Teaching secondary classes of non-English speaking background youth that same year I discovered that the use of Australian literature (Alan Marshall’s I Can Jump Puddles; Ronald McKie’s The Mango Tree; Colin Thiele’s The Sun on the Stubble) released an ever-increasing flood of personal stories which assisted my students towards an understanding of the issues arising from those books. Further, Ronald McKie wrote to students in one of the classes, drawing touching responses from them in reply and Colin Thiele’s Children’s Book of the Year award was greeted with the pride that comes from those who have a stake in the scene, and he was ‘their’ writer after all.

I began then the search for Australian literature which I allude to in the title. This is a journey which is never-ending, as those who have begun this pathway before me know only too well. But it is exciting and I cannot see any reason for stopping. My object in the search had broadened, an inevitability caused by expanding vision, but what remains is Australian and ‘connected’ to experience, illuminating and challenging to everyday perceptions.

That early search I concentrated around literature reflecting on the immigrant experience and /or cultural difference. Zeny Giles’ Between Two Worlds (Saturday Centre Books, 1981), Judah Waten’s Alien Son and Nancy Keesing’s Shalom collection were all early references. Then I came across The Strength of Tradition (edited by Ron Holt, UQP 1983) and amidst a number of fine stories was one in which I found certain personal resonance. ‘A Handful of Earth from Home’ was written by Andras (or Andrew) Dezsery.

The story is very brief but refers to the initial alienation common to the experience of most immigrants throughout the world and the consequent attachment to symbols of their homeland. A situation unfolds in which, ironically, a wattle seedling plays an integral and possibly healing role.

Already planning some ‘action research’, to test further my ideas in the classroom, I dropped Andrew a note pointing out my interest in his story and requesting from him any information on his current publishing output. He did more than that, he sent me copies of a number of works he had published. These included: English and Other than English Anthology in Community Languages ed. Andrew S. Dezsery, Dezsery Ethnic Publications, Adelaide, 1979; The First Step (an anthology) selected by the Multilingual Authors Association of South Australia Inc., Dezsery Ethnic Publications, Adelaide, 1982; and Neighbours (a collection of short stories from which Ron Holt took ‘A Handful of Earth from Home’) Andrew Dezsery, D.E.P., Adelaide, 1980.

This generosity introduced me to a wide range of writing from people who were not being published through the mainstream publishers. At that stage I did not realise what a problem it was for writers of non-English speaking background to gain access to the general reading public. What I did realise, however, was that Andrew was clearly a pioneer, promoting such writers by putting them into print. Not only was he publishing them in English, however, but also in their first languages, in bi-lingual and multi-lingual books.

In late August of 1983, Andrew found himself in Sydney and contacted me, arranging a meeting. It was one of those cases which you will recognise where two virtual strangers hit it off immediately. Suddenly there were so many ‘stories’ we had to tell each other, one narrative spinning off two more in response. It was very satisfying indeed. There was more to the meeting than merely stories related to our interests and concerns with publishing and teaching literature. Andrew kindly loaned me his precious copy of Aurora Australis Vol. 1 No. 4 & 5 from October, November 1951. This was the New Australian Literary, Scientific and Social Monthly published by the Hungarian Literary Society of Australia. In this particular issue Andrew had a short story published, ‘Nobody is White’, now to be found in his collection Neighbours. (It also contained, intriguingly, a piece written by Kate Baker O.B.E. about the poet John Shaw Neilson.)

Our dialogue continued, although through the post, and Andrew rewarded my interest by alerting me to his various current publication projects and fruits. In this way I received copies of Vilagmadar (poems in Hungarian) by Csepelyi Rudolf; Versem, az elet (poems in Hungarian) by Vindus Zoltan; and Bouquet of Poems/Buket Poema (bi-lingual English/Serbian) by Vlada Mancie. This last volume had special significance for me in that one of the students in the class I used for my action research was Serbian, and she thoroughly enjoyed this collection. As Community Language teaching takes its equal place within the elementary and secondary syllaguses, such publications are going to assume a very important place as objects of study. How important it is to make use of Australian materials in our educational institutions! The short history of Australia written in Hungarian by Janos Penzes and titled Szeretem e napsutotte foldet (I Love this Sunburnt Country) fits easily into this context. It was published through Dezsery Ethnic Publications in mid-1984.

