I was born on 1st of April 1937, on a day when the midwife had so many prank calls that she thought my birth was also a non-event. Regardless, I was born and lived my early years in Transylvania which at that time belonged to Hungary. Towards the end of WW2 my father was elected as a member of parliament in Budapest, representing Transylvania, and he was away from the family for days on end. During the cold winter of 1944, the Russian army was progressing in the direction of our town. One night we could already hear in the distance the noise of the battles, the blasts of the cannons, when an army- truck stopped in front of our house. The driver jumped out and told my mother that my father had sent him and that she should grab my sister and I and be ready in 5 minutes to escape ahead of the Russian invasion. In the middle of the night we left our house and never returned.
Cutting a long story short, my father caught up with us and in the next many months we tracked our way through the length of Hungary and Austria by various means of transportation, like horse drawn carriages, cattle trains and trucks, and finally ended up as refugees in Germany. We lived in Bavaria for a couple of years where I started school. Then we moved to another town in the Black Forest where my father found a job. In 1950 we got our permit to migrate to Australia. We had to board a cargo ship on which men and women dormitories were separated. My father and I were in a room shared with 50 other men. We arrived in Melbourne in January 1951. The hardship continued for many months at the Bonegilla refugee camp, then 4 more years at the Benalla immigration centre.
Finally my parents could afford to rent a house in Melbourne where I finished my studies at Camberwell High. My hobby was photography. I got my first job with Kodak in the company’s photo production department. After a couple of years I went to work for OPSM and I managed their first and only camera shop they ever opened in Melbourne. A year later I joined the large American photographic company, Bell & Howell, importers of the Nikon, Ricoh and Mamiya range of photographic products. After a couple of years I was appointed the Victorian and Tasmanian sales manager. I enjoyed the travelling lifestyle, met many interesting people and won a few sales competitions in the business.
In the mid - 1960s I opened my own photo studio and camera shop in Toronga Village shopping centre, next door to the Toorak Drive-In. I was photographing for business advertising, weddings and all kinds of special events and celebrities in Melbourne. Some very memorable ones were the Jackson Five when Michael Jackson and his siblings were still children; The Seekers, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Betty Hutton, Yvonne de Carlo and Cid Cherise. As my friend was the then president of the Collingwood Football Club I became the official photographer for the club and often found myself in hot water with friends who were staunch Hawthorn supporters.
In the second half of the 70s my parents decided to move to Queensland for health reasons. I was tempted to move with them so I sold my business in 1978 and the three of us moved to the Sunshine Coast, to Noosa and Maroochydore. We were looking for a new venture up and down the Coasts. My father in the meanwhile established the Hungarian Association of the Sunshine Coast. At our first function I met a lovely young lady from Gympie, Agnes, who was the district physical education teacher there. We lost touch but many years later we met up again on the Gold Coast and finally married.
While travelling through Surfers Paradise at the end of 1979 a small motel/ apartment business came up for sale, the Admiral Motor Inn, on the Gold Coast Hwy. I ended up buying it and we moved to the Gold Coast. The competition was fierce amongst the many small motels and it was an on-going challenge to operate. However it gave me the appetite to look for some bigger venture.
After 2 years I heard that Ipswich badly needed better class motel accommodations. I sold the Admiral in 1981 and went to Ipswich to investigate the possibilities. As there were only 3-4 small motels in town I decided to build my own. I had to buy up several houses in a row on one of the main roads, Warwick Road, where I built the Ipswich Heritage Motor Inn with a large restaurant.
In years to come the place was better known as ‘Frank’s motel’. There was never any shortage of clientele which was supplied by Australia’s largest Air-Force base, Amberley. During the following decade I had many distinguished guests staying at my motel, including Gough and Margaret Whitlam, Sir Joh Bjelke-Peterson, Khamal, etc…. However, the best thing I did was to join the Rotary Club of Ipswich and made many good friends there which I still have to this day.
I sold my motel in Ipswich and retired to the Gold Coast in 1996 and joined the Surfers Paradise Rotary Club. In 2002 with many other Rotarian friends we transferred to the Broadbeach Rotary Club.
In 2004 I suffered a massive stroke while on a holiday with my wife in Bangkok. I was paralysed on the left side and could not move at all. We were stranded for a month in, what turned out to be the best hospital in Asia, the Bumrungrad Hospital. If it wasn’t for the phenomenal care of the doctors and nurses and the love and devotion of my good wife, I wouldn’t be around today. Since then I made a reasonable recovery and am lucky to cruise along with some disability. Though my health is up and down I am still enjoying the fellowship of the wonderful Rotary Club of Broadbeach.
