Tag Melbourne
After doing two Masters degrees trying to ride out the GFC in Ireland and there was still no sign of it ending, I decided to move to Australia to try to start a better life. Growing up, I had always had a fascination with Australia. I think I watched too much Home and Away when
I was born in a little Turkish town on the coast of the Black Sea but I took my first baby steps here in Australia, and grew up in Sunshine. Growing up was hard for me. Although I was surrounded by Greeks and Maltese and Italians and many other nationalities, ours was the only Turkish
I’ve had polio in my left leg from when I was a child but we never had any qualified doctor to diagnose my condition. Then, when I was 6 years old, we had to flee our little village because of the attacks on Karen people in our area. It was really hard for my dad
My Dad was killed and my 7 year old sister was abducted when our village was attacked. But my mother, my second sister and I got away together. We walked for a long time to get out of South Sudan. For two years, we trekked, then rested for a few days, then walked again. Finally,
When we were 10 years old, one of our friends said that he had heard the adults say that Aleppo was going to turn into a war zone in less than year, and we felt such fear in our stomachs. We said, ‘No way, that’s never going to happen.’ But soon after that, our parents
War broke out in South Sudan when I was five years old. Over the years, most of my family members joined the army, including two of my brothers. As I was the last boy left, I was responsible for taking care of my Dad because he was sick. I would go and dig the roots
One day the secret police came to our apartment, ransacked our house and turned everything upside down. They said, ‘We’ve been following your wife and we know she’s been attending an underground church. If we ever see her attending again, your daughter will disappear.’ Then they grabbed me. I was only three years old. At
I am Austrian and my husband was Italian, but we met when we were both working in a hotel in Geneva. Because we couldn’t speak each other’s languages, we had to speak to each other in French! We liked our life in Switzerland, but we would have had to reapply for our visa every 10
My parents sent me to Melbourne to study. At first, I was really reluctant to leave Malaysia, and nervous about being alone. But on my third day here, I picked up a magazine from RMIT and saw they were looking for officers for their student association. Joining that association changed my life. I was appointed