By CASEY NEILL
TWO Springvale sisters are helping Victoria’s Vietnamese community mark a major milestone.
Thao Phuong Le, 21, and Xuan Phung Le, 20, appear in a photograph on display at the Vietnamese in Australia: 40 Years of Settlement exhibition.
It opened at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne in November and marks four decades since thousands of Vietnamese people started landing in Australia in 1975 after the Vietnam War.
The organisers want the migrants’ descendants to understand their roots and the wider community to understand their stories.
Thao and Xuan became involved through volunteer work with the Dual Identity Leadership Program, a Vietnamese Community Australia – Victorian Chapter initiative.
“We’ve graduated from the leadership program but we’re still involved with the community,” Thao said.
They helped out with the Tet Festival for Vietnamese New Year and a soup kitchen project.
“We were bringing Vietnamese cuisine to the homeless,” Xuan said.
An Immigration Museum photographer captured the image of the sisters that appears in the exhibition.
They’re standing in front of a stained glass window in Monash University’s Robert Blackwood Hall.
Thao finished a Bachelor of Science majoring in physics and mathematics at the university last year and this year moved on to a masters of physics with plans to complete a PhD in the field.
Xuan is half way through a double degree in science and biomedical science.
“Our family’s always been a sciency family,” Xuan said.
Their parents fled from Vietnam after the war.
“They went by boat up to Hong Kong and from there they got to a refugee camp,” Thao said.
“They went to the Philippines, where I was born, and after that they moved over to here.”
Springvale was their first home and where the sisters have grown up.
“I never felt like the odd one out,” Xuan said.
They planned to visit the exhibition as a family, though the gravity of the milestone hadn’t hit home.
“I think it will be important in retrospect,” Thao said.
Vietnamese in Australia: 40 Years of Settlement is on display until 30 June at the Immigration Museum, 400 Flinders Street, Melbourne.
Phone 13 11 02 for more information.
