By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
TIMES were so different when 30,000 migrants found refuge in Springvale’s Enterprise Migrant Hostel, says its champion Merle Mitchell.
When the hostel was open between 1970-1992, there was a welcoming and bipartisan attitude and policies of successive governments, she says.
“Malcolm Fraser’s government said we have to do something about refugee camps in Malaysia and Hong Kong. In one year we took in 15,000 refugees – and the sky didn’t fall in.
“Those people were made welcome.”
Ms Mitchell said in providing a service, you had to look behind the problem and find the cause. Then you can set a policy to improve things, she argues.
More people, including refugee agencies, needed to speak out against more recent government policy, she says.
“I think it’s absolutely vital that agencies keep bringing to the fore that the difficulties they are facing are not created by the people they’re helping.
“It’s been created by the government policies put in place. So in a way the community has to take some responsibility that we’ve allowed governments to do that over the years.”
Ms Mitchell has been part of the Enterprise since the start and she continues to promote the hostel’s salutary story as convener of a wide-spanning history project.
She says many residents and leaders in Springvale were instantly welcoming to new arrivals.
Springvale mayor Andrew Erickson told new arrivals they were part of this community and to “keep your language, keep your social clubs and keep your places of worship”.
From that wellspring, the voluntary Springvale Community Aid and Advice Service – of which Ms Mitchell was a director – a migrant host scheme and the nation’s first interpreter service were forged.
Greater Dandenong has since flourished into one of Australia’s most multicultural communities.
“It made us the interesting place and vibrant community that we are. Someone said to me I just have to sit down in the street in Springvale and I’m surrounded by the world.”
Isabel Stix has been a proud ‘mother’ to many hundreds of orphan refugees at the Enterprise in the 1980s.
She recently moved back to the site, now occupied by Lexington Gardens aged care home.
“It’s like I’ve put my roots back into the ground.”
She still keeps in touch with her ‘children’, many whom have formed their own families around Springvale. But when they first arrived they had nothing but the clothes on their backs and knew no-one.
Ms Stix said it was a struggle at times looking after up to 15 children “who had no families, care or love”.
“It’s a nice thing to see someone come with nothing then they do their studies and work and they have their own families. They are very happy.”
She looks back to the days of the Enterprise as the “greatest time” and wonders how Australia could employ a “shocking” regime against asylum seekers.
“I wish they could continue the Enterprise, that sort of support for people coming here. You have to teach them about starting anew in a new culture
“If you put them in one house by themselves, it’s a disaster.”
