Calling Australia Home: Our newest Australian citizens revealed
In the lead up to Australia Day, The Australian has profiled people and families who will take out citizenship on January 26. Here are their stories.
In the lead up to Australia Day, The Australian has profiled people and families who will take out citizenship on January 26. Here are their stories in our special series for 2020.
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ANNA LUEDI (originally from Munich, Germany)
Anna Luedi fell in love with Australia during family trips Down Under as a child, but it was not until she met the love of her life here that she knew it was destined to become her new home.
“We had often travelled to Australia and I loved it very much here,” the Munich native said of her childhood holidays.
“I loved the Great Barrier Reef. I loved the beaches. I loved everything about Australia so when I did my gap year, I thought it was quite a good idea to come for a few months and chill out in Australia.”
■ Read Anna Luedi’s love story here.
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SANG VAN LE, TRINH MONG THI, KHOA TRAN LE, THU ANH TRAN LE (originally from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)
Sang Van Le and his family have achieved the Australian dream just six years after migrating to the lucky country.
He and wife Trinh Mong Thi, son Khoa Tran Le and daughter Thu Anh Tran Le will become citizens on Sunday along with more than 27,000 other new Australians.
The family bought a home in the suburb of Hillside in Melbourne’s outer northwest just 18 months after they migrated to Australia from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.
“We had to pick between two lives in two places,” said Mr Van Le. “I know that the values apply here and can you imagine what it was like when we came here?”
■ Read Sang Van Le and his family’s full story here.
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ZAINAB SYED (originally from Peshawar, Pakistan)
Zainab Syed brings an extraordinary range of experiences for a 28-year-old lover of poetry from Pakistan.
She was in Peshawar in 2015 when hundreds of children were gunned down by terrorists. She responded by setting up Pakistan’s first national poetry slam “as a way to go into schools and teach children how to respond constructively to the violence and insecurity around them”.
A job offer sent her parents and two brothers to Australia while she completed studies in Britain and the US. Arriving in Perth in 2016 was hard, she said, until she found a role as a performance poet and writer and a human rights observer with Red Cross in Perth’s detention centres.
■ Read Zainab Syed’s full story on her new life in Perth.
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MARY and ALFRED MICALLEF (originally from Malta)
They have long called Australia home but it has taken Mary and Alfred Micallef 50 years to make it official.
After watching their two children and five grandchildren grow up in Melbourne, the Maltese-born couple will become Australian citizens on Australia Day.
Ms Micallef said Australia long ago replaced Malta in her heart as her home country. “It was always on our minds to do it but I think we were lazy because we should have done it a long time ago,” said the 68-year-old.
■ Read the Micallefs’ story on their journey from Malta to Australia.
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HARRIET SWATMAN (originally from London) and THUTHUKA MANASA (Zimbabwe) and their children Matobo and Magnus
Born in Denmark to a Danish mother and Zimbabwean father, Thuthuka Manasa moved to his paternal homeland at the age of six.
In the 1980s, Zimbabwe was in its prime, having been liberated from British rule at the beginning of the decade.
It was in 2004 when he met his wife-to-be, Harriet Swatman, in a bar in London … and back then, thoughts of moving to Australia were far from both their minds.
■ Read Harriet and Thuthuka’s full story on how they came to be living in Brisbane.
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THE KUMESH FAMILY (originally from India)
Australian slang can be a tough barrier for most migrants, but Mukesh Kumar says his love of cricket gave him and his wife more than a sporting chance of grappling with the nation’s fair dinkum vernacular when they moved to Sydney.
Mr Kumar and his wife, Shilpi, moved to Australia in 2010 on a temporary visa with every intention of staying a few years before returning to their native India.
That plan changed after they fell in love with the country’s democratic values like freedom of speech and gender equality — an issue all the more important since they had two daughters here.
■ Read the Kumesh family’s full story on how they came to be living in Sydney.
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MICHAEL KEATING-KEARNEY (originally from Ireland)
Cricket, a few beers, and some chill-out time in the jacuzzi.
You could not ask for a more typical Australia Day … except Michael Keating-Kearney will be experiencing it all while surrounded by icebergs in Antarctica.
The Irishman is set to become the newest Australian citizen — and one of its most remote — on January 26, in one of the most extreme citizenship ceremonies on the planet when he is sworn in from the nation’s southernmost territory.
■ Read Michael Keating-Kearney’s full story on his journey to Australian citizenship … via Antarctica.
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AMY NOSIKE (originally from England)
Amy Nosike is already living the ultimate Australian lifestyle: she lives by the beach, spends countless hours outdoors with her kids and volunteers as a surf lifesaver in her spare time.
The only thing missing is an Australian passport — and she is looking forward to rectifying that on Australia Day.
The Briton came here more than six years ago, joining a legion of others from her country of birth who’ve made the same trans-continental migration.
■ Read Amy Nosike’s full story on her journey from Britain to the beaches of Newcastle, NSW.
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HELEN ZHI DENT (originally from China)
As a teenager, Helen Zhi Dent began studying English in China’s Shandong province so she could sing along to George Michael’s Careless Whisper.
Little did she know that 25 years later she’d be living in Sydney, singing along to the Wiggles and about to become an Australian citizen.
While there are many things she likes about Australia, Ms Zhi Dent thinks it’s the best place in the world to raise her three-year-old son, Ollie, who was born in Sydney.
■ Read Helen Zhi Dent’s full story on how Australia has given her opportunities she could never have dreamt of in China.
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THE ALLAM FAMILY (originally from Hyderabad, India)
Raju Allam knew of Australia through the lens of Bollywood when he moved to the country for an IT job in 2010.
“I play cricket a lot, so whenever anyone spoke of Australia, I thought of cricket and kangaroos,” he said.
Now acquainted with more than sports and animals, the 39-year-old is set to become a citizen on Australia Day at his local council in Parramatta, NSW.
He’ll share the day with his wife, Jhansi, 33, and daughter Aashika, 6, who will also become citizens. The couple also have a 10-month-old daughter, Avianna, who was born a citizen.
■ Read more about how the Allam family transitioned from life in Hyderabad … including how they’re now supporting Australia over India in cricket.