Getting here is one thing, but what is the journey to calling Australia home?
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Harsimanjeet has made a life-changing decision on Australia’s shores. Neema is following the footsteps of her mother. Stacy is serving her community. Charity has brought the generosity of her culture. This is how four Novocastrians have made themselves at home.
Neema M’maalo (Arrived 2010)
Neema M’maalo’s three-day journey to Australia as a 12-year-old began with a helicopter flight to Kenya and ended in a rental property in Jesmond.
Her most vivid memory from the trip was using an elevator for the first time in Dubai.
"It was really high and I was so scared looking down. We used our feet for everything [at home] but here there were escalators, the lift. ” she says. “We managed."
Neema’s mother, Ababele, was pregnant with Neema when she fled the Congo civil war in the late ’00s to settle in a refugee camp in Tanzania. Now 20, she is about to start a degree in business and commerce at the University of Newcastle. Neema says she is inspired by her mother’s ability to support four children while living in the camp.
Neema’s father left the family shortly after they arrived in Tanzania.
"She worked buying produce from farms and selling it onto companies," Neema says.
In 2010 the family was selected for Australia's Congolese refugee repatriation program.
“We didn't even know Australia existed," Neema says. “I was worried because I was going to leave all my friends behind. But my mum said here's an opportunity you've been given, we might as well give it a go."
Neema says during her first months in the country she "didn't know what on earth" she was doing.
She can remember making the decision to learn English. "I'd bring home a book to read, especially children's books, and if I didn't understand it I'd ask the librarian to do her best to describe it in other words. I tried to read everything.”
She says she made friends "easily" at her high school, using any words she could.
“That’s how I made it,” she says.
Neema helps her mother run a Congolese catering company. In February Neema will begin studying business at university.
“I am a reader but I love numbers. Seeing the way my mum does stuff has impacted me,” she says. “I was thinking of working in finance. I want to stay here and work in Newcastle."
Charity Bell (Arrived 1968)
Charity Bell, originally from the Philippines, moved from Manila to Australia in 1968, five years before the White Australia Policy was officially repealed.
Bell, née Tetilla, was 21 studying pre-med at university in Manila when she applied to move to Australia as a "joke".
She heard from a friend that Australia had a shortage of nurses.
"They accepted me straight away," Bell says."My mother didn’t want me to go but I said this is my chance . . . for adventure."
While she already spoke English, there was still plenty to be lost in translation. Especially in the country town of Wagga Wagga where she was posted.
The request to “bring a plate” to social gatherings was unheard of in the Philippines. "I grabbed a couple of plates from the nurses home before I went," Bell says. “I thought they probably don't have enough.”
And the national meat was a bit on the nose.
"Every Thursday we had roast lamb or lamb chops,” she says. “I would just tell the kitchen maid, I'll have two lots of sweets, thanks.”
Standing at a taxi rank outside Wagga Base Hospital in 1969, the nurse met her future husband, Robert Bell, a soldier based at Singleton.
Now the president of Hunter Multicultural Communities, Robert Bell says his wife has “brought out the Filipino” in him.
The couple are involved in community service in Newcastle, a trait that Robert Bell says is embedded in Filipino culture.
Bell began volunteering in Sydney in the early ‘70s after marrying and officially becoming an Australian citizen. She was part of a community of Singaporean, Malaysian, Vietnamese women also wedded to soldiers.
“When the Vietnamese refugees started to come we were asked to help,” she says. The group introduced the new arrivals to Australian culture during monthly lunches.
Since moving to Thornton in 1979 Bell has dedicated her spare time to the Filipino Society, based at Boolaroo, of which she is treasurer. Her responsibilities include practising the multi-day funeral rites when a member dies, and occasionally providing food for Filipino sailors who end up in John Hunter Hospital.
Most of her voluntary work is assisting Filipino women who have come to Australia in less fortunate circumstances than herself. "With domestic violence I help all these women married to white men. I tell these girls what to do and, if they go to court, they often ask me to go translate for them.”
