By Jonathan Pearlman, The Straits Times
On a ramshackle boat off Malaysia, fearing that they may be in crocodile-infested waters, young Hieu Van Le and 40 passengers steered a narrow path to safety and thought the worst was over.
Hieu Van Le
But the threat of reptiles proved to be the least of their worries. Soon, they found themselves battling a monsoon that lasted three days and sent 5-metre waves ramming into the boat.
When the storms died, they realised that an erupting volcano in Indonesia had expelled a trail of boulders and debris that threatened to smash the boat.
“Several times we thought of ending our lives on the journey. Several times,” Le recalls.
It was 1977 and Le, who was only 23 years old, had fled war-torn Vietnam with his 19-year-old wife on the tiny vessel that soon ran out of fuel and water.
They had hoped to “bump into” Thailand, only to find themselves in Malaysia, which refused them asylum. On they went to Singapore and Indonesia, which also blocked their entry.
Eventually, the voyage of about 4,000 kilometres ended in northern Australia, where the refugees were allowed to settle.
It was the first wave of post-war Asian migration at a time when Australia was still, as Le, says “basically a white Anglo European tradition”.
Le, 60, went on to become a leading accountant and a highly decorated community figure.
Capping his string of prizes and awards, he was last week appointed governor, or Queen’s representative, in his home state of South Australia – the first Vietnamese in the world to be appointed to a vice-regal position.
“It is the stuff that you can only really find in fairy tales,” he says in an interview with The Straits Times.
“We left everybody behind in Vietnam. We just wanted somewhere free and stable and peaceful to build our life and a future.”
After landing in Darwin, Le and his wife soon moved to South Australia where they picked fruit and found work in a linen factory.
From 1976 to the mid-1980s, Australia accepted about 90,000 Vietnamese refugees.
“It took a few years for us to get used to the society – a new language, new tradition, new lifestyle,” Le says.
Read the full article by Jonathan Pearlman from The Straits Times.
