Lien: A refugee’s story
Journalists meet many people in the course of their working lives. Some of those people – and their stories – stick in our minds. Some more than others.
As the flood of refugees from Syria to Europe makes daily news, and Australia’s government wrestles with the issues surrounding asylum seekers who head for our shores, my mind has turned more than once to a young refugee I met in Melbourne in 1982.
I was reminded of Lien Hoang earlier this year, while on a visit to Brisbane’s Captain Burke Park at Kangaroo Point. I found myself standing in front of a memorial dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese “boat people” who perished while attempting to reach Australia by sea between 1975 and 1995.
Lien was one of the lucky ones. On her fourth attempt to escape Vietnam – leaving behind her parents, three siblings and everything she knew – she joined 297 other people in a 5 x 7 metres boat. Six people on the boat died during the six day trip to Malaysia. After spending about six weeks in a Malaysian refugee “holding camp”, Lien, then aged 17, was selected as one of a group who were sent to Melbourne.
The daughter of a South Vietnamese army major who had spent six years in a Communist concentration camp, she would not allow me to use her full name for the first story I wrote about her for fear of repercussions for her family in Vietnam. When I met her, she had been in Australia for 16 months and had so impressed her high school teachers that they had contacted the local newspaper, for which I worked, to see if we would publish an essay she had written about her experiences and about what it might be like if she could return to Vietnam in the future.
It was heart-wrenching stuff, resulting in a feature story on her experiences and her hopes for the future. Lien, 19, wanted to become a doctor, an impossible dream because funding her studies would be financially out of reach. Instead, she said, she might settle for a career in computer science.
Two months later, she was accepted into the University of Melbourne’s medical school – but the problem of how she would fund six years of study remained. I wrote another small story, appealing for anyone who could help her find work to get in touch.
If I ever heard the outcome of that story, I had forgotten. But with so much debate in Australia – and elsewhere – about the plight of refugees and their treatment by the Australian government, including appalling conditions in offshore holding camps, it got me thinking. Thinking about the wonderful contributions that so many refugees make to their adopted lands, the richness that other cultures bring to us in so many ways and the different ways in which they are treated by those already here. Because – as is the case with any country that was colonised by others – in reality many of us are descendants of “boat people”.
I wondered if I could find out what happened to Lien. And it was easier than I expected. A quick Google search turned up information about her on the Museum Victoria website, where her story is featured in detail.
After my story was published, Lien received a $500 donation and was offered work as a housecleaner. But crucially, the article was also seen by Nan Rivett, the widow of well-known journalist Rohan Rivett, a former war correspondent and long-time Murdoch editor in the 1950s and early ’60s. Nan organised a scholarship for Lien and acted as her guarantor throughout her studies at medical school.
Lien wanted her family to join her in Australia, but her repeated attempts failed. Nan’s daughter, Rhyll Rivett, who had worked with immigrants for many years, helped her – and she was finally successful after becoming an intern. The first to arrive were her parents and brother, followed in later years by her two sisters.
Among Museum Victoria’s collection relating to migration and cultural diversity is a black case with red lining, holding 11 miniature Vietnamese wooden musical instruments. These instruments were bought by the Hoang family in Saigon in the late 1980s as they prepared to migrate to Australia, as a reminder of the traditions and culture of their homeland.
Later, the family presented the instruments to Rhyll and Nan Rivett in gratitude for their support and assistance to Lien. The Rivetts, in turn, presented them to Museum Victoria in 2002.
So Lien had become a doctor, and as far as I can ascertain is working as a family GP in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, which has a large Vietnamese community. Her dreams had been fulfilled by her own persistence and hard work, and through the kindness of an Australian family.
Of course, there are many stories like Lien’s. Stories of migrants who have arrived with nothing, rebuilt their lives in strange new lands, learned a foreign tongue, created successful new careers for themselves – and then set about contributing to their new communities and countries in a significant way.
It makes me wonder why so many people are so set against accepting new arrivals, and why the compassion that was shown to the Vietnamese “boat people” in the 1970s and 1980s seems to have disappeared.
