By Jewel Topsfield
A hostel in Springvale was the saviour for 30,000 migrants.
CAMBODIAN refugee You Horn Chea calls it "the day we came to heaven". Others describe it as paradise. "We were lost at sea for nearly one month with no food and no water and robbed by pirates twice," says Vietnamese refugee Be Ha. "When I woke up I thought, 'Wow, what a luxury! It was unbelievable.' "
These six women were among 27 pregnant women who arrived at the hostel from East Timor in 1975.
In truth, the Enterprise Migrant Hostel in Springvale was not utopia. Interpreters were not always available, the food was unfamiliar, the rules were rigid and the showers were communal. The orientation did not include basic information such as how to flush toilets or the difference between cold and hot water taps. Bewildered residents mistook toilets for washing machines and had no idea what to do with strange implements called forks.
Cambodians who had spent years in primitive refugee camps often learned painful lessons about hot water. But for 30,000 migrants and refugees from 58 countries who stayed at the Enterprise between 1969 and 1992, it was a place of refuge. Mrs Ha's eyes still well with tears when she talks about it. "It was my first shelter in Australia people extended their heart, their mind to us," she says.
Merle Mitchell is a former director of the Springvale Community Aid and Advice Bureau, which was established in 1970 to provide services to migrants.
"The Enterprise Hostel changed the face of Springvale," she says. In the early 1970s the local mayor encouraged migrants to build their own places of worship, arguing this would make new communities feel welcome and older residents more secure. The council turned a blind eye when a Buddhist temple was established in a home on Princes Highway, even though it was in a residential area.
"All this was quite unique," Ms Mitchell says. "In the 1970s, the word multiculturalism hadn't even been thought of."
When 27 pregnant refugees arrived from East Timor in 1975, Anglican church women knitted layettes and gave each a bassinet. Volunteers held English classes and established a sewing group.
Ms Mitchell says that because Springvale was so welcoming, many of the migrants who passed through the Enterprise settled in the area.
The City of Dandenong is now the most multicultural municipality in Victoria, home to people from more than 150 backgrounds.
Ms Mitchell believed the story of the Enterprise was such an important one she successfully applied to hold an exhibition at the Immigration Museum.
"The hostel's history presents a fascinating window into the changes in Australia's immigration history from the 1970s to the 1990s as its residents changed from predominantly assisted migrants to refugees and then to detainees," says the museum's community exhibitions manager Briony Galligan.
English assisted migrant Evelyn Edie is one of 70 former residents who tells her story in A Worthwhile Enterprise: The Migrant Hostel in Springvale, which opens on Monday.
The Enterprise was established to help encourage skilled migrants to Australia by providing modern accommodation. Mrs Edie, her husband and son were part of the pioneering first intake of Enterprise residents, arriving on Christmas Eve, 1970.
The couple paid $27 a week for their keep, plus an extra dollar a week for their own toilet "an incredible luxury". The communal laundry became a classroom.
"When we did our washing, we used to hold up a shirt, and everyone would say what a shirt was in their language. "Children of all nationalities would play together they didn't need to know any English," Ms Edie says.