Sequence 2: Vietnam survivor, Hieu Van le
Profile
Racial attitudes remained surprisingly dormant throughout these decades (1950s and 1960s), partly because few non-Europeans had entered Australia. But this changed in the1970s when the first of the ‘boat people’ began to arrive out of the chaos of the Vietnam War.
The Vietnamese experience in Australia was highly varied and inevitably those who succeeded were best documented and celebrated. One was Hieu Van Le, who arrived in 1977 in Darwin Harbour on a dilapidated old boat with 40 other Vietnamese people. The fraught voyage, the end of a long prior saga, was assaulted by pirates, volcanic debris and monsoonal rains. On arrival Hieu Van Le had the wit to ask for the nearest police station and was received as one of the beneficiaries of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s more welcoming refugee policy.
Le was born in Quang Tri in1954, his father was killed during the French occupation and the surviving family was caught in the extreme turmoil of war, and they especially feared being drafted into the army. He and his new bride plotted for a year to escape by way of Malaysia to Australia, which meant leaving behind his mother and his brothers. After Darwin he was located at Pennington in Adelaide, the reception hostel which had been used for the earlier waves of postwar migrants. Within a fortnight he and his wife were picking fruit at Loxton on the Murray, then back in Adelaide for better work at the Attil factory. Subsequently, Le went to university and became well qualified as a senior manager with ASCI (Australian Security and Investment Commission) for 15 years. He was one of the 150 000 Vietnamese in Australia by the turn of the century, together with 50 000 of the next generation. Hieu Van Le himself was the very model of the new racially diverse Australia. He served as the chair of the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission and in 2007 became deputy governor of the state.
Source for text above: Eric Richards (2008) Destination Australia — Migration to Australia since 1901, UNSW Press, pages 246–247
The following ‘Hot words’ could need explanation: dormant, Vietnam War, monsoonal rain, beneficiaries, Malaysia, dilapidated, racially diverse
Inquiry questions
- What do you think the following quote means: ‘The Vietnamese experience in Australia was highly varied and inevitably those who succeeded were best documented and celebrated.’
- What did Le have to survive to get to Australia?
- Would you say Le’s story is positive? Why?
Further information
- Multicultural South Australia website biography
- ‘A remarkable journey’ from the Adelaide University Magazine Lumen
Back to Sequence 2 The Globalising World: Changing policies and Australian identity History Year 10