Last year also saw three collections of short stories appear from his publishing house. The Male Model and other stories by Joe Abiuso; Tales of Doctor Amber (a collection of satires and humorous sketches) by Leonid Trett; and Tad Sobolewski’s Crossing the Bridges. The Foreword to Crossing the Bridges was written by Peter Lumb (Diversity & Diversion: an annotated bibliography of Australian ethnic minority literature, Lumb and Hazell, Hodja, 1983) and in it he draws attention to an aspect of our language we too often overlook:

The language of Crossing the Bridges is clearly not the English of Lawson, nor is it the English of the more contemporary Australian short story writers. At times, it is not the standard English of print. It is however Sobolewski’s English, and a form shared by many other Australians who have struggled and enriched this land with a multiplicity of words, accents, stresses and structures. As we’ve accepted new styles at last in cuisine, in cinema, in television and radio, in family structure and in other aspects of lifestyle, so too we accept that English will be stretched and beaten into a diversity of usage patterns. The shape of these patterns reflects different language groups which communicate richly and competently across many boundaries… Sobolewski’s book contributes much to a more complete and diverse literary perspective on Australian social life.

Andrew Dezsery was born in Budapest in 1920. He attended the Royal Hungarian Pazmany Peter University between 1938 and 1942, ultimately graduating with a Doctorate in Political Science and Public Administration at the ripe old age (pardon the cliche) of twenty-one. His early work was in the area of journalism but even before his arrival as an immigrant in Australia in 1949 he had been a Press Secretary and war correspondent, manufacturer of dolls, dishwasher and typist and whilst working with the United States Army, worked in the area of industrial relations. Since his arrival he has never flagged in promoting the cultural aspects of the immigrant and the ‘new’ land. It was in 1975 that he founded Dezsery Ethnic Publications specifically to put into print those writers of non-English speaking background who otherwise found opportunities all too limited.

As part of his philosophy of encouragement, Andrew early decided that he would publish the writing of talented authors, especially those dealing with the central issue of identity in the new society. He doesn’t limit his support only to publication and tireless promotion, however. At last year’s Arts Festival in Adelaide, during Writers’ Week, he joined in quite actively by reading to school children. He is also most excited by the appearance on the literary scene of the new journal Outrider (twice a year: P.O. Box 210 Indooroopilly, Qld 4068, S10) which is genuine evidence that a lot of his early pioneering groundwork (as well as that, too, of Patricia Laird and the Saturday Centre of Prose and Poetry in Sydney) is beginning to bear fruit.

As a teacher, I find it difficult to move away from an evaluation which does not deal with application in the classroom. My interest in Australian Literature is restricted to that which I know will enhance either the English language learning of my clients or which adds to our appreciation as Australians of the diversity of cultures in our society and of what the experience of being an immigrant or culturally different might suggest. Andrew writes in his first language which is Hungarian. He was twenty-eight before he arrived in Australia and before he had had much contact with English. Like many people in a similar situation, he has his work translated. Most of his writing has been translated by Victor de Stankovich, an element in the process which is responsible for a touch of linguistic intrigue. The mystery about why certain words in the translated stories seemed slightly out of place in the Australian context was cleared up when Andrew informed me that Victor de Stankovich had never been to Australia; indeed, he lives at Versailles. This may also be a footnote to the comment on Andrew’s translation made by Wilton and Bosworth in their recently published work Old Worlds and New Australia (Penguin 1984 p.135).

In August of 1984, I attended the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (A.A.T.E.) annual conference in Adelaide. Andrew had told me about it early in the year at a time when I thought I had no hope of being able to go. The conference itself was excellent value, but the added bonus was in being met at the airport by Andrew, being taken to a Hungarian restaurant for lunch, and being taken to his home to see for myself the Hungarian Room described so well in the story ‘A Handful of Earth from Home’!

To readers who are interested in exploring further some of the issues I have outlined might I suggest that they avail themselves of the works to which I have referred and my best wishes go with them in this exciting journey.