How a group of passionate locals are helping refugees find their 'home among the gum trees' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

How a group of passionate locals are helping refugees find their 'home among the gum trees' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)



How a group of passionate locals are helping refugees find their 'home among the gum trees'
ABC Mid North Coast By Wiriya Sati

Updated Sat at 6:38am
PHOTO: Cooks at the Tamil feast, Jack and Hemily are classed as refugees on a Safe Haven Enterprise visa. (ABC Mid North Coast: Wiriya Sati)
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Port Macquarie, a coastal town popular with holiday-makers and retirees, is home to a group of ordinary people who have made it their mission to make refugees and asylum-seekers feel welcome.

Key points:
A group of volunteers in the NSW coastal town of Port Macquarie has set up a support group, which receives no government funding, to welcome refugees to the area
Although Safe Haven Enterprise Visasencourage migrants to move out of cities and into regional areas for five years, there are often no support systems in place to help them find work, homes and settle in
The group aims to bridge that gap by welcoming migrants to the area, hosting them with local families and assisting them with settlement as part of a program called Home Among the Gum Trees



The Mid-North Coast Refugee Support Group has nothing to do with government resettlement areas and does not receive any funding, but group member Beth Flynn said they want refugees to know that they are welcome and have support.

"There is an obligation as citizens to support people fleeing persecution," Ms Flynn said.

Nikshan Sharma is one of seven Tamil people to arrive in the community after fleeing Sri Lanka in 2012, after horrific war crimes and torture by the Sri Lankan military.

"In Port Macquarie there was a refugee support group who were more helpful, caring, visiting me every day," he said.
Bridging the gaps in the system
PHOTO: Support group member Kathryn Parle worked for nine years as a torture and trauma counsellor with hundreds of Tamil asylum seekers in detention centres offshore and on the mainland. (ABC Port Macquarie: Wiriya Sati)



The group's Kathryn Parle said people were encouraged to get out of cities and move to rural areas on their Safe Haven Enterprise Visas for five years, and one of the conditions of that visa was to work and be self-supporting for three of the five years.

But regional areas do not have the normal support systems.

"There's no case management, there's no torture trauma-counselling service here, no translator, they have to do that by phone," Ms Parle said.

"It's the support group of volunteers who are doing enormous work to accommodate them and what their particular needs might be."


Mr Sharma was living in Sydney where there was already a Tamil community and plenty of support both culturally and financially, including counselling services, Tamil schools and study opportunities.

He worked in a residential care facility for two years in Sydney before going to Port Macquarie where he now works in aged care, a job he secured before he arrived at the town six months ago.

"The first time I visited some other regional areas because it's a condition of my visa, I didn't feel comfortable and I came back to Sydney," Mr Sharma said.

However in Port Macquarie, he said he felt more welcome, because of the support group, but his biggest struggle had been finding work.

Mr Sharma has a casual contract for 18 hours a fortnight, sometimes more, but he needed to be on full-time work for his visa conditions.

He did not earn enough money to survive and struggled with petrol and bills.
The locals who make it possible

The Refugee Support Group has more than 100 hundred people on its distribution list.

It runs a program called Home Among the Gum Trees, where refugees from the city can go for a holiday and a look at Port Macquarie as a possible place to live.

It has a list of host families and about 30 refugees came on a bus for a weekend to look around the community.
PHOTO: The Mid North Coast Refugee Support group takes part in Home Among The Gum Trees, sponsoring, in their homes, a holiday for city refugees. (Supplied: Kathryn Parle)



Out of the people who came, there were five adults and two children who decided to live here.

They are now being accommodated with host families as they look for work and housing.

The support group members do not act as counsellors, rather they can provide welcome and the warmth of friendships.

Ms Parle said the group promoted a sense of belonging by assisting with aspects of settlement.

She said they might facilitate access to systems of care, accompany a person to an initial appointment, or provide social contact and links to other community groups — or opportunities to practice English conversation.

Ms Parle said that group members attended sessions in cross-cultural awareness training and in aspects of vicarious trauma.

