Malaysian  beach shots

Music

00:00

DAI LE:  The quiet shores of north east Malaysia are serene and inviting.

Perhaps the least likely place for a maritime tragedy.

But more than a quarter of a million people headed here on their voyage to a new life.

Many would never make it.

00:15

Music

00:36

Dong

DONG:  The tears come and I cry. I can’t control it.

00:39

File footage. Boat escapees

DAI LE:  It was the late 1970s and the communist takeover of Vietnam prompted the biggest nautical exodus of refugees in modern history.

They were to endure treacherous seas, hunger, thirst and attacks by pirates.

00:47

Boat people greet Dai at airport

Now, after building successful lives in Australia, some of the boat people are heading back to retrace their odyssey.

01:08

Many of the people you’re about to meet haven’t spoken of their experience, not even to their own families.

They’ve come here to revisit some of their darkest days, but also to celebrate their new lives.

01:22

Ominous clouds

01:37

Hoang and Be on bus

DAI LE:  Far from the comfort of their home in Melbourne, Pham van Hoang and his wife Be are about to confront the most painful day of their lives.

02:01

Malaysian beach

In late 1978 the couple and their four children set sail from war torn South Vietnam on a fishing boat owned by Hoang.

02:12

Fishing boat/ Hoang and Be walk along beach

On board, were more than three hundred paying passengers.

HOANG: So many boats left Vietnam

02:24

and many disappeared at sea, and so many lives were lost.

02:28

DAI LE:  After four days sailing they arrived at this beach, only to be turned away by Malaysian soldiers who fired into the water.

That night, while anchored off shore, a thunderstorm swept in.

02:37

Hoang and Be

BE:  There was one small lifebuoy. My husband, Hoang, told me to carry my youngest child, our son, and jump into the water to swim.

02:51

Super: Re-enactment

Music

03:08

Re enactment, child crying

HOANG:   Our boat was sinking because so much water was coming in.

03:15

Hoang and Be

The boat was crumbling, and so I said everyone has to try to swim ashore.

03:20

Re enactment

Music

03:26

DAI LE:   Hoang took his wife and two of their children to the beach.

Malaysian soldiers were already there,  stealing jewellery from survivors and the dead. 

But the storm was so severe, Hoang could not return to save seven year old Oanh and three year old Le.

03:

Hoang and Be

BE:  I felt traumatised, how can I express it? I felt that if I had wings, I’d fly out there to rescue to my two children. 

03:58

Re enactment

Music

04:08

Hoang and Be

HOANG:   It was two days later, that we went to pick up the bodies.

04:14

Re enactment

And that’s when I saw my children, because they had worn the same clothes.

04:21

Beach

Music

04:26

Buddhist ceremony

04:33

Mass grave. Hoang and Be at ceremony

DAI LE:  At a mass grave several kilometres from the shore, they’ve returned for the first time to see where Hoang buried his own children.

04:41

Hoang at grave

HOANG:  Number 23, 24… they’re my children. When we

04:56

Hoang and Be at grave site with Dai

came in here it was all bush.  Just with my hands I took them and put them here - all the people here - and I  put the dirt over just with my hand.

05:04

Grave site

DAI LE:  One hundred and twenty three people from Hoang’s boat are buried here.

The grave site was overgrown and almost lost until a group of Australian  Vietnamese boat people got together.

Led by Dong Tran, they set about collecting information to allow the visitors to retrace their journeys. 

DONG TRAN:  Most of them,

05:23

they are proud they are refugees

05:47

Super:
Dong Tran
Historian

and they want to bring their children and they want to tell them about the history and about the difficult days when they set their first steps on the shore of freedom.

05:51

Lim meets Hoang and Be

DAI LE:  They were painful first steps for Hoang and Be, but they met someone else who was there on the day in 1978.

Malaysian businessman Lim Bo Ye helped carry the bodies to their resting place.

06:10

LIM BO YE:  Even up to now if I think about that day I cannot stand it, I keep crying, I cannot, cannot imagine when that time happened.

06:28

Dai with Hoang and Be at fence

DAI LE:  Hoang and Be took me to what was once the refugee camp where they spent the next two years waiting to travel to Australia.

The camp is now a women’s prison, and from the outside, virtually unrecognisable.

06:57

DAI LE:  And how do you feel coming back here now?

HOANG:  I feel very sad.

DAI LE:  Sad?

07:16

Photo of Hoang and Be’s family in camp

BE:  When we first got to the camp, I was in shock because I had just lost two children.

07:24

Hoang and Be

I was emotionally devastated. I had to pull myself together

07:33

Photo of Hoang in camp

otherwise I would have gone mad.

07:42

Modern mosque

Music

07:48

DAI LE:  The Malaysia of today is much different than the half way house it was for boat people in the 1970s and ‘80s.

07:53

Malaysian traffic

Of the more than one million Vietnamese who left across the ocean, two hundred and fifty thousand arrived here.

08:04

Malay flag/Muslim women

Music

08:12

DAI LE:   At first the Malaysians had a so called ‘push back policy’ to turn boat people away.

But after 1978, officials housed them in camps while their claims for refugee status were processed.

08:18

On boat to Bidong

08:33

Hue and Hans on  boat

Many boat people found themselves on a tiny island called Bidong.

On this day, Hue Nguyen from Melbourne is heading back to where he spent time waiting to be resettled.

