On Tuesday, 20th July 2010, Zbigniew Jerzy Sudull, known not only in Brisbane, but nationwide and beyond, departed for eternal rest. Zbigniew was known by several names: Zbyszek, George, Pa and Daddy.

George was born on 16th of July 1928 in the town of Jaslowce in the province of Wolyn, the son of Maria and Jan and brother of Romka. He lived uneventfully for 11 years but then things changed dramatically for the worse as both the Soviets and the Germans occupied his country.

When the Germans staged a round-up of Poles, George became a victim of it – herded onto a cattle train. At this time his father was a Prisoner-Of-War and his older sister had been deported to Germany 2 years earlier so his mother was left behind alone. In desperation she ran along beside the train, crying out, “Zbyszek, Zbyszek!”. Hearing his mother’s voice, he approached the door of the wagon and his mother jumped in. They were transported to Germany for forced labour. Unfortunately, to their despair, they were separated as his mother was taken to Holland to work on the land and George was taken to Osnabruck to a steel foundry to do the hardest labour – a year of shifting molten blocks of metal for munitions factories. The staple diet there was turnip, one of the very few foods George could not abide until the day he died.

List kondolencyjny Konsula Generalnego Daniela Gromanna

In 1945, he was liberated by American commandos and almost immediately the allies started to organise the Displaced Persons camps where George spent the next 5 years. It was here that George met Frank Rutyna. Frank recalls the volleyball field that was always used by students in study-free time. The Polish game leader was a skinny, very tall young man with glasses who always took up the position near the net, and without much effort or jumping, fired goals into the opposing field. His name was Zbyszek Sudull. Frank has many pleasant memories of meeting up with George in the common kitchen that the schools shared and the two often recalled those times here when together here in Brisbane.

In 1950 George was part of the large groups of migrants who came to Australia under 2-year contracts. The prospect of Australia was what George referred to as a kind of “paradise” - far away from a war-torn Europe with warm sunshine most days of the year. George arrived in Newcastle in February 1950 and was transported by train to a migrant transit camp at Greta which became well known in the film, ‘The Silver City’. He used to say that the accommodation was fairly basic, but after five years in various D.P. camps it must have been comparative luxury. After one month in Greta, many young men including George were driven to Maitland railway station on their way to work on the railways in western Queensland. Here they were introduced to what they were told was cold fruit juice which they drank eagerly in the hot summer. Later they found out it was 'Australian ‘plonk’. After a ‘plonk-filled hour’, the totally ‘legless group’ eventually ended up in Wallal west of Charleville. There George commenced his first Australian career as a fettler. Frank recalls him telling about his work there after a surprising reunion at the dance hall in Woolloongabba where that tall volleyball player whom he remembered from Germany suddenly appeared one evening.

In 1951 my father’s eyesight was considered not good enough to continue work as a fettler and he was sent to Brisbane where he was employed loading heavy cement pipes onto railway wagons. One day he was requested to translate what one of his non-English speaking workmates had said to the foreman. George’s accurate translation of the lurid expression earned him the sack. As he was still on a government contract, he had to find other work. Due to some basic design knowledge, gained after the War, he was sent to an office, placed at a high desk, handed a plan of a school building and instructed to draft plans for a new classroom. Before the end of the day, he was called to the manager’s office and informed that he could keep the job on the condition that he study architecture. Astonished, George accepted that proposition and started to prepare himself for the senior examination, as his Polish matriculation was deemed unacceptable. 1951 was a fateful year. It was the same year that, Patricia Ryan moved from Rockhampton to South Brisbane.

Patricia noticed a tall, interesting-looking bloke entering the church for Polish Mass at St Mary’s in South Brisbane after the 9 o’clock English Mass. She had also spotted him during office lunchtimes in the city. “Wow!” she thought. They met and gradually became good friends but in the meantime George was persuaded by his friend Bolek in Sydney to pack up and head south to obtain his architecture qualification at the University of New South Wales. So began a long-distance courtship for George and Pat … or as he always called her, “Kitty”.

They married in 1958 at her parish, St Finbarr’s Church in Ashgrove. Their married life began in Sydney and George graduated in 1960. In 1962 with two babies, Mary and Thomas, they returned to Brisbane. Here the president of the Polish Association, Ted Stellmach, was planning for a new club house as a monument to Poland’s Millennium of Christianity in 1966. Ted invited the young Polish architect to discuss his plan. George was reluctant not just because it was a daunting task. He had a full-time job with the Department of Public Works, a young wife and expanding family. He finally accepted after encouragement from Pat. After a short time, the architect put his initial drawings and approximate costs before the committee. They gasped, but the president stood hard by his dream of a new Polish Club. And so, George started the plans and Ted and the Polish community, with determined effort, gathered money for the project.

