The area where I grew up in Perth wasn’t very multicultural, and when we arrived from Singapore in the mid-70s, I think it was the Asians’ turn to get bullied. Within the first few weeks we got a letter in the letterbox saying, ‘You dirty Asians, why don’t you...
I failed my English exams in my fourth year of my Finance degree in Colombia. At that time, I had a cousin living in Darwin who suggested I come here to learn English, so I said, ‘Alright. Why not?’ It was very hard for me at the beginning. Sometimes I felt homesick....
When I was 19, I had a boyfriend who rode a motorcycle and through him I fell in love with riding. And then I had one of those terrible weeks where I lost the house, the dog, and the boyfriend in a break up and I was in this moment of absolute devastation. One day, I...
My husband and I got married and seven days later we landed in Sydney. Neither of us knew a soul and it was such an adventure. He fell in love with Australia as soon as we arrived and wanted to stay here forever. But I was thinking to myself, ‘What have I done?’ In...
I come from a fairly privileged background in Pakistan, as both my parents had white collar jobs. We weren’t really rich though. Whenever we asked for something luxurious, the answer was ‘no’. But they were always prepared to invest whatever it took in our education,...
