By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
FOR former Vietnamese refugee Be Ha, her 35-plus years of ongoing charitable and community-minded work is payback.
The Greater Dandenong Community Hall of Fame inductee still feels indebted for the kindness and sacrifice that allowed her to escape from communist Vietnam in a small fishing boat with her husband, two children and sister in 1979.
The 150 passengers had just a week’s rations of food and water.
Ms Ha said it was a “miracle” that they arrived in Australia despite towering seas, pirates and near starvation.
It was amazing to see the bright lights of Melbourne after Vietnam’s communist regime had consigned them to poverty, stealing their land, homes, money and choices, she said.
“I felt reborn.”
She is overcome with tears when she thinks back to the fishing boat’s captain.
He had bravely led a mutiny against the Thai pirates who captured all the men and left the women and children to starve on the fishing boat.
While stowed in the hull, the young captain, with three other captives, jumped the pirates. In the scuffle, the captain was slain by a pirate’s sword.
“If it were not for their sacrifices, we would have surely died,” Ms Ha said.
There’s special mention to the kind Captain Sloan on the British cargo ship Entalina who later rescued Ms Ha and the other passengers from starving after a month on the sea.
“Many, many ships passed by without rescuing us.
“On the day he rescued us, the sea was very rough. As the last of us was rescued, a great big wave came and took out the fishing boat.
“It was a miracle of God.”
From that came her determination to pay it forward to those who “opened their hearts”.
She, like many refugees, wanted to help build the country that has given them a new home.
Her first stop, after quarantine detention, was the Enterprise Hostel in Springvale in 1980.
There she and her family made life-long friends, practised English, learnt new skills and foods and what it meant to be Australian.
“We painted dreams for our new bright future,” she said.
In 1982, she and her friends started several not-for-profit organisations including Springvale Indo-Chinese Mutual Assistance Association (SICMAA).
To this day, SICMAA delivers help to the Vietnamese community, such as its large numbers of problem gamblers and, until recently, ice addicts.
Ms Ha, the organisation’s president, said many Vietnamese families had been destroyed by pokies.
It had spurred family violence and ensnared even professional adults into financial ruin.
She recently refused to write a letter of support for Springvale RSL’s push to increase its poker machines, despite the RSL helping her establish a community garden.
“I said no way. You’ve helped me but that’s just a drop in the ocean.
“Our people have suffered enough.”
Ms Ha continues to fight for government funding to revive SICMAA’s ice-addict counselling program.
She argues the $70,000 annual cost is more than repaid by helping young people become drug-free.
She has also founded the Hoa Nghiem Buddhist temple in Springvale, initiated and run the Springvale Children’s Festival, and is treasurer of the Vietnamese Cultural Heritage Centre including the Vietnam War memorial at Dandenong RSL.
Her other causes include Melbourne’s Vietnamese Lions Club branch, the state’s Vietnamese Community in Australia chapter and tin-rattling for the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal.
It’s been hard to balance her community devotion with her family life, but her children support and take part in her charitable work.
There is an overarching pride in her work, of continuing to pay back the freedom and kindness she has received.
“People accepted me like a good Australian person, not just as from a community overseas,” she said of her life in Springvale.
“Everyone is equal.”
