From refugee camps to hope: How Townsville multicultural support group builds community of thousands
Hundreds of refugees land in Townsville every year. Read the stories of these two men from one of the most disadvantaged countries on Earth.
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A support group for Townsville migrants is set to move into a new, bigger building as they continue their important work helping ease the transition for new arrivals.
Townsville Multicultural Support Group chief executive Stephanie Naunton said more than 6500 people currently received language, accommodation, work and support services from the group’s 56-strong workforce, and the expectation is the new office building on Charters Towers Rd will be fitted out by the end of the year.
Support group president Cathy O’Toole said they’ve wanted a larger premises for a while, and noted some of their success in courses teaching women how to start their own catering and hospitality businesses.
“They’re just 10-foot taller,” Ms O’Toole said of the effect the course has on the their self esteem.
Townsville man David Njabra is just one of thousands of people helped by them every year, and spent 13 years in a refugee camp, where he married his wife, before moving to Australia.
He hails from the Central African Republic, as does fellow North Queenslander Adam Mahamat.
Mr Mahamat, 22, settled in Townsville in February 2020. He is working for the multicultural group translating French, Arabic, Sango (the co-official language of the Republic, along with French) and English, doing shifts at The Ville and has dreams of becoming a doctor.
In 2013 violence in the Republic spiralled as the President was removed by a rebel group.
Civil War ensued and about 1.4 million people were displaced during spurts of political violence in from December 2020 to February 2021.
The Russian Wagner Group was in the country last month for security during a contentious referendum vote.
Mr Mahamat grew up in the capital city Bangui and remembers as a child seeing armed groups terrorising families and businesses, taking whatever they pleased, and killing anyone who tried to stand up for themselves.
Mr Mahamat is Muslim, and remembers seeing a total lack of humanity on the faces of the ‘anti-balaka’, a mainly-Christian terrorist group.
“Whatever you have, people will take it away from you and they will kill you. They will say nothing about it, they will kill children. It was not good,” Mr Mahamat said.
The mostly-Islamic terrorists – the Seleka – had similarly terrifying auras, he said.
Mr Mahamat and Mr Njabra both spent years in refugee camps in the neighbouring country of Chad.
Mr Mahamat, his parents and five brothers lived there for five years. His only sister died of illness, aged five, before they got to the camp.
Mr Njabra spent even longer in a refugee camp. He married his wife there during their 13-year stay. He could only do intermittent farm work and had six children to feed.
“It was hard, got nothing to do, no job, just stay at home all day,” Mr Njabra said.
Mr Mahamat tells his friends back home that Australia is “a nice safe place to be, if they have any opportunity to come I tell them please come (as) they can have a better life here”.
He still misses some of the benefits of home. In the Central African Republic you could just walk into the doctor, with no need for an appointment, he said.
In Bangui he could blast music as loud as he wanted at any hour of the night, unlike Australia.
Townsville Multicultural Support Group is a not-for-profit organisation, subcontracted by Multicultural Australia to welcome people who arrive through the Federal Government’s Humanitarian Program.
The group has helped about 80,000 people settle in North Queensland over the past 30 years.
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Originally published as From refugee camps to hope: How Townsville multicultural support group builds community of thousands
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