Rose memorial for hostel

By Nicole Williams
A ROSE garden greeted newly arrived migrants to the Enterprise Hostel in Springvale for more than 20 years, so it is fitting the tribute to the popular hostel will be a rose garden at the old Enterprise Hostel site.
Local resident Merle Mitchell has been collecting donations from local businesses to install the garden, matched dollar for dollar with government funding.
On Wednesday morning, all the donations were in and were enough to fund the $100,000 garden installation.
“When we consulted with the community, people asked for some permanent and physical acknowledgment of the Enterprise,” she said. “People said the most vivid memory was the rose garden because when they arrived off the bus, often from war-torn places, there was a beautiful rose garden which gave a feeling of peace.”
Greater Dandenong councillor, and former mayor, Youhorn Chea got his first start in Australia at the Enterprise Hostel with his wife and four children after arriving from Cambodia.
Cr Chea said the rose garden would be great recognition of the valuable role the Enterprise played in the community.
“It’s a good way to recognise the Australian Government who provided a settlement service to the refugee and migrant people,” he said.
The Chea family stayed at the hostel for 12 months after being badly treated at a refugee camp in Thailand.
Cr Chea said the hostel had everything anyone could need when arriving in a new country. “It was fantastic because they provided a lot of services for the refugee people,” he said.
Despite coming to Australia with an engineering qualification, Cr Chea studied welfare studies and has worked with the Cambodian Welfare Association since 1991; the association contributed to the cost of the garden.
Geraldina Alvarez-Podlete arrived at the Enterprise Hostel from Chile in 1975 and said everyone who stayed at the hostel remembered the roses.
“One of the things that a lot of people who lived in the hostel remember was the roses – an amazing garden of roses,” she said. “It stayed in our minds because if they could look after the roses so well, then they could look after us. The garden will recognise the contribution of migrants who stayed in the area.”
Ms Alvarez-Podlete stayed in the hostel with her then-husband for seven months before establishing a life in Springvale.
“Most of us believe that good start influenced how we settled into the community – because we had such a good start,” she said.
“Most migrants don’t have extended family here, so those families we spent time with at the Enterprise are our family now.”
She still lives in the area and now works as a community worker at a migrant refugee centre, New Hope Foundation.
Treloar Roses will also produce a new rose, The Enterprise Rose, which will be launched at the 2012 Melbourne Flower and Garden Show and will feature in the rose garden. The garden will take pride of place on the grounds of the Lexington Gardens Retirement Village, which Ms Mitchell said would hopefully be opened by the time the Enterprise Rose was launched.
It will feature a Digiglass structure surrounded by a rose garden and a fountain as the centrepiece – a place Ms Mitchell said would offer a place for reflection.