(2/2) At first, Mum joined Dad selling stuff outside the temple, but finally after six years, they decided to immigrate to Australia for a better life. Just before they left, Dad had this crazy idea of approaching a Japanese rice cooker company and saying “I’m going...
(1/2) My mum always says that she and my dad were fated to be together. His family weren’t rich. They sold noodle soup from a trolley cart at a train station. But Dad was the brightest of the kids, so when he got into university in Japan, his family invested all their...
My mum was the first person to buy an airplane ticket out of her village in Sicily. She came to Brisbane to visit family and never went back – she said that she smelt freedom here. At the time, she was engaged to my father, and apparently she said to him, ‘If...
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...
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...