A Canberra man has been awarded Austria's highest national honour.
Canberra travel agent owner and retired diplomat Dr Claus Dirnberger has been of service to the Austrian heads of mission and Austrian embassy in the national capital for decades, with the mission also serving New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
But the award - the Decoration of Honour in Gold for services to the Republic of Austria - was also in recognition of his recent efforts, literally working side by side Austrian Ambassador Wolfgang Strohmayer in Canberra to get hundreds of stranded Austrian nationals and other Europeans across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands on repatriation flights back home as countries started to lock down in the the face of the then unfolding coronavirus pandemic, back in March 2020.
A dual citizen of Austria and Australia Dr Dirnberger, 63, now retired but still an owner of the Civic Travel Service agency, worked pro bono for weeks to unravel the logistical nightmare of getting the Austrians home in the face of different travel restrictions across countries and across the states and territories of Australia.
Some of the Austrians who needed to get home were exchange students, some as young as 13, and old and vulnerable people on medication, who had been on holiday. Host family parents in New Zealand were not even allowed to drive their exchange student to the airport, which presented another challenge to be organised from Canberra, getting them all to the right place at the right time.
"The Austrian government organised two repatriation flights, one from Australia and one from New Zealand," Mr Strohmayer said.
Austrians across the Pacific had to be brought to Sydney, Auckland or Christchurch to catch their flights home while those scattered across Australia had to be brought to Sydney to catch their flights.
"In one instance, people in Fiji could only get back via New Zealand, but the only connecting flights had a difference of 12 hours and five minutes and the law said they could only stay [in New Zealand] for 12 hours and they did not get an exemption for the five minutes, so we had to find another way to deal with it," Dr Dirnberger said.
Dr Dirnberger and Mr Strohmayer managed the crisis from the ambassador's residence in Forrest.
"I installed him with all his laptops on the conference table in my office so on the one side he was sitting and on the other side was me. For three weeks, we were operating. He just wanted to help," the ambassador said.
Dr Dirnberger, of Fadden, first came to Australia from his homeland Austria in 1981 on holiday. In 1984, he received a scholarship to study at the Australian National University and eventually migrated in 1986.
The attraction was simple.
"Quality of life. That's it in three words," he said.
He was a diplomat with Foreign Affairs and Trade for 25 years. As director of Civic Travel Service in Canberra, he advised on and organised the Austrian Embassy's travel to the Pacific Island countries, where transport links are scarce and expensive.
Dr Dirnberger, who has a son Markus, 26, was humble in accepting the honour from the ambassador at a ceremony on Friday.
"I didn't expect to get it. I like to help people and I like to do it pro bono, I don't care, as long as it's useful," he said.
