Small Bamboo (18 page)

In August 1979, when Dad had been working at Al Picchio for almost a year, Mum and Dad received a call from my Uncle and Aunt Five, whom they missed terribly. This was the first time they had thought about leaving Perth. My parents didn’t feel lonely in Perth but there were times when they longed to be with the rest of their family. Mum and Dad discussed the option of moving to Melbourne and decided that this would be a good time to do so. Dad went to work the next day and asked Mario for three weeks’ holiday.

‘I’m going to see my sisters and brothers in Melbourne. My wife hasn’t seen them since we left Malaysia,’ Dad said, but he didn’t tell Mario about moving. Dad thought that if they decided to stay in Melbourne, he would just call Mario and tell him he wasn’t coming back.

Mum and Dad packed up all their belongings and purchased one-way train tickets to Melbourne for $175. As well as all their household items, they also took their new car, a 1978 Ford Fairmont that Dad had just bought, in the train’s cargo. It was very exciting for Mum because it was her first trip out of Perth. She stared out the train window the whole time, as the land rolled by, in awe of the country she lived in.

In Melbourne they drove to Aunt and Uncle Five’s house in Maidstone in Melbourne’s north-west where they lived with their children, and three of their brothers and sisters, my Aunt Sixteen, Uncle Seventeen and Uncle Ut. Mum and Dad spent the next two weeks with their family. They loved being with their brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, but my parents found Melbourne dark, cold and busy. They missed Perth’s laid-back lifestyle and bright, warm weather.

‘Do you want to stay here or go back to Perth?’ Dad asked Mum. One of the reasons he hadn’t told Mario about moving to Melbourne was Dad wasn’t sure he wanted to.

‘Maybe we should go back to Perth. We’re settled there,’ Mum said. ‘I would like to go back.’

They were both relieved they wanted the same thing. They told Aunt and Uncle Five, who were disappointed but also understanding. The family were still getting used to the idea of freedom, of being able to fly back and forth to see each other any time they liked. ‘We will be back soon, I promise,’ Dad reassured them.

The next day my parents left all their belongings—kitchenware, bedding, even a brand new stereo—with Aunt and Uncle Five. All Mum and Dad took with them was their car and their clothes. They were exhausted from the excitement of their fortnight in Melbourne but they couldn’t wait to get back to Perth.

Mum and Dad found an apartment in inner-city Highgate. It was a small one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment on the second floor. Dad returned to work at Al Picchio and never told Mario that he had intended to move to Melbourne during the ‘holiday’. Within a few years Dad became head chef of the successful Italian bistro. It was only open for dinner so during the day Dad worked in the kitchen at the Underground Nightclub on Newcastle Street in Northbridge. Sometimes he would even go back to the club after Al Picchio closed and work until 2 a.m., preparing food for the next day. It was hard work, and the hours were long, but Dad enjoyed it.

During his late-night shifts at the Underground, Dad met a lot of famous people. One of his highlights was in 1980 when Kiss performed at the nightclub. Dad got right up front. It was a great show. He’s still amazed at how long Gene Simmons’s tongue was and how they all walked in those platform shoes.

12
THE AUSSIE WAY

On 16 January 1980, my brother Trevor was born. Mum didn’t have any family around, so she relied on friends to help her with her newborn. Trevor was a very easy baby to look after—he hardly cried and he slept for long periods—but it was still quite a challenge to bring up a baby in a country that was quite foreign to her, especially when she still wasn’t fluent in the language.

One evening, when Trevor was about five months old, he came down with a fever. Mum didn’t know what to do or where to go for help. Dad of course was working, at Al Picchio. Mum remembered seeing a building near their apartment block with a sign saying ‘HOSPITAL’. She knew that word. She ran down to Beaufort Street with Trevor and had another look at the sign. There was a word in front of ‘hospital’ but Mum didn’t know what it meant. She went inside anyway, and showed her baby to the woman at the reception desk.

‘Excuse me. My baby feel very hot. Can you help, please?’ Mum asked.

The woman looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. We’re not that kind of hospital. We only look after animals,’ she said, pointing to the pictures of dogs and cats on the walls. Mum had walked into a veterinary hospital. She was so embarrassed. The woman was very kind and tried to help Mum get to a hospital but my mother just thanked her and went home to call a friend of hers.

We call this woman Ma Hai, which translates to Second Mother. She was Trevor’s godmother. Ma Hai advised Mum how to reduce Trevor’s temperature, and the fever went away after a couple of days. Ma Hai helped Mum with a lot of things. When Trevor turned one, Mum got a job selling fruit outside the Commonwealth Bank in the Murray Street Mall in the city. She then worked at the fish markets in the Boans Department store. Trevor would spend the day with Ma Hai while Mum was working.

