177 Nations of Tasmania

Jeff was born in Toronto and came to settle in Launceston via Western Australia and Hobart, for a combination of lifestyle and work reasons. He met his Australian wife on a flight from Vancouver to Mexico when he was still a medical intern and she was doing a ski season in British Columbia.  They would later marry and he moved with her to her hometown of Perth. Jeff's a skin cancer specialist,...

Carole grew up in Brussels in a cosmopolitan neighbourhood in a country in which the two major cultural and linguistic groups have lived side-by-side for a long time. Growing up in this environment, Carole speaks of having to be open to differences in others and this can be seen no better than in her advocacy for her son Lio, born just before the Covid lockdown in Tasmania and diagnosed with Down&...

Anna's story highlights how complicated defining "nationality" can be sometimes, and though I'm trying to use a standard based on the Australian Census's "Country of Birth", there is a category "Eastern Europe, not fully defined", showing that many people in Eastern Europe throughout the 20th century were displaced or found themselves within changed border...

Jenny or Yenni was born into a Hungarian family in the eastern part of Slovakia, then part of the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Jenny was a child when Soviet tanks occupied her home town of Kosice, and then grew up as part of the first generation of "socialist youth" in post-war Czechoslovakia.  Things were going well until the "Prague Spring", initiated by the Slovak President o...

Ukrainians have a long history of settlement in Tasmania, being amongst the earliest groups of post-war European migrants to settle in Tasmania. But nowadays, this migrant community is relatively small and elderly.  However, Darya is one of the new generation of Ukrainians to now call Tasmania home, after coming here on a Prospective Marriage visa. Darya's childhood was spent mainly in Kyiv in...

It would be hard to imagine finding anyone else coming further away to be in Tasmania than Ivalu. Hailing from Greenland, the world's largest island on the far north of the globe with a sparse population of around 55,000, Ivalu talks about the experience of growing up in this remote and unique place.   Ivalu had already travelled widely before she came to settle in Tasmania several years ago -...

James grew up in the Malaysian province of Sarawak in Northern Borneo. Although James comes from Chinese heritage,  Sarawak's population is culturally diverse and the festivals of each major ethnic group are celebrated by all.  With a strong interest in Malaysian elections, both personally and academically, James was drawn to Tasmania by a work opportunity at a South-East Asian Studies Centre...

With a librarian mother, Edward's early life was immersed in books, and planted a seed of curiosity to see the world outside his own country. Growing up in an English-speaking environment that was heavily influenced by British culture, meant that Edward has not felt the "culture shock" so much of adapting to places, and he has a lived in a few before Launceston. In fact, Edward has found much that...

So what associations come to mind when you think about Brazil ? Sun, samba and soccer, perhaps ? But as well as that it's a big country geographically and one of the most diverse racially and culturally on earth. Ariana is a rare example from the people I've talked to, in that she both aimed to come to Tasmania and was able to secure a job here before moving, which took many attempts over 9 months...

When Anna and her husband visited Tasmania for a short holiday several years ago, they had not imagined they would be coming back to live, but a year later Anna's husband was offered a job at the University of Tasmania and they decided to come and give it a go.   Although the cultural transition has not been too massive, there have been some notable cultural differences to adjust to, especiall...

Jaewon first came to Australia as a student, looking to improve her English in Melbourne, but in the process met the man she was to marry. They lived in the Middle East and South Korea before her husband got a job in Launceston, a place Jaewon knew nothing about beforehand. Having young children though has helped get to know people in the local community and build a social network, but Jaewon had...

Melika and her husband came to Tasmania in what proved to be the most challenging time imaginable - 3 weeks before Covid-19 hit Australia fully and the international and state borders were slammed shut.  Neither of them had a job and wear very worried that finding work was going to be very challenging. Things worked out for Melika, finding work within a month, but were much more challenging f...

