The river of life from Vietnam to Australia

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The river of life from Vietnam to Australia


Narrow escapes, unforeseen relocations and a new home in Sydney have all helped shape the lives of four Vietnamese migrants who feature in a new online exhibition presented by the NSW Migration Heritage Centre and the University of Technology, Sydney. Gold & Silver, based on interviews conducted by UTS researchers, presents in word and images the moving personal accounts of journeys made both by choice and necessity, that all led to the Georges River region in Sydney's south west. The exhibition was launched this week to celebrate Refugee Week. Dr Allison Cadzow from the UTS Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences said Gold & Silver invited visitors into the world of the four people and their families and their unique relationships with landscapes in Vietnam and Sydney. "There's Huy Pham, a refugee who left Saigon at age 11; Thanh Hue who fled Central Vietnam with her young family, and Kim and Vinh Nguyen who left Hanoi to study in Australia and decided to stay," Dr Cadzow said. "Among all the stories are common threads of homeland and attachment, journey, new land and revisiting. "These stories demonstrate how their rich cultural heritage has influenced their interactions with their new community and places, and how these new relationships have influenced their ongoing connections to their homeland. "Gold & Silver illustrates how communities and environments here and abroad continue to shape the dynamic culture and lives of Vietnamese Australians." Gold & Silver is a NSW Migration Heritage Centre online exhibition in partnership with the University of Technology, Sydney and the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation. It has drawn on a major UTS research project, Parklands, Culture and Communities, involving interviews with people from four cultural groups - Indigenous, Anglo-Celtic, Vietnamese and Arabic-speaking - asking how they use the Georges River parks and what those places mean to them. See here for more information on the research. Thursday 26 October 2006