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The most dangerous animal is the one cornered and fearful.
You can’t drink jewellery or eat gold teeth caps, but that water meant everything because it bought us an extra day. That second pirate attack saved our lives.
The second day on the island, American helicopters flew overhead and dropped bags of food. The drop contained a number of items, including lots of tins of corned beef—a practical and long-lasting food. For the first few weeks, our family indulged on this canned meat and, to this day, it is my mum’s favourite food. Every second Christmas she still rolls it out and I curse those choppers for not dropping something tastier. I mean, after bombing the hell out of Vietnam, the least they could’ve done was thrown us some lobster.
Australia eventually offered us sanctuary. Mum and Dad were overjoyed. Dad walked around the island asking people if they had any spare warm clothes. He collected a big bundle of jumpers and blankets because he’d heard about Australia—‘Beautiful country, friendly people, but really cold. It’s right near Switzerland.’ That’s my dad, great at rescues, crap at geography.
We touched down in Sydney, Australia in thirty-degree Celsius heat and my family were thinking, Geez, Austria’s really hot, man!
My mother, ever polite and practical, took these kind gifts with a grateful smile and, for the next few months, accepted compliments from strangers about what a ‘pretty little daughter’ she had. If you ever meet my brother Khoa, make sure you mention the lovely photo you saw of him in Anh’s book wearing a lacy dress with gorgeous red ribbons.
My parents and their siblings worked and worked and worked. I look back now and the hours they did were absolutely ludicrous. But for a group of refugees who came from a communist regime where you had almost no means of making a living, they were in paradise. They were incredibly grateful they had the opportunity to be rewarded for their efforts, and worked accordingly. What a great country!
‘Always question your fear, Anh. There’s almost never a good reason to be scared.’
A while ago, I was watching TV and I saw footage of a mine defuser strolling through a minefield in Afghanistan and I thought to myself, This guy doesn’t look all that nervous for a guy who’s looking for landmines. And then I realised he wasn’t nervous because in front of him was a cameraman walking backwards.
Eventually Dung, the eldest, who shared the same name as my Mum’s brother, decided to change his name to Joe. A quick word of advice for any immigrants moving to a new country: before sending your children to school, please ask the immigration authorities if any of your names are a local word for ‘poo’.
Then, in front of the whole classroom, the deputy principal said to me, ‘We’re going to have to send you home because we’ve found nits on your cousin.’ C’mon man. You didn’t have to say it in front of the whole classroom. I looked around and everyone had heard. ‘Let’s go, we’ve got to make sure it doesn’t spread to the rest of the class. Grab your stuff.’ I made my way back to my desk and I’ve never seen ten-year-old kids move so fast. The thirty little rascals parted like the Red Sea, and there was me, little Vietnamese Moses with my head down and my cheeks bright red, walking through the
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If the worst happens, if you lose and fail, but you still celebrate coming second because you’ve given it a red hot go, there is no need to fear failure.
Dad had a favourite Vietnamese saying that he always used to pull out, and it loosely translates as this: ‘There’s only two times in life, there’s now and there’s too late.’ It goes a long way towards describing his outlook on life.
Then one day Mrs Borny, our English teacher, who I’ve always thought was my very own real-life version of Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poets Society, walked in and decided that us bunch of rejects weren’t hopeless and started to run her own drama classes.
One day she said to me, ‘Anh, you’re a very talented storyteller.’ She had no idea how far that one line of encouragement would take me . . . until twenty years later, when this little boy became a famous comedian and surprised her on a TV show called Thank You.
I often asked my mum about Vietnam, what it was like being in the middle of a war, and her answers would sometimes surprise me. She told me it was the little trivial everyday things that you couldn’t do that was the most annoying; like running out of ingredients and not being able to just stroll up to the shops to buy some. ‘You get used to the noise and bombs and bullets and you end up not being really concerned about getting killed so much as being sick of having this bland rice with no fish sauce,’ she said.
Having this woman stay with us made us feel very well off. This is why my mum is a genius. She could’ve told us a million times that we were lucky to have what we had—three meals a day, clothes to wear, a roof over our heads—and we would never have believed her because we heard these clichés all the time and they didn’t make us feel lucky. But allowing someone who had even less than we did to live with us made us feel incredibly fortunate, wealthy even.
I learned life experiences from a whole range of people, and it was an incredibly rich and varied form of wisdom that these passers-by gifted us with.
Since then, whenever I’ve had to go into battle as the underdog, I know in my heart that an extraordinary result is a very possible outcome.
What I’ve found with racism in Australia is that there are isolated and one-off incidents, but wider Australia is appalled by it. The reaction against a racist act is always quick and severe.
She comes over and pats me on the back of the head. ‘War’s taken too many men away from me.’
I’ve always found that if you apply yourself at the right time with the right intensity, you can accomplish just about anything.
‘When you know it’s right for you, but it scares you, it means you have the most to gain from doing it.’
‘There are only two times in life, there’s now and there’s too late.’
‘To thine own self be true, Anh. Never let others force you into anything you don’t want to do. Let your own integrity be the ultimate guide.’
‘You always have to make decisions in your life, Anh. And don’t kid yourself; when you don’t decide, that’s a decision.’
Dave used to say the hard gigs were an opportunity to test your mettle: ‘Learn from them Anh, treat them like a rare gift.’
‘You know why we lost the war, Anh? It was all those bloody tunnels that the communists dug. We could never do that. You know why? Because with us Aussies, for every one guy who’s digging there’s got to be five standing around having a smoko.’ We all threw back our heads and roared.
‘Let them believe it, son. But if you really want to know the truth, I was shitting myself! All of the those times . . . shitting myself!’ Hahaha. ‘Just don’t let the bastards know you’re scared, then conquer them.’ Jesus. He was scared all those times, and yet he still managed to pull it all off. In that moment my respect and love for this man went up tenfold.
Khoa, the baby dangled over the side of the boat by the pirates, the toddler that Mum dressed in little girls’ dresses, the fat kid who thought the homeless woman was going to eat him . . . had just won Young Australian of the Year.
