Refuge #43 Fifty People in Stowage

Iranian refugees Maryam and Benham boarded a crowded cockroach-infested boat. Their people smuggler told them that they would reach Australia in 3 days.

Don’t let headlines kill the welcome

In The Australian last weekend, journalist Paige Taylor described the gradual hardening of her heart. She wrote of baby Abul flushed from a baby-carrier strapped to his mother...

Interview with Blackwood Circle of Friends convenor: Tricia Rushton

Last week, I spoke to Tricia Rushton, the current convenor of the Blackwood Circle of Friends, a support group for refugees and asylum seekers. The Circle of Friends was...

Mothers and Sons

Tomorrow morning, I shall bid my seventeen-year-old son farewell as he travels to another city to begin his undergraduate studies. These past weeks, as friends have learnt of...

Seeing life through the lens of death

Since moving away in 2001, I have returned to Malaysia and Singapore each year to spend time with family. As the years passed, I have noticed loved ones growing old, often...

Foreign workers, foreign languages

Each time I return to Malaysia, I eat dim sum, or as it’s known in Australia, yum cha. Pushing trolleys of bamboo steamers and plastic plates, waiters and waitresses...

Harmony Day Celebrations

Last Sunday, at the Migration Museum in Adelaide, Anette and Zaid demonstrated how to make Injera, an Eritrean/Ethiopian flatbread. They have kindly agreed to share...

Ancient civilisations meet

When I drove across Adelaide for my first interview with Sabah and Lamia from Iraq, I had fanciful ideas about 5000 years of Chinese civilisation meeting 5000 years of...