I was basically brought up in my parents’ Chinese Malaysian restaurant in Mooroopna near Shepparton. All my sisters and I worked there. We joke about it, but it was a bit like child labour – like I was a baby bringing out the lemon chicken from the kitchen! The...
Both my parents are Italians. Mum came out first with her parents when she was 9. Unfortunately, her mother died, and Mum had to leave school to look after her younger brother and sister. Later, she got married to my Dad, who she had met in Italy. He came to Australia...
My parents were part of the wave of boat people who left Vietnam towards the late 1970s, and they both ended up in Australia, where they met in a migrant hostel in East Hills. In the beginning, they mostly relied on charities whilst they learnt English and then later...
My parents don’t like to talk about what happened during the Pol Pot regime but in the last few years, they’ve started to share their story. I never thought about it much growing up but as I’m getting older, I am learning to appreciate the sacrifices they made, how...
My parents both migrated to Australia from Iran in the 70s. Dad worked for the Iranian embassy at first, and later as a public servant, and Mum was a biochemist at the CSIRO. I didn’t experience much discrimination initially because I had pale skin and a pretty Aussie...
CONTENT WARNING: VIOLENCE / RAPE I come from quite a racist family, particularly my dad, who would still say ‘kaffir’. My primary and high school were completely white, and there wasn’t a person in my neighbourhood that was black, unless they worked there. In 1988, I...
