Hung

This year it will be twenty-three years since I arrived in Australia after fleeing Vietnam with my family.

In Vietnam my father and mother owned and ran a grocery store. The store was passed on from my grandfather who was from China. He moved to Vietnam with my grandmother early this century. We lived in a villa in a small town about 300 km south of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in the province of Ca Mau.

After the end of the Vietnam war in 1975 things become very difficult for my family.1979 was a turbulent year as Vietnam had fought a war with China and had occupied Cambodia to expel the Khmer Rouge Communists. My parents were therefore very worried that their sons would eventually be conscripted in the army and possibly be killed.

My parents therefore decided that the family had to leave Vietnam and try to start a better live elsewhere.

My father paid a large amount of gold to secure places in a boat to escape Vietnam which include eight children, plus my mother who was 71/2 months pregnant.

We squeezed on board a 23metre wooden vessel with 300 others. The journey from Vietnam to Malaysia was horrific. We had to encounter seven separate pirates who attacked our boat. They took everything they could find. This include jewellery and gold. A number of women on our boat were badly mistreated by these pirates who were mostly Thai fishermen.

Eventually after 6 days and 6 nights in the South China Sea we landed in Malaysia. The boat got as close to the coast as possible but we all had to jumped overboard and swim to shore.We were pushed up from the beach by the Malaysian police and taken to a refugee camp where we lived for about four weeks.

Fortunately for us, we were granted permission to come to Australia. Two weeks later my younger brother was born.

We arrived in Australia in winter(June) and coming from a tropical country it was too damn cold for us.

We first had to stay in a hostel in Fairy Meadow south of Wollongong, where most of our fellow countrymen who had recently arrived in Australia as refugees.

Dad’s first job in Australia was as a cleaner in Port Kembla Steel Works as were most of the men coming from my country. That is all they could do at that time, but as their English improved they thrived in small businesses.

As for me. I arrived in Australia when I was only 10 years of age. I went to a public school where most refugee kids go to excell in our English. Because my English is much better than my mother’s tongue, I consider my-self more Australian than Vietnamese. I now consider myself an Aust-Viet, although I will never forget my origins.

written by Hung Thich Trieu