KHOA Do, a young Australian who fled his native Vietnam with a boatload of his family and friends in 1980, was in Brisbane earlier this month to share his inspirational story with tomorrow’s Catholic leaders.
And what a story it was.
Khoa was born in Vietnam in 1979 and he and his family arrived in Sydney as Vietnamese refugees in 1980.
About 500 senior student leaders from throughout the Brisbane archdiocese listened in rapt attention as Khoa told the story of how his parents and brother joined 36 other family and friends and fled Vietnam in a 9m boat.
He recounted the voyages journey as it had been told to him many times in the years since.
“As we pushed out in the boat my Dad actually turned around and took one last look at his home country knowing he’d never see it again and my Mum recalls him crying because he and my uncles were leaving a country that for 10 long years they had fought so hard to defend,” he said.
He told students setting out as boat refugees brought its own host of dangers.
Khoa said after one day at sea the boat began leaking, after two days the engine failed and the 9m craft began drifting.
“On the third day we were hungry and we were thirsty,” he said.
“We were running out of food and water when suddenly we saw a boat come towards us in the distance.
“We were so happy thinking we were saved and we jumped up and down calling for the boat’s attention but as it got closer and closer we realised it was a fishing boat and at that point in time, in that part of the water it meant only one thing – pirates.”
Khoa said after ramming the refugee boat the pirates boarded the craft, lined all the occupants up on the deck, stripped them and searched them before taking everything they had.
“They’d even taken our compass,” he said.
“Mum had brought along some infant milk to feed Anh (brother) and I on the journey and they even poured that out in their search for gold and jewellery.”
Khoa said despite the ordeal the refugees were fortunate as the pirates hadn’t taken or harmed any of the women.
He said over the next several hours everyone on board hoped and prayed for a miracle as they continued to bail water and the boat continued to drift.
“Eventually we saw another boat come towards us but it wasn’t the miracle we were hoping for, it was another group of pirates, this time more vicious than the first,” he said.
Khoa said what happened next had been retold to him hundreds of times over the past 30 years.
He said the pirates followed the same procedure as the first group.
“We had nothing left for them to take and they weren’t happy and what’s more they didn’t believe we had nothing left,” he said.
He said the pirates then grabbed the youngest child on board and held him overboard, telling the refugees if they didn’t divulge the location of their gold and jewellery the boy would be thrown overboard.
Khoa said even to this day the refugees have no idea why the pirate didn’t throw the boy overboard, but instead flung him back on deck.
“That little boy was me,” he said.
He said eventually the refugees were picked up by a German ore freighter that gave them food and water and then took them to Malaysia where they spent several months in a refugee camp.
When news of resettlement came through the family had been accepted as refugees to Austria and on the following day also to Australia.
Khoa said his father had heard a lot about Australia while still home in Vietnam and he chose Australia.
He said this wasn’t the first time the family had fled.
“Before 1954 we were from the North but, because we were strongly Catholic, when the Communist government moved in the North we were forced to flee, along with all the other Catholics, so we fled down to the South and when the war was over we had to flee again,” he said.
Once in Australia the family did it tough for much of Khoa’s younger years but he was keen to point out to the Brisbane students that when faced with the greatest challenges, opportunities emerged.
Khoa received a scholarship to attend St Aloysius’ College, in Milsons Point, Sydney, graduating in 1996, and he went on to study Law and Arts at the University of Sydney.
After three years’ study he decided he didn’t want to be a lawyer and instead wanted to move into film.
That proved to be a good call as these days he is a well known and highly respected actor, writer and director. He received the Young Australian of the Year award in 2005 for his “leadership, compassion, and will to inspire and inform Australians on issues that affect our communities.”
Since 2001 he has won a significant number of industry awards for his film projects and writing.
Projects such as the The Finished People in 2003 have combined his passion for social justice and the industry.
“It began with the Catholic upbringing and having such a strongly Catholic family,” he said.
“After school when I got into my study and the arts I thought if there is a way in which I can combine both my passion in social justice with making a living and so on, that would be wonderful.”
These days, Khoa told the students, he does just that.
He spends half his time working on his passion projects – with the current one being a film with African refugees in Melbourne – and the rest of his time is spent on professional projects. His latest feature film is to be released soon.
Khoa called on all Australians to give all people a chance.
“Every refugee has the same dream of making a good life for themselves in Australia and if we can help refugees in achieving their dreams then overall as a country we will be much better off,” he said.
Khoa was also keen to offer students a few hints on how to realise their own dreams.
“We should focus on what we have rather than what we’re lacking and we should be grateful for it but too often we forget that,” he said.
“We are not here for a long time, we shouldn’t take our lives to seriously, we should enjoy it.”
Khoa said everyone could do amazing things with their lives if they focused on what they had and on the good in others.
“One of our roles I believe is to help others achieve their potential and in doing that we’ll achieve ours,” he said.
