Bethlen Naptár, 1958 (Ligonier)
Highlights in Hungarian Life…
BETHLEN NAPTÁR 245 AUSTRALIA -HISTORY OF THE HUNGARIAN REFORMED FELLOWSHIP OF PERTH One rainy afternoon in May of 1952 an old man alighted from the Melbourne train. As he looked about he saw a man in clerical attire approach. He asked, “Mr. St. Allan?” The old man nodded. They began to speak to one another, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Western Australia and Nicholas Csintalan, the pastor of the Hungarian Protestants of Perth. He asked, “Where are my Hungarians?” But the Hugarians weren’t anywhere. They were scattered about in a city of more than 400,000 people. Emigrants to Australia had nowhere to turn or seek advice. Although emigrants had entered Australia following the failure of the Kossuth led revolt in the last century, they had become assimilated and only Hungarian names in the phone book testified to their owners’ national origin. According to tradition these early emigrants began the great cattle and chicken raising industries of Australia. This emigration disappeared because it was never aided by later waves. The mass of Hungarians went to the United States where churches and clubs and schools soon bore witness to their numbers. But here in Australia only weary workers and some adventurers found homes. Nicholas Csintalan Csanádi was one of them. He had left Aranyos in Komárom county some fifty years before. In New York he studied his father’s profession, teaching. Then he served as a miner in Chile and as a sailor visited the islands of the Pacific Ocean. But when he saw the English shores he remembered his older brother’s words, “You will return home like the prodigal.” And he got on another ship and went to the furthermost place, Australia. He remained there. His soul longed more and more for God who was his only refuge. He became pastor of a small rural congregation in New South Wales. He got married. During the first World War he was interned as an enemy alien. When he was released he was once again alone, his family had deserted him. The lonely man sought even more solitude, he went to the uninhabited edge of Queensland where he found his place among the odd sea creatures, huge turtles and sea shells. And God. He spent six years in solitude, studying the secrets of the sea. When he had filled a few trunks he applied at the Cultural Ministry in Victoria. He took his little museum from school to school, telling the children he loved so dearly of the secrets of life. And on one occasion in a school a child spoke to him in Hungarian.
