MORE than three million people, mostly Vietnamese civilians, were killed in the Vietnam War (1955-1975), where North Vietnam fought South Vietnam and its allies — including Australia and the US.

In the years that followed the harrowing conflict, more than a million people escaped Vietnam by air, land and sea in fear for their lives. There have been three major waves of Vietnamese refugees in 1975, 1978, and in 1979 to suburbs like Ferryden Park, Croydon Park, Woodville and Pennington.

Thuan Nguyen, 50, escaped communist Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1978 with his parents and two sisters. His father fought the Vietcong — and the new regime put their lives at risk. Forty years later, he lives in Ferryden Park with his wife and two children.

VIETNAM

We were peasants, working in the field as village people.

We grew rice. That was 90 per cent of the occupation in Vietnam in the fields, basically to grow things we could survive on and eat and if we had spare we could sell it.

At 10 years old we decided to escape.

Politically, my dad was a soldier in the old regime so there was always a threat he could go to jail at any time.

Say the government came in and said they needed a volume of grain. If you said no, you’d go to jail because of his involvement.

We had the opportunity to buy the boat without the engine. Ninety per cent of people in Vietnam wanted to leave but nearly two million escaped.

In 1978, we bought a little boat ourselves and then we got other people to pay with gold bullions.

Say we had a family of ten, and we would use all that gold to buy the engine and then we get a captain. If his family had five people, we’d let him go for free so his job was to get us out.

ON THE BOAT

About 70 people booked to go illegally and we got together in one place at night and just silently left.

Other people heard about it and just joined in the line and then we ended up with 130 people sitting in there like sardines.

No one knew what would happen. It’s a bit like going to Mars. When we got out to the sea, we didn’t know what it was going to be like.

We were very lucky there were no waves or wind. It was very calm.

There were a few hundred thousand people who died at sea. They couldn’t find anybody to rescue them and food was low so the weakest were going to die. You were thrown out to sea or eaten.

The people on these boats, the majority of them came here with mental illness.

We were lucky, but there were a lot of unlucky boats. Some of them ate human flesh — they had to.

The food we brought was about a week’s worth. Two weeks of petrol was in the boat. That’s like a bomb.

But after three days a Norwegian boat rescued us.

You could be resettled in Singapore, Indonesia and some other country.

Luckily we were brought to Singapore, which was the nicest place.

We would get three Hong Kong dollars per day to live.

It was like a detention centre. You had to report in and out. There would have been about 10,000 people.

We lived comfortably and people who were lucky got a shack, otherwise they lived in a common place like a big shed.

We got a room about the size of a toilet block and set up a coffee shop in the detention centre.

Then we bought a tape recorder and my father got Vietnamese music to sell and we made quite a lot of money.

Three months later we came here to Adelaide because anybody who knew anybody here could get out.

AUSTRALIA

My dad chose Australia because it’s a big land so we could come here and go to the jungle and make some space and grow stuff ourselves like we did in Vietnam.

When we came here, that was not going to happen.

Of course there was prejudice, but it just depends who you hang around with.

Aussies are not prejudiced. Maybe about 20 per cent are, but you don’t care about them. You go with somebody else who is not prejudiced.

Some people can’t overcome it, but I can because I don’t care. Just go somewhere else where somebody wants you. Why do you need to be with someone who doesn’t want you?

We were in the Pennington Hostel for three or four months with three meals a day cooked by the government and they paid for us to go to school.

We moved out to rent a three-bedroom house in Kilburn for about $60.

In 1983 or ‘84 the government had a scheme where we could get a home, so we bought a house in Salisbury Downs but my dad didn’t have a job.

We paid it off pretty quickly because he went to work on a farm.

I finished school in 1987 and studied to be an electrician and accountant — everything. But because I had no idea, I just studied what my friend told me.

Then my older sister moved to Melbourne and she said, “I’ve got you a job”.

She found me a job in Melbourne so I borrowed my dad’s car and drove there and went to the Crown Casino to work.

They paid me to train for three months and after that I got a job.

I worked there for three years and almost became a supervisor.

One of my friends said “why don’t you go back to Adelaide”, because then everybody in my community loved their music and they needed Asian and Vietnamese music.

It started with the karaoke wave, so he told me to go to Adelaide and open a video and music shop.

So I quit my job drove here and I didn’t have any money. Dad gave me the house and then I got $70,000 cash from the bank which I spent in about two weeks in 1994 to set up the whole shop.

I paid the loan off in about three years and owned the shop for about 10. I only had one day off each week.

I bought a house and after 10 years the shop owner wouldn’t resign the lease, so I closed it down, put all the money in the bank and went on holiday for three-and-a-half months.

When I came back, downloading was starting to take off so I couldn’t reopen the shop and I spent about four years at home. Semi-retirement, I called it.

My wife told me to find a job so I became a mortgage broker. After that, a friend in Sydney told me to go into fruit and veg and I’d make a lot of money, so I said “OK”, bought a van and started delivering to shops.

There was one whose contract was up in a year, so I waited, got the shop and mainly sold Asian fruit on Hanson Rd.

It was the only place that sold sugar cane juice and it made a sh**load of money. It was 300 per cent profit.

I had that for four years but my wife and I argued a lot because I was working seven days a week and my son is autistic, so I sold that two years ago and made a lot of money.

My daughter can be anything she wants. I will show her how to make money. It’s not about study or the job, it’s about making money.

Traditionally people go to school, get a degree and die. But my dad didn’t teach me to be like that.

There are positive people and there are negative people. I’m one of the positive — and no one can change my mind.

Find a taste of Vietnam in Adelaide

• Vietnamese Community in Australia canteen, 62 Athol Street, Athol Park
• Mai Kitchen, 34 Wright St, Ferryden Park
• Adelaide Pho, 199 Waymouth St, Adelaide
• Pepper Leaf, 1328 North East Rd, Tea Tree Gully
• Banh Mi K, 615 Lower North East Rd, Campbelltown

Significant days on the Vietnamese calendar

• Tet: February 5. The Vietnamese celebrate the new year based on the beginning of spring according to their calendar.
• Lim Festival: February 18. Celebrated on the 13th day of the Lunar year, the festival dates back 300 years and features a special folk song.
• Reunification Day: April 30. Marking the end of the civil war in 1975,
• National Day: September 2. The date President Ho Chi Minh declared independence from France in 1945.