She has also earned plaudits galore for efforts in drawing attention to the life-threatening effects in Australia of the sun's rays on the skin.

Opting for Australia because it was 'so far from Russia', Judit and her mother were held in a camp until it was their turn to board an old US troop carrier loaned to the UN to ferry refugees to new lands and new hopes.

The voyage was full of foreboding for the young girl who now recalls: "My mother was sick in the hospital. I was this little kid, on my own, learning English for the new country."

First impressions of Australia were a far cry from our expectations after escaping post-war Europe. The reality of land in Australia in the 1950s was stark, traumatic and very, very lonely.

Judit is one of a generation of immigrants now enjoying great success in Australia on their own terms and openly celebrating their cultural identities.

And she is one of 50 Australians whose inspirational lives are chronicled in A Fair Go Portraits of the Australian Dream (Focus Publishing) by well-known author and businesswoman Wendy McCarthy.

The book was penned to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Australian Citizenship. Until the Nationality and Citizenship Act came into being Australians were solely British subjects without separate Australian status.

McCarthy says A Fair Go celebrates Australian Citizenship through the "voices and experiences" of a selection of migrants who subsequently became Australian citizens.

Others include broadcaster Caroline Baum, boxer Kostya Tszyu, winemaker Wolf Blass, artist Judy Cassab, businessman Sir Arvi Parbo, author Ariene Chai, politician Petro Georgiou, design Akira Isogawa, journalist Dai Le, several times Businessman of the Year and tireless charity worker Paul Simons and the Honorable Jim Spigelman QC, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of NSW.

"A 'fair go' is what we all expect" says former NSW Premier Neville Wran, but explains that the achievements of these 50 great Australians illustrate "that a fair go is all we need."

Judit's story is a triumph of fortitude and vision. Even on the ship to Australia she observed that the women refugees didn't possess much, but they still managed their facials.

"It was a situation of a mismatched bunch of people, from scientists to linguists to opera singers to labourers and all the women were having facials with butter, eggs and honey that the American sailors had in abundance.

"They were in a situation where they didn't know whether they would be alive tomorrow, yet they wanted silk stockings, they wanted lipstick, they wanted perfume, they wanted face creams." Judit paid her way through school by working in a pharmacy, a period during which she developed a fascination for lipsticks, perfumes and beauty treatments generally.

She headed to Sydney to study dentistry, mixed up the enrollment date and decided on a profession of beauty care.

Experimenting. Expanding. Half the population was her market, when it was all said and done, yet Judit considers her greatest professional achievement to be increasing awareness to damage done to skin under the unforgiving Australian sun.

"In some ways I have made people aware of skin care,' she says in A Fair Go." It's not just something frivolous, it's something important that has proved to be so right with the number of melanomas detected in Australia. The statistics far outweigh those in other countries."

She is also proud that her Madame Korner operation trains staff and generates considerable employment, but adds, "Australia was the country that did it all for me."

As Madame Korner gave the industry the makeover it had been needing for some time, the temptation was there for Judit to take the enterprises to the world.

Judit Korner is one proud Aussie. Her passport to freedom didn't come cheaply or easily. There were the clandestine train rides, and slogging through ploughed fields of snow.

"I became an Australian a long, long time ago," she says. "They didn't make too much fanfare at the time, but now they have fandangos on Australia Day, which I think is really welcoming."

"I was stateless, I was a refugee. It was not a question of 'shall I give up my citizenship?' I became an Australian wholeheartedly."

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