deprivation, with eventual escape to a new country. While Susan’s family also experienced the horror of that war, her story concentrates on positive aspects. It is told from her memories and her childhood diary, and concentrates on building a new life. Arriving as a young woman in Melbourne, initially separated from her family, she was given the opportunity to start a nursing career that lasted nearly fifty years. Marriage, children, marathon running and academic study packed her life in Australia.

Boarding the ship Hellenic Prince in Naples in 1951 proved to be a momentous decision.