Her image remains clear in my memory. Short, stocky, confident, cheerful, voluble, Vietnamese-born and now Australian citizen, this remarkable woman, named Ut [pronounced as in ‘put’] has a dramatic life story. I met her when in Queensland recently visiting elderly in-laws. Ut cooked and cleaned for them for many years. They were thoughtful and generous to her when she started with them, and now that they are in their aged and frail years, though Ut no longer works for them, she still ensures that they have fresh cooked food every day.
Ut is the second youngest of 11 children born to a Vietnamese businessman and his wife in Saigon. The family was torn apart by the war in Vietnam when the family lost everything. By 1979, Ut was married and she and her husband (Be -pronounced 'bear') became ‘boat people’ desperate to leave their devastated country and try their luck in a new home. But only two days out at sea, their small craft was pursued and sunk by pirates. Their escape had become a horror trip and Out and her husband thought all was lost.
Fortune smiled at that moment. A passing US troop ship saw them, rescued them and had them taken to a refugee camp in Thailand where they stayed for 12 months. Then they were offered asylum in Canada or Australia. They chose Australia.
For several years, Ut worked as a domestic [where she met my in-laws] and in food kitchens in Cairns while she learnt the basics of English. She still speaks with a strong Vietnamese accent and requires close attention to be understood, but her strong personality is irresistible. With great humour and many words, she describes the effort she and my then younger in-laws made to communicate with each other, growing fond of each other in the process. She was a kitchen hand in a local café at the same time and it was then that her employers discovered she knew how to cook delectable Vietnamese food. ‘When I was a child,’ she says, ‘ I would watch my mother do our cooking. None of the other kids was interested, but I was, and I learnt what to do.’
As a result, Ut was promoted to restaurant chef and her fortunes began to change. She was able to send money back to remaining members of her family in Vietnam and to others in the US, to assist them to buy houses, to visit them and while there buy artefacts to sell in a small and profitable business arrangement she had established in Cairns. She continued to work very hard, branching out into buying and managing her own shopping mall take-away Vietnamese food outlet and took on several cleaning jobs in schools and homes at the same time.
Ut’s outgoing warmth and almost palpable energy at first daunted me, especially when she began describing in very casual terms the real estate wheeling and dealing she and her husband now do ‘on the side’ of their other work. Early on, they found time to become parents to a son and moved on to buying run down homes, living in them while they renovated and then selling at a great profit. I admired her business skills and said so. Out said modestly, ‘My father was a business man. I learnt all I know from him. My brothers and sisters weren’t interested.’ Clearly, she loved her father. When she learnt he was dying shortly after her arrival in Australia, she longed to be by his side, but immigration authorities did not permit her to return home so soon, even on compassionate grounds. The sadness sits like a stone in her heart.
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| Bruce, Ut and Mandie |
- Bev Cameron