Meanwhile two more daughters Julia and Monika had arrived in the Ashgrove household. In 1968, thanks to the honorary architect, his honorary typist wife, and heroic efforts of the Polish community, Dom Polski as the Polish Club is known, was opened with great celebration. After the official opening and blessing of the building, Ted believed that his dream had become real, resigned from the committee and Frank became president. Frank asked George to become first vice-president. He did so and with a loan from the Fourex Brewery, George started to plan the unfinished upper floor of the Polish Club. A well-equipped club with a liquor licence, Polonia began to prosper quite well and not only help Polish organisations, but occasionally support some Australian institutions. Incredibly amidst all of this activity I arrived.

During George’s 10 years as Vice-President and then as President of Polonia, many fruitful outcomes were achieved for the Polish Club. George’s proudest moment as president was in 1973 when he welcomed the visiting Cardinal from Krakow, Karol Wojtyla who went on to become Pope John Paul the second.

Polonia became a member of Australian and Ethnic Organisations such as the Captive Nations, Good Neighbour Council, Ethnic Council, and others, where George was a member or chairman. When the Ethnic Radio station, 4EB was formed in the late 1970s, George represented the Polish Association and was the Polish program manager. He eventually became the chairman of 4EB for several years (all these in an honorary capacity). George also became a member of the Federal Council of Polish Organisation in Australia and New Zealand and a member and spokesman of the National Ethnic Broadcasting Corporation. He was later the spokesman for the SPK (the Polish RSL). For many years he represented the Polish National Association of which he was very proud. He was a committee member of SWARA. His latest membership was that of Polonia’s Welfare Fund.

For his contribution to the Polish community, the General Meeting of all members awarded him the Honorary Life Membership and the Golden Members’ Badge. In 1984, for his contribution to the Polish community and communities at large, he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal. The President of the Polish Republic bestowed upon him the Polonia Restituta Cross.

When interviewed by the Polish Bulletin newspaper, the editor asked him about his hobbies. George told about his extensive recorded music collection of various Polish and other famous musicians, in particular orchestral works such as symphonies. His final words in the interview were: “This music strengthens my belief in God”. George was a man of great faith. He was a great lover of music. Indeed his preferred career would have been to be an orchestral conductor. The family remembers many times when he would be in his little haven downstairs, his study, vigorously conducting a particularly loud piece of music from his stereo to the ire of his neighbours.

George was a compassionate and considerate man who did so much for others. It’s simply impossible to list everything he did in this regard.

He was a fine public speaker, whether delivering something meticulously researched or impromptu. At my own wedding he brought the house down with his speech – he could be so funny! His presence, wit and intellect left lasting impressions on those who met him.

He enjoyed several trips back to his beloved homeland Poland. In 1992, two months before his mother’s death in Brisbane, George completed a pilgrimage to Czestchowa, the one which she had pledged to do for him when he was a young child, sick and near death but was never able to fulfil. During one of his final visits, in more recent years, he made the journey to his hometown which is now part of the Ukraine, where unbelievably he was recognised by an elderly neighbour who last saw him in 1944.

We are incredibly proud of this humble man, and as his family and close friends will know, that despite all of his achievements and all of this recognition… right at this moment he would be saying, “Aww, CUT IT OUT!”.

Many people know his more public persona, but we remember Daddy in the family home: sitting in his chair, typically with a Diet Coke in hand, in the backroom in front of the television either watching British shows (many know that the sacred hour was 8.30 on Saturday night for “The Bill”), or speaking on the phone in English or Polish. And he really enjoyed speaking with many on the phone. So, here we have a proud Pole and Australian … but he was also much of an Anglophile.

In the words of Cardinal John Henry Newman from whom George drew great inspiration: "May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last!"

And to use a Polish expression: May the Australian soil rest lightly upon him.

Vale great man…son, brother, displaced person, refugee, fettler, student, architect, music-lover, gentleman and scholar, author, man of faith, Polish patriot, Australian, mentor … but above all, loving husband and father.

God Bless you, Daddy. Rest in peace.

Romka Sudull (27 July 2010)

Petersen, D. (1984) The Courier Mail: It’s been a long and adventurous road for George Sudull – From Nazi camps to Govt House …

From Nazi camps to Govt House