NORTH Gambier Primary School was full of music and dance on Saturday night as hundreds of people gathered to celebrate 10 years since the first Karen and Karenni families settled in the Blue Lake city.
Sharing their culture with the wider community, representatives of the Karen and Karenni communities extended their thanks and gratitude to those who have helped ease their transition to a new life in Australia.
Although now living happy and successful lives, their past remains full of fear as they fought to keep their families safe for many years.
Leaving their home country of Burma and escaping across the border to Thailand, many spent most of their lives living in refugee camps.
Moving to Australia in 2009, Win Naing still has vivid memories from his 13 years in the camp with his family.
“Many of the people who live in the camps had their relatives killed by Burmese soldiers, some of their children were captured and forced to be soldiers, some of them have been killed by land-mines and many survived, but some lost a leg or arm,” he said.
“We got food rations from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) of rice, beans, fish paste, oil and charcoal and once a year we got wood and bamboo to build houses.”
While Win said there were schools and hospitals in the camps, strict rules were in place and they were punished if they did not abide by them.
“People are not allowed to leave to go outside to work, people cannot go out at night after 9pm and visitors from outside the camp are not welcome because the Thailand authority doesn’t want people to know about the problems in the camps,” he said.
Luckily for Win and his family, in 2009 they were given the opportunity to settle in Australia, first in Adelaide and then in Mount Gambier.
Here the Karen and Karenni community was already growing with thanks to the then Mount Gambier Migrant Resource Centre manager Heather Muirhead.
There from the beginning, Ms Muirhead played an important role in settling the first two families in Mount Gambier in June of 2007.
“I know both families suffered greatly from culture shock, I can’t understate that – they were the first Karen families here, there was no one that looked familiar to them, they didn’t have food they liked, everything was different,” she said.
“They took a big risk staying with us, it would have been so easy for them to go to Melbourne or Brisbane where there was already established communities, but they trusted us and stayed put and I’m really glad they did.”
Honoured to have been a part of the settlement in Mount Gambier for almost five years, Ms Muirhead said she was very fortunate to have been given the job.
“I’ve watched the families grow in confidence, go onto further education, gain citizenship, gain employment, start their own businesses, buy houses and become an integral part of the community,” she said.
“We in turn have been blessed to be able to share in their culture, especially the music and food.”
Contributing to the Mount Gambier community, the Karen and Karenni arrivals have overcome challenges to support themselves, from undertaking apprenticeships to opening their own businesses.
“We are proud of what we have achieved in the past 10 years and we thank the local Australian community for welcoming and accepting us in this beautiful city,” Win said.
