Thuyen Vi-Alternetti’s journey to Australia as a baby was one full of hardship and danger.
Unseaworthy boats, unscrupulous people smugglers and even pirates were real and pressing dangers for refugees escaping Vietnam after the war.
However there is one story from the trip Ms Vi-Alternetti took with her mother as a one-year-old baby that still brings a smile to her face.
"Mum describes it as the moment she knew that we were destined to be safe," Ms Vi-Alternetti says.
"She was holding me because I was very young, and we were on the upper level of the boat.
"She must have fallen asleep, and she dropped me.
"But somehow I managed to drop on to a gentleman on the bottom deck who was quite large, and I actually bounced on his belly! His belly saved me.
"She was so exhausted, and she woke up to someone yelling, ‘has anyone lost a baby? Because it’s down here!’
"Mum said that’s when she felt like someone was looking after us."
Born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1977, Ms Vi-Alternetti fled Vietnam in 1978 and has no memory of her birth country.
Her father had left six months earlier, landing in Darwin with no worldly possessions beyond a single shoe.
"My grandparents, my dad’s parents, were very scared about their children’s future so they actually split up the family," Ms Vi-Alternetti says.
"Some kids went to Australia, some went to America and the youngest two children and two daughters who were already married stayed in Vietnam.
"My grandfather had lived through the rise of communism in China and he was very fearful of what might happen to his children and future generations."
Ms Vi-Alternetti says her mother was then faced with a dilemma – stay in the only country she’d ever known or take her one-year-old daughter and attempt to escape communist Vietnam to reunite with her husband.
She says she’s still amazed by the courage her mother, who was only in her early twenties at the time, showed.
"My auntie on my mum’s side, she sold up and gave all her money to people who just basically ripped her off, and she ended up back in Vietnam with nothing," Ms Vi-Alternetti says.
"So many stars had to align for my mother to be able to navigate our safe journey to Australia where we were able to reunite with my father and have this safe life, one of many opportunities."
After making it from Vietnam to Malaysia on the boat, Ms Vi-Alternetti and her mother spent 12 months in a refugee camp before finally getting the go-ahead to fly to Adelaide to reunite with her father.
"There is a photo of mum and I in that camp in Malaysia and every time I look at it, I just get tears in my eyes thinking about how amazing she was and how much courage she had," Ms Vi-Alternetti says.
She says her first memories of Australia were the smells – the smell of the thick, foggy steam in the shared bathrooms of the Pennington Migrant Hostel and the smell of an unknown food known as Chiko Rolls being fried in the hostel kitchen.
After the hostel Ms Vi-Alternetti and her parents moved into their first home in Bowden, not far from the Clipsal factory where her parents worked.
And she still has very clear memories of the kindness shown to them by the family who owned their rental home.
"I can’t remember if they were Greek or Italian, but they invited us over for Christmas and we had no idea what Christmas was even about," Ms Vi-Alternetti says.
"But they invited us into their home and they had Christmas gifts for us and I think that helped us feel like Australia was going to be a good place to live."
Ms Vi-Alternetti said she soon adjusted to Australian life, with her best friend in primary school introducing her to two distinctly Aussie treats – summers in a shack at Wallaroo and pavlova.
"My parents went on to have two more children in Adelaide, so after being the only child for six years of my life I suddenly had two younger brothers," she says.
Ms Vi-Alternetti went on to study international business at Flinders and marry her high school sweetheart and having two children of her own.
The General Manager, Infrastructure and Environment with the Rural City of Murray Bridge, Ms Vi-Alternetti is currently a Board Member with the Local Government Professionals (SA), the Sector Lead (Local Government) with South Australian Leaders of Gender Equity and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, as well as being a member of the SA Multicultural Commission.
And in 2016 she wrote another chapter in her migration story by returning – for the first time – to Vietnam.
"Up until then I had never really had a sense of belonging to Vietnam," Ms Vi-Alternetti says.
"To be there, with my mum and my dad and my kids and my husband, it was just a beautiful feeling that I’ll never forget.
"I’d always considered myself Australian. But flying into Vietnam I had this overwhelming feeling that I was coming home.
"My family story is not unique. There are so many other refugees that have their own story and I think it's only fitting that this year's Refugee Week theme is A Million Stories.
"I encourage everyone to open the dialogue, you never know what you might learn."
Click here to find out what Refugee Week activities are happening in your area.
