Small Bamboo (32 page)

Mum with her first scooter in Vietnam, 1974.

My mother Lien (left) at work in a pharmacy in Saigon, 1974, the year before she started working on the black market.

The Vo family at Uncle Three’s home in Saigon, 1970. Dad (second row, far left) is the boy wearing a red tie.

A day at Vung Tau beach. Dad, 15 (far right), with his sister, brother and nephews, including (from left) Uncle Twenty (third from left), Uncle Seventeen (fifth from left, wearing the hat) and Aunt Fifteen (sixth from left).

Dad loves the ocean, and as a teenager he would try to swim every day. Here he is at Vung Tau beach in 1970, at the age of 15.

Dad, 16, sitting at the bar in Uncle Three’s home in Saigon, 1971.

Dad, 17, with his sister, Aunt Sixteen, 1972.

Dad’s confirmation card after completing his re-education training under Communist rule, 1975.

Mum and Dad in the doorway of their unit at Graylands Migrant Hostel, their first home in Perth, in 1978. Mum is wearing the white cardigan Dad had bought for her in Kuala Lumpur.

Mum and Dad chilling out in their room at Graylands, 1978.

This photo was taken in 1979 on the front lawn of Aunt and Uncle Five’s home in Melbourne, during Mum and Dad’s first visit, when they decided not to move there. My parents are in the back row with Uncle Twenty (third from left), Aunt Five (third from the right) and their nieces and nephews.

Dad as a chef in 1979 at the Underground, where he saw Kiss.

Our first family photo, 1984, when I was just four months old and Trevor was four.