Making Australia HOME: Refugees

Public Lecture | Updated 1 decade ago

Compilation of portraits of Carina Hoang and Jana Vodesil-Baruffi
Carina Hoang and Jana Vodesil-Baruffi
Images courtesy of Carina Hoang and Jana Vodesil-Baruffi
In this final conversation in Curtin University’s Making Australia HOME series, you’re invited to hear former ABC reporter Verity James discuss the hardships experienced by Vietnamese boat person Carina Hoang and Czech refugee Jana Vodesil-Baruffi, and their joy at making Australia their home.

A free event, no RSVP required.

HOME interview speakers

Carina Hoang

Carina Hoang demonstrated amazing courage by escaping war-torn Vietnam on a wooden boat with her two younger siblings and 370 other people when she was just 16. She then had to endure ten months in a refugee camp in Indonesia. Hoang’s on-going work as a publisher and refugee advocate saw her publish her award-winning book Boat People in 2011, a moving account of the Vietnamese boat people experience during the late 1970s and 1980s.
 
Hoang has become an influential advocate for refugees and helps Australians to understand the issues surrounding the modern-day boat people arrivals and shares the experiences of Vietnamese boat people with students and adults.
 
Since 2009, Hoang has committed to return annually to the sites of former refugee camps on now-uninhabited islands in Indonesia, to help Vietnamese families from France, Canada, Vietnam, Australia, and the USA, search for graves of loved ones who died during the exodus.
 
Hoang has received numerous accolades for her work with refugees including being inducted to the Western Australia Women’s Hall of Fame in 2011, and a nomination for the 2012 Western Australian of the Year Award.
 
In 2012 Hoang was appointed as Special Representative to the UN Refugee Agency’s Australian charity, Australia for UNHCR.

Jana Vodesil-Baruffi

Jana Vodesil-Baruffi is a freelance artist, muralist, teacher and gallery owner, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1957, when the country was ruled by the Communist Party and belonged to the Eastern Bloc. Vodesil-Baruffi ‘s mother worked for the Secret Army as a clerk, and her father was a Doctor of philosophy and an army Colonel whom she credits for igniting and supporting her interest in art, which was to become her vocation.
 
Of her country’s political turmoil, Vodesil-Baruffi says she was “blissfully unaware of what was going on politically and economically until I was 11. It was the year 1968 when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia”. She notes how government-imposed restrictions bred corruption, which lead to “decadent and immoral behaviour as people surrendered to the basic pleasures of alcohol and promiscuity”.
 
At the age of 23, dissatisfied and unhappy with life in Czechoslovakia, Vodesi-Baruffi escaped through Yugoslavia without informing her family. She and her husband were given prison sentences in absentia. Her parents and brother were forbidden from communicating with her and lost their employment positions.
 
After three and a half months in an underground refugee camp enduring fear and intimidation, she was able to settle in Perth. This saw her life change for the better the moment she arrived. She notes that she “felt overwhelmingly grateful and still continues to feel so today”.

About the HOME interview series

The History of Migration Experiences (HOME) Centre at Curtin University, in conjunction with the Western Australian Museum, is hosting this series of interviews with prominent migrants who came to live in Western Australia. The HOME Centre is part of the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute (CUSP).