Rural Australians for Refugees Apollo Bay branch welcomes new arrivals

An Apollo Bay woman is among rural residents reaching out to help refugees settle in Australia and has even written a book on the subject.

Welcoming smile: The Apollo Bay group of Rural Australians for Refugees, which Ali Corke founded, is one of 40 around Victoria. Picture: Andy Rogers

APOLLO Bay’s Ali Corke was watching the TV news in 2009 when an item caught her eye.

“There was a little asylum seeker boat overturned in the Indian Ocean and I watched and thought, oh I hope they’re all right,” Ali recalls.

A few weeks later, just after she had gained qualifications to teach English as a second language, Ali received an email asking whether she would like to be a pen pal to an asylum seeker.

The result changed her life and that of her family forever.

Ali ended up corresponding with Para Paheer, who had been rescued off that asylum seeker boat in the Indian Ocean and was then housed in detention on Christmas Island.

Not only did Para become a pen pal, Ali lobbied the Federal Government to secure his release, ever since welcoming him — and his wife and children — as members of the Corke family.

All in the family: Ali Corke, pictured with her dog Ed, founded the Apollo Bay group of Rural Australians for Refugees. Picture: Andy Rogers

Ali then founded the Apollo Bay Rural Australians for Refugees branch of the national organisation and finally, more recently, ended up writing a book with Para — called The Power of Good People — about how Para survived Sri Lanka’s 30-year civil war, which killed more than 100,000 citizens.

Since their first introduction in 2009, she says, they wrote to each other daily.

“From the first email I told him he should think of me as his Aussie mum because he was about the same age as my three daughters,” says the grandmother of five.

“The next morning he wrote ‘dear Mum’. Initially he was so traumatised he wasn’t capable of sharing his story to me. He had been in the water nine hours after the boat had overturned and he was traumatised from that.

“But he had also fled Sri Lanka after beating beaten, tortured and imprisoned there during the civil war.

“Being in detention on Christmas Island was also difficult — not as difficult as for those on Nauru or Manus Island — but when he was downcast I’d write to him that it is important to keep happy.”

For two years Ali lobbied the Immigration Department, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and various immigration ministers to secure community release for Para, welcoming him into her Apollo Bay home in 2011, and six years later welcoming his wife Jayantha as well as their son (they now have another child).

Para is now studying nursing at Deakin University and living with his wife and children in the Corkes’ other home in Geelong, while working at Geelong Hospital.

“He’s like a brother to my daughters and a lot of my friends do this. A friend in Queenscliff has a Tamil boy living with them,” Ali says.

She says that having grown up in the UK, the daughter of a World War II pilot who reluctantly bombed Germany, she was always reminded by her parents “how lucky we were”.

“We weren’t rich or poor, but my parents always felt lucky to be alive and have survived the war.”

Ali had her first insight into the difficulties living in a foreign country when she and her physician husband Charlie moved to work in Hong Kong and then Australia in 1986, with Charlie initially establishing intensive care units in hospitals in Melbourne and then Geelong.

The Corkes moved to a small property in Apollo Bay a decade ago and Ali says while she is passionate about many issues, Rural Australians for Refugees is close to her heart.

Around Victoria there are more than 40 RAR groups, in addition to other rural groups such as Grandmothers Against Detention of Refugee Children.

RAR was founded in Bowral NSW in 2001 as a way for country people to make a difference, with Aireys Inlet the first Victorian group.

The Apollo Bay group has about 70 members and holds events such as film nights and fundraisers, providing money as well as groceries for asylum seekers whose visas prohibit them from working or who are struggling to make ends meet.

They also constantly write to and phone the offices of the Immigration Minister and Prime Minister to push for more humane treatment of refugees.

“I believe it’s all about doing what you can, when you can. Knowing there’s someone out there who is cold, lonely, hungry and desperate and I can do something to help,” Ali says.

“The poet William Wordsworth wrote about the ‘little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love’ and that’s appropriate to everything people in RAR do. They just help out where they can, seek out — rather than avoid — people who need help and do for others what they would like done for them.”