Pauline Nguyen

But our prayers were not always answered.

Ship after ship after ship ignored our SOS, the most basic code of the sea.

And at gunpoint, a group of Malaysian soldiers pushed us off supposedly friendly shores.

We ended up in Thailand where we spent a very difficult year and in 1978, Australia finally accepted us.

The government housed us at Westbridge Migrant Hostel and my father quickly found a job working on the production line at the Sunbeam factory in Campsie.

Sunbeam gave him the graveyard shift from 2pm to 2am and they gave him all the jobs that nobody wanted.

The train ride home was the worst, my father would later tell me.

Every night was dangerous for him.

The locals threatened to beat him.

and the bigots threatened to kill him.

My father cried every day going home on that train.

A lot of us cried in those days.

We came into this new world with nothing.

Nothing.

No job, no house, no money.

We didn't know the laws, the systems or the language.

My father had nightmares.

And it's the same dream over and over.

He's back in Vietnam.

He's preparing for our escape.