Escape From Vietnam

Overview

Because my father cannot tell me this story himself, my mother often tells me about my father’s journey to Australia as a Vietnamese boat person. She talks about this era in fragments: some are told in vivid detail, so much so that I suspect that she is exaggerating. Some are both inspiring and terrifying and help me appreciate my life in Australia. Some are left unsaid because she does not know. It’s this missing link that I look for in stories about boat people from Vietnam — stories that only my father could have told me.

Escape From Vietnam is a collection of thirteen photographs from the Archive of Vietnamese Boat People that do exactly this. While seemingly few in number, the collection covers much of the lives of Vietnamese boat people in their journey to freedom. From floating in rickety, overcrowded fishing boats to building shanty towns out of wood and plastic salvaged from the ocean; from constructing primary schools to receiving vocational training; from performing wedding rites to marching in funeral processions. While each photograph differs in time and place to the next, all point toward a brighter future.

Here, boat people gamble away all they know, hoping for a glimpse of a brighter future. People who once lived in mansions huddle under huts made out of coconut palm fronds on the Philippines’s Luband Island; huge families for whom space was once no issue cram their lives into five cardboard boxes. Yet, even without this material wealth, the most striking thing about ‘Escape From Vietnam’ is the dignity that its subjects retain. Even when 40,000 people are crammed into a square kilometre on Bidong Island in Malaysia, even in conditions where 200,000 or more perished to drowning, hunger, thirst, malaria, and cholera, chins are held high and eye still bring smiles from the homeland.

Every person brings a story, and all of these stories form a culture. And, when a boat of Vietnamese people brandish the flag of South Vietnam upon rescue by the relief organisation Cap Anamur, it’s clear that they have embedded their journey into their culture – one defined by hope, sacrifice, endurance, and new beginnings.

Escape From Vietnam is a powerful collection whose opening marks Refugee Week. It celebrates the triumph of the human spirit against all adversity by focusing on the plight of just one culture of the people who sought a better life here. It is a reminder of the rich histories and unfathomable struggles that each person carries every day.

Image 3 Refugee camp on Bidong Island Malaysia 1981 provided by the Australian National Maritime Museum.