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By Al Turley
September 15 will mark the completion of Susan Hudak’s 55th year as Myer Doncaster’s longest-serving employee. And she’s not finished yet.
Susan was one of about 500 people who began work at Shoppingtown, as Westfield Doncaster was then known, on September 15, 1969, two weeks before its official opening on September 30. Though she will be 90 in December, Susan is still employed full-time.
When the Centre opened, there was no shopping on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, so Susan worked a 5 ½ day week. She was first employed in the delicatessen section, cooking chicken and chips for takeaway lunches, and after about ten years, when that section closed, she assisted in the fresh produce department. Always willing to tackle any job, today she helps in the stock room sorting incoming goods and delivering them to the appropriate departments.
As with many European families, Susan, her sister, and her parents had difficult times during World War II and its aftermath. At the war’s end, her Hungarian stepfather and Serbian mother found themselves with their children in Bremen, Germany.
One of Susan’s most memorable events from that time was the visit of a Canadian army doctor with Hungarian ancestry who, when her sister fell ill, could communicate with her stepfather. The doctor performed an adenoidectomy, which Susan says saved her sister’s life.
In 1948, as was often the case in those days, the family was split up so her stepfather could come to Tasmania to work. At age 14, Susan and the rest of the family sailed from Italy, arriving in Australia in June 1949. They were housed in an immigrant camp in Bonegilla, Victoria. She later found work at a cotton mill in Melbourne’s west.
In 1968, she and her husband and two children settled in Doncaster East. Within a year, Susan was employed by Myer, which offered her a more interesting job closer to home. Today, Susan has six grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
Susan is now busy making plans for her 90th birthday on December 6, which she will celebrate in Bremen. She says she will also visit her grandmother’s grave in that city. Since she is the last of her generation in the family, she has had an ongoing arrangement for someone in Bremen to care for her grandmother’s burial site.
On her trip, she will also visit Singapore, Las Vegas, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California, where she will meet the comic character Goofy. She is so confident in her abilities that she will be travelling alone.
Susan has generally maintained good health, her only setback being the implant of a stent in an artery in 2018. But nothing is going to stop Susan. She has already booked her overseas flights.