HUE:  Today I still feel very emotional,

08:38

and it’s very moving.

08:54

Hue and Hans on island

DAI LE:  Hue has brought his 19 year old son Hans, whose American mother worked for the UN’s refugee agency on the island. 

09:00

Super: Hue Nguyen
         Former refugee

HUE:  Everything is in ruins now.

HANS:  Did Mum work here?

HUE:   I believe so. And that’s where your Mum stayed whenever she came here to screen the Vietnamese boat people.

09:16

Hue and Hans

HUE:  People were mainly happy because they got what they wanted, they escaped Vietnam and the high seas, storms and the pirate attacks, so people were generally happy.

09:36

File footage. Super:
ABC-TV News, July 1980

NEWSREADER:  The refugee island of Bidong off the Malaysian coast in the South China Sea…

HUE:  The night belonged to rats. When you came out at night

09:49

Hans and Hue on island

you could find rats everywhere. So many of them.

10:03

ABC TV File footage

NEWSREADER:  One of the effects of the continuing refugee outflow has been an effort by the refugees themselves to better their own lot in  camps like this.

10:08

Derelict house

HANS: Actually it’s really emotional just to see.

10:18

Hans and Hue. Super: 
Hans Harland-Hue
           Son of refugee

I’m just really curious and fascinated in our culture and background.

10:22

Houses on former site of camp

And also the background of my entire family, my mum too, she was here.

10:30

Dong Tran with former refugees at camp

DAI LE:    Dong Tran and his amateur historians want this place to be heritage listed.

The last of the refugees only left here in 1991, but the jungle has reclaimed much of the camp.

10:37

Dong Tran with former refugees on  beach

For three years running Dong Tran has brought former refugees back to the place where he too spent time after fleeing Vietnam.

DONG TRAN:  I spent more than ten years attempting to escape unsuccessfully -- four times caught by the Vietnamese government put in jail.

10:58

Super:
Dong Tran
Historian

Once you step from the hell to the paradise, although it is a small paradise, but paradise is paradise.

11:22

File footage. Boat people at sea

Music

11:35

DAI LE:    Hundreds of thousands of boat people would not survive the voyage.

Across the South China sea, pirates raped and murdered refugees,  they plundered and sank the tiny fishing boats.

Thousands more perished because they were pushed back to sea by hostile governments.

11:40

Thao Ma with Dong Tran on island

Thao Ma has come to Bidong island with her two sisters to visit the grave of her brother. 

12:06

Thao Ma with Dai. Shows photos

Loc Ma had become delirious with thirst on board his boat. He made the fatal mistake of jumping overboard to drink.

12:18

THAO MA: Loc, her brother was a very sweet and gentle guy and he was very much loved by his sister’s and his parents. He has escaped 16 times, and this was his 16th escape, and he died once he got to Bidong Island.

12:28

Gravediggers digging up bones

DAI LE:  The sisters have come to take Loc home.

THAO:  Now I feel happy

12:45

Super:
Thao Ma
Former refugee

because I remember him for 24 years, now I’m very happy.

12:55

Burning money

DAI LE:   Thao and her sisters perform a traditional Buddhist ritual of burning money.

13:07

So Thao arrived here a month after her brother in 1984,

13:12

Dai and Thao

and he was already dead and buried here. It was a mound of dirt when she arrived she got it built,

13:16

Gravediggers digging up bones

cemented and had a tombstone built.  She personally engraved her brother’s name and details on this tombstone with a piece of stick from this area.

THAO:   Now I take home the body

13:22

Thao

to take back to Vietnam.

13:42

Thao at gravesite

DONG TRAN:  A lot of people, because of “push back”, passed away and sank in the open sea.

13:48

Super:
Dong Tran
Archive of Vietnamese Boat people

We want to revive the stories we want to make public we want as many people to know about that as possible.

13:58

Hoang and Be walk along beach

DAI LE:   For Hoang and Be, the couple who lost two of their four children on this beach, the return to Malaysia has given them a chance to grieve.

14:09

Hoang and Be’s Melbourne home

After settling in Melbourne, the family  built a successful business in hot bread shops.

14:25

Family sitting around watching video of trip

DAI LE:   Now retired, their comfortable lives are shared with their four children, including daughter Kellee and son Kim, who survived that fateful day. 

14:34

A son in law and grand daughter completes the family.

14:50

Be

BE:   Going back there, I feel a burden has been lifted.  I was able to see Le and Oanh’s gravesite after 30 years of wishing and thinking about them.

14:58

Kellee. Pan to Be crying

KELLEE:  Well now that you’ve been there, you know where your two daughters are now, you’ve been there you’ve seen their names on the tombstones. They’re resting there now. You’re very lucky to know that they’re there.

DONG:  The first generation, they spend time to work hard to settle,

15:18

Dong Tran

the second and third generation, they try to integrate into the new society, and the fourth and fifth generation on, their tendency is to look back.

15:40

Sky/Beach

Music

15:58

Hoang and Be walk along beach

DAI LE:    It was a long and dangerous journey for one hundred and thirty seven thousand boat people who were to later become Australians.

16:05

Hans and Hue on Bidong Island/Be

After thirty years of living for the future, some at least have become more accepting of the past.

16:17

Credits

Reporter : Dai Le

Camera: Simon Beardsell

Editor : Garth Thomas

Producer : Trevor Bormann

16:34