It’s not exactly the Road to Damascus but the Old Hume Highway has a few conversions of its own.
It was on a Bankstown-Berrima bus trip that Vietnamese refugee, Lien Ho, enjoyed her first day out with born and bred Australians in 21 years.
And it was on the same stretch of highway that semi-retired clockmaker, Peter Short, renounced his long-held view that Boat People “should all be sent back”.
Not quite miraculous but big shifts, nevertheless, for people who inhabit different worlds in the same city.
It was the Sydney Alliance that brought their lives together.
The Alliance is made up of 30 partner organisations working together to improve services and communities.
Bankstown Uniting Church minister, Neil Smith, decided to put the theory into practice by strolling the quick kilometre around to the offices of another Alliance partner organisation, Asian Women@Work.
There he met Vietnamese community worker, Bich Thuy Pham, and it didn’t take them long to work out that the church’s bus and predominantly Anglo parishioners, and immigrant women keen to improve their English, might be a match.
Peter says, in the early days, Neil “hassled” parishioners about coming along for the ride. Initially, he concedes, he was sceptical.
But he agreed to take part in the May 7 trip to Berrima.
He spoke with a woman who had escaped Vietnam, twice. He said her story of small boats, rough seas and cramped conditions opened his eyes to the courage and determination some people need to taste freedom.
“The trip sounded frightening,” he said, “100 people on a small boat in a big ocean.
“She described it to me as very cramped, very hot and very smelly.
“I found her determination amazing.
“I can honestly say it changed my opinion about all boat people. I had always thought – send them back and let them join the queue.
“I am sure a lot of other Australians would change their minds if they could meet these people and hear their stories.”
Lien left Vietnam in 1988 and spent two years in a Thai refugee camp before she and her son were resettled in Australia.
She sewed fashion garments for $5 apiece, about $5 an hour, from her Villawood home to put her son through school and tertiary studies.
She is proud of him and the job he holds with a Sydney accountancy firm.
But, years of working from home, left her almost entirely reliant on a network of fellow refugees.
“I listened to community radio in Vietnamese and one day I heard about Asian Women@Work and their English classes. Before that I was cut off from all the people around me,” Lien said.
She said the Vietnamese and Chinese women on the Southern Highlands trip resolved to fine themselves if they reverted to their mother tongues on the bus.
“I spoke only English to the people from the Uniting Church,” Lien said. “They were teaching me the names of animals and trees I had never heard before.
“It was good for me to go outside and see things I had never seen in my life.
“It was good for me to meet Australian people. I enjoyed the trip very much, I would like to go again and learn more.”