Bell says she has seen men try to deport their wives and keep the children, as well as "success stories" - women finding their feet independently in Australia.
She says Australia has become more tolerant of people of Asian backgrounds since she arrived five decades ago.
Robert Bell says his wife has perfected her reply whenever someone tells her to "go back to where she came from".
"My wife will say, 'Oh, you're Aboriginal are you?'"
Harsimranjeet Singh Brar (Arrived 2012)
When Harsimranjeet Singh Brar came to Newcastle from Punjab, a land-locked state in India, he had never seen the ocean. Now he goes scuba diving twice a week.
He made the move to Newcastle at age 22 to study civil engineering. However, that motive would eventually change.
At the University of Newcastle he joined student societies to make friends.
“That’s when I found out about the university’s scuba diving club. I went and spoke to the president and he told me you have to get a scuba diving certificate,” Harsimranjeet says. “Obviously, I didn’t know how to swim at this stage.”
Harsimranjeet put himself through swimming lessons and a scuba diving course in Nelson Bay in the middle of winter.
It was worth it for his first dive at Swansea.
“There was quite a few octopus around, moray eels, and I think we had quite a few kingfish as well. It was amazing, being so close.”
Moving from the small Punjabi city of Muktsar to Newcastle was not unlike being plunged into a totally new world.
“It’s two poles apart,” Harsimranjeet says.
“The activities are different. The lifestyle is different. The clothing is different. The language is different.”
While working casual shifts at 7/Eleven stores in the Newcastle area, Harsimranjeet said it was clear some people saw him as different.
“People are often curious, especially kids,” he says. “They are very amazed to see this new creature in their environment. I try to tell them who I am and where I come from - that I come from a Sikh family.”
Harsimranjeet says his six-and-a-half years in Australia have been marked by questions he’s asked himself.
In 2016 he switched from engineering to a degree in fine arts. Now 27, he is completing his final year. He hopes to extend his visa to stay in Newcastle for possibly three years to consolidate his practice as an artist.
“It’s certainly one of the paths I’ve discovered about myself: bringing out an inner perspective, giving people something new to perceive.”
Stacy Allen (Arrived 2012)
Texas born and bred, Stacy Allen says it was challenging leaving her home behind at the age of 35 and moving to Australia.
“Just going to the grocery store was hard in the early days,” she says.
“What is a Lebanese cucumber? And why is it wrapped in plastic?”
Allen says it was her willingness to “get involved as soon as possible” that has allowed a sense of home to develop.
“I did funny things. I put a note in my son’s backpack saying I wanted to be friends with a kid’s mum, saying, ‘I’m Stacy, Brett’s mum, could we have coffee?’”
Up until 2012 Allen and her husband Greg, an Australian, lived with their three children in Austin, Texas, where they were both church pastors.
“My husband became a Christian in the States, and we both feel really passionate about serving our community and showing people religion doesn’t have to be old-fashioned and out of date,” she says.
“He grew up in Canberra and didn’t really have that experience growing up so he wanted to start something here that would be life-giving and relevant. I guess there was always the thought of moving here.”
The couple, however, didn’t plan on moving to Lake Macquarie.
“We came out and lived with his parents [in Forster] for six weeks and we just kept coming here and driving around. We just love it,” she says.
Allen’s concept of home is now closely bound with her children’s. The four became Australian citizens in October.
“My little Sam learnt to talk here, he has no remembrance of America,” Allen says. “They even have Australian accents. This is home to them, so this is my home too.”
While Allen misses friends from the US, she feels grateful to be where she is today.
“Even this week my little ones were in surf groms at Blacksmiths Beach, and I’m just sitting there on the ocean,” she says. “Where we used to live the ocean was five hours away. I’m so lucky to raise my kids here. I just hope they don’t take that for granted.”