Arman was brought up in a fairly small, rural area of Bangladesh, but was sent to school at a competitive cadet college ( a kind of boarding school) at 12 years of age, surrounded by ambitious high achievers.  Arman has set his sights on getting into the army, but when his efforts failed his self confidence, sky high until that point, took a  hard hit. Being forced to taste failure for the first t...

Eri comes from the old Japanese capital of Nara - a small peaceful city which could represent a picture postcard of traditional Japan. But the path Eri has followed has been anything but traditional and has brought her to Tasmania via Germany, England and India.   Eri was always interested in dance, but only learnt of the field of dance psychotherapy while living and working in Germany and this la...

Helena and her husband were living an idyllic lifestyle breeding horses in rural Czechoslovakia and looking forward to buying a rustic old property to set up their own horse-breeding farm, when a fatal accident triggered a series of events that would change the course of their lives and lead them to Tasmania.  After their manager was killed in a car accident, his replacement, an ardent Communist p...

The Cold War and the Soviet era can feel like ancient history for some people, but for Olga and Yuri the oppresson of Soviet Russia is still part of their lived experience.   After  being involved in political activities in Russia, they were subject to threats from the KGB, job loss and imprisonment, and then experienced a wait of many years to get out of Russia and discover the Wes...

German left Venezuela in 2015, before the economic, social and political situation seriously deteriorated. His reasons for leaving were more related to a love of travel than the situation in the country that has caused many Venezuelans to leave in the past few years. After some time in the USA, German was thinking to go to South Africa where he new people, but his girlfriend persuaded him to follo...

The township of Cygnet and the Huon region in which it lies were both named by French explorers in the 18th century, so it seems an appropriate place for a Frenchwoman to have settled down in.  Catherine moved here 9 years ago with her husband and the area bears many similar features in common with her birthplace in Normandy - the apple orchards and cider, the cows in green paddocks and even...

Nicolas was born in a small majority Christian town in Palestine, but when he was 2 his family left for Chile, where they had long-standing family connections. In fact, migration from Palestine to Chile has a history going back to the 1920s.     Although the family settled in Santiago,  Nicolas never felt like it was quite home, and as an adult returned to Palestine to reunite with family and to w...

When Boyd arrived in Australia with his family at 18 years old, his father's first act, perhaps a symbolic one, was to take the family out for a seafood lunch and told his children that Zimbabwe was where they were brought up, but if anyone asked to say "Australia is my home now".   Advice Boyd credits with helping him settle down in the new country much quicker.   Years later he re...

Dona grew up in small village in the Philippines where just getting to school required  deep commitment - literally, as kids had to cross a river with no bridge to get to their primary school.   Dona had a strict religious upbringing, but broke family traditions and expectations by not marrying a pastor, rather she found love online with a man in Tasmania. In 2005, she came to Tasmania knowing not...

When Paola left Argentina for the first time having just finished uni studies, she never expected she would have ended up at the bottom of the world in southern Tasmania.   The plan had actually been to backpack around Europe and go back to Argentina,  but a 500 km walk on the Camino in Spain with an Aussie guy she met travelling lead to a kind of spiritual awakening, falling in love and then movi...

Elaine arrived in Tasmania in 2013, when her husband got a position in the Philosophy Department at the University of Tasmania. Originating from a small town in the "Rust Belt" state of  Ohio, she came via Melbourne ( 19 years ) and London, looking for a change and a place to concentrate on her writing. Americans now make up Tasmania's 7th largest migrant group,  and it's a group that ha...

After Carlos's mother remarried and relocated from Peru to Tasmania in 1972, 12-year-old Carlos was meant to follow. His visa application was rejected and Carlos was left in the care of his elderly grandmother who was too old to look after him properly.   Carlos, though a victim of polio at an early age had made him lame, lived a privileged early life, but left to educate himself through his high...

Like many other recent migrants, Carlos was drawn to Tasmania by the regional migration programme, after spending a year in Melbourne.  He and his wife had decided to leave Colombia 4 years ago to seek a safer and more secure life in Australia.    Carlos bought with him much experience working in social projects in Bogota,  but with few employment opportunities in Tasmania...