He was only six when they made the journey so he doesn’t remember much. But standing on a hot field in the regional area of Albury-Wodonga, on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, Rohit Khulal tries to trace his mind back.
“We had to leave the country by force,” he says, flicking a fly from his cheek.
“I was the youngest in the family and my dad… he put me on his shoulders, on the top of a bag, and then we came by walking and then by truck.”
The family belonged to an ethnic Nepalese minority group the Lhotshampas, from the southern part of the country, and were among thousands who fled Bhutan in the 1990s after the Kingdom allegedly branded them “illegal migrants”.
The family sought refuge in a Nepalese refugee camp, where Mr Khulal lived for 20 years before being resettled in Australia in 2013. His mother and brother are still there.
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He says most of the people inside the camps had worked on farms before fleeing Bhutan.
“Our parents used to talk about how they used to work in the fields…they used to tell their stories like how they used to sow the seeds of the corn or how they used to harvest the rice.”
Today, Mr Khulal is one of two Bhutanese refugees running a garden project in a large area of public parklands in Albury-Wodonga. The project is aimed at getting local Bhutanese involved in community, particularly elderly refugees who often struggle with language barriers.
Mr Khulal believes they will benefit from working on the land as they once did in Bhutan.
"We may bring our parents here so that they can remember those days and forget the sorrow and sufferings that are filling in their hearts.”
New community
Mr Khulal is one of more than 1000 Bhutanese refugees to be resettled in Albury in the past seven years.
The first group of 22 refugees were brought to the area in October 2008 and the community has been built up from there.
They came to the area after Australia, along with seven other countries, agreed to take part in a program to resettle the thousands of Bhutanese refugees from 2007.
The refugees had been stranded in the camps for decades - unable to return to Bhutan or be resettled in Nepal - so third-country repatriation was the only option.
Since then, Australia has resettled 5554 Bhutanese refugees, Canada 6500, Denmark 874, New Zealand 1002, the Netherlands 327, Norway 566, the United Kingdom 358 and the United States 84,819, .
"We may bring our parents here so that they can remember those days and forget the sorrow and sufferings that are filling in their hearts.”
The Multicultural Council of Wagga Wagga, funded by the Department of Social Service, has facilitated the resettlement in Albury.
Belinda Crain, a manager with the council, says the Bhutanese community makes a positive contribution to the local community bringing economic benefits and diversity.
Albury City deputy mayor David Thurley says the program is now winding down because there are far fewer Bhutanese refugees in need of resettlement.
But he says it has been a major success for Albury and serves as a model for resettlement as Australian prepares to welcome 12,000 refugees from Syria.
Secondary migration
Many of the Bhutanese refugees in Albury went straight into schooling after missing years of education in the camps.
One of those students is Ram Khanal, who was born in a refugee camp in Nepal after his parents fled Bhutan.
“The conditions were quite terrible,” he says. “I remember that my parents had a very difficult time to keep me and my siblings alive.”
At 16, Mr Khanal was brought to Albury with his family, where they still live today.
“When I first started at a local high school, I remember I could hardly speak any English and I had a difficult time understanding the system, how the school works,” he says. “But I realised that it was a wonderful opportunity for me to achieve my potential.”
“I remember that my parents had a very difficult time to keep me and my siblings alive.”
Mr Khanal was named dux of his high school two years after arriving. He later completed a Bachelor of Medical Science at Australian National University in Canberra and now acts as the vice president of the Bhutanese Association of Albury.
He says a wave of secondary migration is taking place where more Bhutanese people are moving from other major cities to the Albury-Wodonga region.
“It speaks a lot about the Bhutanese community in Albury-Wodonga and also about the local community and support services,” he says.
Mr Khulal is still hoping his mother will be brought out to Australia so she can join him and his wife and daughter in Albury. His brother is also in a camp and he says it is not uncommon for family members to be resettled at different times.
Mr Khulal's grandmother lives at home with his family in Albury. Source: SBS
After arriving in Australia, Mr Khulal studied organic farming and now wants to use the skills to help older Bhutanese refugees in Albury.
“Our parents have the knowledge of farming but they don’t have the technology,” he says.
“In new country, new technology, new Australia we are trying to teach them here so that later they may get jobs in other farms as well.”
“They are our parents, they have looked after us. This is our time to look after them.”
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