In she came here to join her brother and son, who have jobs in the Luv-A-Duck factory. But the winters are cold, and the language is so hard.
Nhill, says year-old Naw Phe, reminds her of home. It seems strange, given that the hard plains are so different from the jungle where she grew up. And the farming. And the love of the people. Partly this is about language. For most of them, the barriers between thinking and speaking English have yet to grow porous. The middle-aged Karen remember village life.
They were subsistence farmers, growing rice and vegetables and raising a few animals, living in houses built from the materials that grew all around — bamboo and palm leaves.
Then the Myanmar military regime began a program of persecution and conflict. Soldiers came and burnt their houses. Men were forced to act as army porters, on pain of death for their families. Crops were looted, women raped and children shot indiscriminately. Today, more than , Karen refugees live in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border.
They were born in the refugee camps. There was no freedom, and no chance of a job. Now, sponsored by relatives who have found jobs in Nhill, Wah Ka Paw La says her entire aim is to learn enough English to get a job — probably in aged care. It was an overwhelming experience. Asked what they remember of their first Australian home, they talk about traffic and crowds and constant noise. They were bemused, at sea, knowing little about life in any city, let alone one on the other side of the world.
The concept of buying a ticket for public transport was new to them. It was, effectively, another refugee camp — a place of no hope and little chance of finding work. They were imprisoned by their lack of English and by their life experience.
Faces settle, once one passes a certain age, into the lines of habit. John and Margaret Millington are normally smiling, and seemingly never still. They are involved in everything that moves in Nhill. But catch them when they are not aware of being watched and you can see the lines of grief.
The worst thing that can happen to a parent is to bury a child. The Millingtons have lost three. It is the kind of tragedy that would leave many people cursing God. Instead, as committed Catholics, they have responded by seeking to serve God more fully. The Karen are part of that story. In the early s, the Millingtons were pheasant farmers in Gippsland when their 2-year-old daughter was killed in an agricultural accident.
Still weighed by grief, they moved to Nhill when John got a job as manager of Luv-a-Duck, which is one of two factories that supply the majority of duck meat to the Australian market. The Millingtons intended to stay a year, but that turned into more than 30 years. They quickly became central to the community — officeholders in Rotary, active in the community, their children attending local schools. They raised four more children. Then, 11 years ago, their year-old son Daniel was killed in a motorcycle accident.
The tunnel of grief opened once again. Not long after that, their other son, Simon, was involved in a car accident that left him with multiple injuries.
He was prescribed opiate painkillers and developed an addiction to them. Those who have done the classic step program for addicts and those who support them know that the first lesson is the need to accept your life is out of control. The Millingtons travelled that journey with their son, trapped in the vortex of trying to control the uncontrollable, as he doctor-shopped across the country, each medico unaware or uninterested in knowing just how many pills he had acquired.
Finding meaningful work for refugees: John and Margaret Millington. Luv-a-Duck, at least, was doing well. John was Managing Director, Margaret his assistant. They were a team. By the business was ready to expand beyond providing whole birds to restaurants, and into supplying ready to cook meat to supermarkets and butchers. Millington, though, was having trouble sourcing labour. The working population of Nhill was tiny. Nobody, it seemed, was prepared to move to Nhill for work.
He spent thousands advertising locally for skilled labour, before finding a diesel mechanic in South Africa via a single advertisement. He hired more overseas labour, all of which led, in , to Millington being invited to a meeting of Rural Australians for Refugees to give advice on how to settle people from other cultures in rural Australia. He told them if the Karen were to be settled in rural Australia, the key was finding them meaningful work. Going home that night, he and Margaret googled the Karen, and learned more about the burning of villages, the forced labour, the rape and pillage.
They were seeking candidates for five unskilled jobs at the factory. Donate Take action Fundraise for Amnesty. Research and reports Submissions. Give regularly. Get refugees to safety End the death penalty. There are no new notifications. View Alerts. Bendigo is a small regional city in Victoria in south-east Australia. Bendigo has a population of over , people. More Karen refugees have come directly from refugee camps in Thailand, and many Karen refugees have relocated from other places in Australia to live in Bendigo.
Since , when the first family of Karen refugees arrived in Bendigo, their community has grown to about 1, The most recent census in found Karen was the second most commonly spoken language in Bendigo.
The study also found full-time equivalent positions were created for Karen workers. AMES Australia chief executive Cath Scarth said the study's results were an endorsement of regional refugee resettlement. Bendigo poultry producer Hazeldene's is the single largest employer of Karen people in Bendigo, with about of the refugee community on staff.
The company's Ann Conway described the Karen workers as loyal and hardworking. Ms Conway said while language barriers persisted, several Karen staff were paid to act as translators, while social services in Bendigo also offered support.
Executive officer Kate McInnes said refugee resettlement had transformed the Bendigo community, as well as its economy. The change is significant for the Bendigo local government area, which was considered the country's least culturally diverse at the time of the census.
They get to experience festivals from all over the world," Ms McInnes said. Increased ethnic diversity in Bendigo has also meant more religious diversity; a Buddhist monastery now operates in Bendigo, while a local Baptist church offers regular services in the Karen language.
Ms McInnes said the burgeoning refugee community had been instrumental in breaking down religious tensions, the sort that fuelled protests against plans for a Bendigo mosque in
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