At the base of the Brisbane memorial, erected by the Queensland chapter of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, there is an additional message. It reads: “In Gratitude/In the hour of our greatest need – you were there/We thank you Australia”. I’m sure that every refugee who flees war or persecution and is granted asylum in Australia – no matter what country they began their journey in – feels the same. Those who end up incarcerated in appalling conditions in offshore holding camps, or who are subjected to a new kind of terror by those charged with their care, may not.
The memorial has one last message, a quotation from the Greek playwright Euripedes, who wrote in 431 BC: There is no greater sorrow than the loss of one’s native land.
We should all think about that, and give thanks every day that we are not among those forced by circumstances beyond our control to flee our homes, perhaps never to return.
One girl’s story, etched in my mind for 33 years, is just a simple reminder of that.
A Glass Half Full 
20 Responses to “Lien: A refugee’s story”
What a wonderful story!
Thank you so much!
What a wonderful story. It should be on the front page of every paper to remind us that, with the exception of the Aboriginal people, we are all just ‘boat people’
Thank you, I really appreciate that. It’s easy to forget what a struggle many people have when they first arrive in a new country, especially if they are non-English-speaking or young and alone.
“There is no greater sorrow than the loss of one’s native land.” What a powerful and moving story! We should all think and be grateful indeed.
Indeed…and anyone who doesn’t live in their native land feels it, I’m absolutely sure of that. Even if it is by choice, and not through necessity, the longing never leaves…
I’m leaking at the eyes here, in part over cruelty to others and in part for hope.
I wish this could be read far and wide, to help reframe folks’ questions from what we lose to taking in others to what we lose when we don’t.
Thank you…please feel free to share it wherever you like. I’m glad you were touched by Lien’s story.
A well written story of hope and dedication, of love and determination. Send this blog to the Prime Minister of Australia at once.
Thank you Tommy. Let’s hope that under our new Prime Minister, some things might change. It can’t happen fast enough.
I agree. Send your story on to the PM.
Lovely inspiring story Lee!
Thank you Briar! Glad you enjoyed it.
This is why being a journalist is so rewarding. You get to become aware of this story and to make others aware. Touching minds and hearts. Spurring thinking.
Yes, Kris, I agree. It’s why I’ve always loved it. No day is the same, and you learn so much about people with every story you write.
This is a great story but not all of them are so great. I live in Serbia and 90% of refugee’s travel to EU through my country. I must say that I am very proud of my people for helping them with no questions asked. There is just a small problem there. Not all of them are running from the war in their country. Little more than a week ago a man who is responsible for the killings in Paris was registered in Serbia, Croatia, Austria and at the end in Frace and we all know how that ended. We should help them, there is no question about that but we need to be more careful. I saw with my own eyes that they travel with no documents with them, they are all born on the same day, January 1. I know what everyone will think: “That were running”, but no! They all had their smart phones, pictures of their family and a lot of other things, but no documents. We must understand that we need to protect ourselves first, we need to separate terrorists from people who are really running away. As a proof of what I wrote here is a video of the Paris terrorist dancing in refugee’s camp in Serbia: https://youtu.be/1PrhPvS0js0
At 0.07 he is dancing behind an older lady, the one without a hoddy.
I appreciate your sentiment, but there is no easy solution to that problem. How to identify a potential terrorist among a torrent of genuine refugees? Nearly impossible, I’d say. But that doesn’t mean we should treat all refugees as potential terrorists. The point of my story was that many refugees make wonderful contributions to the countries that take them in. Times have changed, however, and with that comes the risk that we lose our compassion and retreat behind fear.
I…stumbled across this article by chance, only to find that the Lien Hoang you mentioned was the very same person that used to be my family GP in Richmond.
I’m not sure if you were aware but Dr Hoang had sadly passed away many, many years ago.
I am very sorry to hear that. Do you know the circumstances of her death? She would be too young…:-(
Apologies for the late reply.
I believe it was brain cancer/tumour? Not exactly sure when and I might be completely off the mark, but I believe it might have been somewhere between 2005-2010?
And yes, she was still quite young :(