"[This training was] to give them confidence to offer support with sensitivity to the impact of trauma and to have realistic expectations," she said.
Dance as storytelling therapy

The group has also held several events in the form of a Tamil feast and dance performance, inviting the community to attend the dinner which will raise money for the cooks, showcase their cooking to help them find further work in catering and raise their presence in the community.
Mr Sharma is a classical Indian dancer, of both the Bollywood and Tamil cultural styles.

"I am a classical dancer, as a teen I learnt street drama for telling stories and inciting strong emotions," he said.
PHOTO: Nikshan Sharma, who performed at a Tamil feast, arrived in the community after fleeing Sri Lanka in 2012. (ABC Mid North Coast: Wiriya Sati)



Mr Sharma does not accept money for his performances.

He said this was because he used dance as a platform to share his story without relying on language, and said he used dance as a form of narrative exposure therapy.

Ms Parle worked for nine years as a torture and trauma counsellor with hundreds of Tamil asylum seekers in detention centres offshore and on the mainland.

She said narrative therapy was a counselling method involving storytelling in some way, which could help to externalise the story, and perhaps find meaning or some healing in the process.

"Nikshan through his dance, allows himself to feel his way through his memories of trauma, and express his experiences safely, under his control," Ms Parle said.

"It can be frightening to tell the story — a person needs to feel safe and ready.


"If you watch Nikshan dance, you'll see it in his face, and his expression is profound, he knows exactly what it was like over there."
A very painful history

Mr Sharma said it was a very painful history.


"Still every day the thoughts are coming, every day is remembrance day, for my friends, family and neighbours I've lost. I just recently lost three friends and my uncle," he said.

Mr Sharma was well-educated, with a degree in psychology and several diplomas in social work and counselling.

He had ambitions, but like many Tamils in Sri Lanka, his career was interrupted by the civil war between the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers.

As his home town became a battleground, his skills as a social worker saw Mr Sharma employed by the Red Cross for several years through the conflict, including what is described as a mass genocide of Tamils by the Sri Lankan military.
PHOTO: "Every day, parents are crying in the street, missing people, sons, daughters, husbands," Nikshan Sharma said, telling his story through dance. (ABC Port Macquarie: Wiriya Sati)



Mr Sharma tried to help the injured and dying after attacks on innocent civilians in schools, hospitals, churches and homes within a government-designated 'No Fire Zone'.

"Every day in 2009 thousands were killed and I was seeing all the bodies, counting the bodies," Mr Sharma said.

He ran groups for torture survivors, trauma groups, missing people groups, gathering people together to talk in counselling sessions.

The military came in asking him questions about his clients and whether he was a Tamil Tiger.

"Five times I was arrested, taken by military for inquiries and released," Mr Sharma said.

They questioned him about the photos and articles he had published under different pseudonyms, showing the war crimes that the Sri Lankan government wanted to keep secret, still largely unrecognised around the world today.

On the fifth time, he was not officially arrested.

He was picked up riding his bike home from work and was taken to a military check point in a white van. He was blindfolded, stripped, beaten and tortured.


"I knew I had to go — next time I would be killed," he said.

"I was 18 days in that boat to Australia. I landed in the Cocos Islands, then Christmas Island and then Darwin."
The community

While many in Port Macquarie had been welcoming, the Tamil people who settled there had made friends and were all working, there had been some racism and discrimination when finding employment.

Mr Sharma has a house and two jobs and has opportunities to perform his dance and tell his story.

He said he would not say he was happy, but just going along every day.
PHOTO: Mr Sharma uses dance as a way to share his story with his new community without words. (ABC Mid North Coast: Wiriya Sati)



"There are still issues in Sri Lanka, my family are still in danger, my brother was taken arrested and tortured two or three times," Mr Sharma said.


"But the biggest issue is language and people not understanding my culture.

"In Sydney, there are a lot of Tamil groups and cultural activities.

"I have no future plans, like when I will be married, have kids, I am now 37.

"The last election I was hopeful for new opportunities, waiting with fingers crossed for the changes to refugee policies. But nothing happened.

"In Sri Lanka the government does physical and sexual torture, the Australian government does mental torture, with the unknown times for uncertain visa status."

Ms Parle said that all asylum seekers wanted the same thing as anyone.


"People who have fled persecution in other countries, want freedom, they want to be safe and they want dignity and respect. Like all of us," she said.

Topics: refugees, immigration, community-and-society, immigration-policy, com