My mother really enjoyed going back to work. She was meeting different people and it was also a great way to improve her English. Meanwhile, Dad was thriving at Al Picchio and the restaurant had become very successful. Life was good. Everything had fallen into place. They had a wonderful son and a lot of support from their friends. Their next goal was to become true Australians.

By this time my parents had lived in Perth for almost three years and didn’t want to live anywhere else. They loved Australia and regarded it as their home. In those days, all they had to do to gain citizenship was apply. So they filled out the forms and, on 27 August 1981, Mum and Dad became Australian citizens. It was one of the proudest days of their lives.

My parents relied on a few local friends to help them become more accustomed to the Aussie culture. Among them were Mario, Dad’s boss at Al Picchio; Moyle and Aileen Campbell; and a kind-hearted couple named Diane and Pascoe. When my parents first met Diane and Pascoe in the 1980s, they were running a small café in Subiaco Village. Dad had quit the Underground Nightclub and was doing some catering work from home. He mainly made spring rolls and supplied them to cafés and takeaway shops across the city. One day Dad was dropping off some food and Pascoe was curious about his other jobs.

‘Tony, do you work anywhere else?’ he asked Dad.

‘Yes, I have a full-time job.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘At the Al Picchio Bistro in Claremont. Have you heard of it?’

‘Yeah, I know that place. I’ve driven past it a couple of times. So what do you do there?’

‘Oh, I make spring rolls!’ Dad joked.

‘Ha! Is that right?’ Pascoe thought it was a bit bizarre for an Italian restaurant to serve spring rolls.

‘Come down to the restaurant and we’ll look after you,’ Dad said. ‘I promise you will enjoy your meal there.’

So Pascoe and Diane had dinner at Al Picchio later that week. They certainly enjoyed their meal, as Dad had predicted, but they were disappointed they didn’t see him in the restaurant. They were about to finish their meals when Mario checked in to see if everything was all right. Pascoe and Diane raved about the beautiful food, then Pascoe asked Mario, ‘Do you know of a Vietnamese man named Tony? Apparently he supplies food to your restaurant.’

‘Yeah, yeah. He’s out the back,’ Mario replied casually.

‘Oh, what does he do here?’ Diane asked.

‘What? You don’t know what he does?’ Now Mario was baffled. ‘He cooked the food you’re eating. He’s my head chef!’

Pascoe and Diane were stunned. Dad had never said anything about being a head chef. When they explained how they knew Dad, Mario laughed and invited them into the kitchen where Dad was still working.

‘Tony!’ Pascoe gave Dad a hug. ‘You were pulling my leg, mate! You told me you made spring rolls here. How ridiculous!’

Their lifelong friendship formed then. Whenever my folks needed them, Diane and Pascoe were there. They’ve since retired and moved to Denmark, a few hours south of Perth, but they keep in touch and my parents will always be indebted to them for their support in those early years.

Meanwhile, with Trevor becoming a toddler, the small apartment at Highgate was becoming a little tight. Mum and Dad wanted more space, but before they started house hunting, Dad did some research, asking locals which suburbs were good and which weren’t so good. At the time there were pockets of Perth that were dominated by Vietnamese refugees, who chose to live in those suburbs because it was familiar and comfortable. They would see the same Vietnamese faces every day, people who would understand their culture; it was easier to mix with one another.

But my parents wanted to plunge into the Aussie culture and lifestyle. They had plenty of Vietnamese friends, but they wanted to meet all kinds of people, especially in a country like Australia. They wanted their children to grow up among non-Vietnamese families, to integrate with the Western community. They also wanted to make it easier for their children to fit in.

Mum and Dad say they didn’t experience any racism during their early days in Perth; there was no such thing. They said people understood their situation, and were so welcoming, generous and sympathetic everywhere they went. They were treated no differently to anyone else. But my parents were realistic about racism and knew there were some people who wouldn’t appreciate them being in Australia.

Their main priority now was setting up a life for their children—they didn’t want them to feel left out or judged. So they bought a block of land in the northern suburbs, in an area named Hamersley. It’s about 14 kilometres from the city and just 6 kilometres from the ocean. It was still a fairly new suburb, about ten years old by the time my parents moved there. In 1982 they built a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home. They were literally the only Asians in the neighbourhood.

My parents also wanted to have another child. Now that they had this big home, they wanted to fill it. A year later, on 4 November 1983, I arrived. Mum and Dad felt complete. They had their own home and two healthy children, one boy and one girl. It was perfect.