My first two years in Australia and my residency from 1965 to 1967 in Barton House, a privately-run boarding house in Canberra a short distance from where now stands Parliament House, were my most character-forming.
Those were the days of parties, of evenings in front of the then black-and-white telly in the TV Room watching "Z-Car" or "M*A*S*H", laughing at the antics of Agent 99 and Maxwell Smart in "Get Smart" ("Good thinking, 99" was a favourite saying); or being bored to death by Barry Jones' insufferable show-off act on Bob and Dolly's BP Pick-a-Box.
And then there were the evenings spent at the Burns Club or in the Newsroom of the "Wello" Pub across the road, drinking 'schooners' and talking about 'sheilas', followed by a last-minute dash back to Barton House before the dining room closed! And Sunday morning, sitting on the frontsteps with the boys, recovering from the night before, while waiting for the week's washing to run through its cycle in the laundry.
All that 'socialising', cheap as it was, made a big hole in the small pay-packet I received once a fortnight from my employers, the ANZ Bank. Peter Chek, the manager of Barton House, would wait for us at the front office on payday to be the first to lay claim to our money for the boarding-house fees before we had a chance to spend it elsewhere.
He wasn't always successful and on several occasions I fell into arrears, but he trusted me and patiently gave me time to catch up. I knew nothing about this man other than that he managed the boarding-house and also ran a "self-defence academy" somewhere in the city.
Only now, in retirement and during a casual search of the internet, have I learned about Peter Chek's own chequered and difficult life which may explain why he was so patient with us battling young "Bank Johnnies".
According to an article from the Australian Martial Arts Hall of Fame, Albert Peter Chek was born on 9th July 1925 as son of a Ukrainian Russian living in France. He became a prisoner of the German army in 1941 and was sent to work in a concentration camp near Berlin.
After 18 months of incarceration, and one failed escape attempt, he made another attempt, knowing that if unsuccessful it would be his last. In the midst of an oppressive winter after dodging bullets and grenades, and being literally hunted by soldiers and dogs, he hid beneath the carriage of a goods train. When the train finally stopped, many hours later, weak, cold and hungry, he ventured from the semi-sanctity of the train to discover that he had arrived in Munich in the heart of Germany.
Though fluent in French and Russian, his German was not polished enough to pass as a local. Stranded and without identity papers, he wandered the war-torn streets posing as a lost and disorientated orphan that spoke a dialect of German. Possibly by chance or just through sheer good luck, a German soldier who had recently returned from the Russian front took him in.
Provided with this new identity, he lived this way for several years, until he was recognised by a soldier stationed at the work camp from which he had escaped. Again on the run, he remained so until the end of the war. Following the war, he returned to Paris where in 1947, at only 22 years of age, he won a coveted medal in jujitsu, after which he was sponsored by the French Army, for whom he was an unarmed-combat instructor to the elite paratroopers, to travel to Japan and train at the prestigious home of Judo, the Kodokan.
Following an 18-month stay in Japan, he travelled to America, where he lived in New Orleans for almost a year. During this period he also visited Panama City and Colombia where he taught and trained.
In 1950, he arrived in Australia as migrant and worked in a range of jobs including farmhand, chef, and martial arts instructor until 1953. Then he left the mainland for a better job in Tasmania, where he settled and in 1956 began the first-ever school of Judo and Ju-jitsu, known as the "Shihan Check Academy", based at the Sandy Bay Rowing Club in Hobart.
And the article continues, "Between 1964-67 he travelled throughout NSW and Qld before finally settling down in Canberra where he worked as a Government-employed Photographer. He also taught Ju-jitsu and Judo at the local Police Boys clubs as a master-level instructor. It was also in Canberra that he met and married his lovely wife Julie."
I don't know about him being employed as photographer but those were certainly the years when he managed Barton House where he lived on top of the stairs (with "his lovely wife Julie" who used to work for MBF in the city), took his meals at the front of the dining room (with "his lovely wife Julie"), and was always on duty to keep order and the noise down in what was often a fairly rowdy place, but especially on pay-nights.
In 1968 they both moved to Darwin where he managed a government hostel and later a hotel/nightclub. He also taught Judo and self-defense to Northern Territory Police recruits. In 1971 they both returned to Canberra, where he managed public service accommodation hostels before becoming a government press photographer.
In 1981 he was given a Civic Award by the then Governor of Australia, His Excellency Sir Zelman Cowen, for his dedication and tireless work in the interests of the community as a martial arts instructor and member of the community. In 1994, he and Julie moved to Western Australia. He died in 2007 at the age of 82.
When I first read this truly amazing story of this unassuming man whom we used to call "Frenchie" to his face without ever knowing anything about his life, I couldn't believe it but when I saw the old sepia-coloured photo in the article I recognised him immediately. The eyes had it!
