Meet the people
In a celebration of our cultural diversity, photographer Michel Lawrence spent two years taking portraits of more than 220 people, from 190 countries. The result was a stunning exhibition, titled All of Us, held at Federation Square during March 2008. Click here to find out more about Michel Lawrence.
As a follow up of the All of Us exhibition, the Victorian Government has developed a television and print advertising community harmony campaign to convey that Victoria is a state built on diversity and that this has made us a much better, stronger community. It emphasises that maintaining this harmony is a shared responsibility. The campaign illustrates the diversity of the Victorian people; engenders a sense of pride in being Victorian and shows us all that diversity is inclusive.
Meet some of the people who feature in the campaign below.
Wezoor Jibril Lovegrove - Ethiopia
Born Jimma, Ethiopia, 1999
Arrived in Australia 2002
Wez is of the Oromo people of south-west Ethiopia and has the large, vibrant eyes that distinguish his race. Both his parents died six months after he was born. He spent his infancy in an orphanage until he was adopted by his Australian parents after a lengthy process. Wez arrived in Australia with no English but has learned well. While now speaking English without a trace of any accent, he is keeping up his own language as well. His mother, Nico, is involved with a group of parents of Ethiopian children who are working to ensure they maintain a sense of the culture into which they were born.
View the print advertisement featuring Wezoor (JPG 535kb).
Aruna and Usha Rumney - India
Born Madras, India 1948
Arrived in Australia 1973
Aruna comes from a large professional Indian family. After completing her basic medical degree in Madras, she headed to New York, where she trained in paediatrics at the Beth Israel Hospital. After two years there, Aruna decided she needed to take 12 months off to go travelling and, towards the end of that time, ended up in Australia. She was offered a job in psychiatry and took it up after being granted a work visa. Completing her psychiatric qualifications in Melbourne, Aruna has practised here as a psychiatrist ever since. As she and her husband, Clive, were unable to have children, they decided to adopt an Indian child. With some serious research and the help of her family, Aruna found Usha in an Indian hospital; she had been abandoned by her birth mother. Under Hindu law, and because of her own Indian heritage, Aruna was able to adopt the child. ‘My family all decided that this was the child for me’, she says. “She even looks like me, so they were right’. Usha is now a secondary school teacher specialising in business management.
View the print advertisement featuring Aruna (JPG 635kb).
Elva Zhang - China
Born Hang Zhou, China, 1983
Arrived in Australia 1999
Elva’s given name is Jiang. ‘It is formed in Chinese characters by three suns’, she explains. ‘It means fruits of my parents’. Elva, however, is definitely her own person, choosing the new name for herself when she arrived in Australia. “Elva just seemed a lot more fun’, she says. ‘It’s bubbly and outgoing’. She is studying law and international relations at Melbourne university and wants a career with the United Nations. Elva is president of the Australian Federation of International Students and also works as a volunteer for the Muslim Legal Service. “I am not a Muslim’, she declares, ‘but this has really helped broaden my view. I am a global citizen’.
View the print advertisement featuring Elva (JPG 530 kb).
Joe Natoli - Philippines
Born Valenzuela, Philippines, 1989
Arrived in Australia 1989
A trip back to Manila was an epiphany for Joe, who had been abandoned at birth and adopted by a Melbourne couple. He says: ‘I felt like I was stuck between two worlds and I didn’t really know where I belonged’. Visiting his hometown of Valenzuela, was something of a shock. “It opened my eyes and inspired me’. He took a small handycam video camera with him and recorded the trip for his family and friends back home in Melbourne. ‘I went to a jail in Sebu and there were kids my age there! We just take everything for granted and I decided I wanted to show people what life was like for many people in Manila’, he says. Joe won an award for his film and an Australia Day Young Achievers award. He is studying at the William Angliss Institute in Melbourne and working towards a career in event management.
View the print advertisement featuring Joe (JPG 605kb).
Johannes Van der Horst - Netherlands
Born Utrecht, Netherlands 1952
Arrived in Australia 1965
John came to Australia with his family in the mid 1950s as part of a large wave of Dutch immigrants. “My father always wanted his own farm and he had no hope of ever getting that in Holland’, he says. “Australia offered hope’. His father’s dream came true with a dairy farm in Warburton, where he also began growing plants; a venture that developed into a small nursery. John left home to being work in a retail nursery, eventually buying a run down nursery in Surrey Hills. “It was a disaster at the time I bought it. All I had was hope,’ he remembers. With his wife Melissa, John has built the small nursery into a large retail nursery operation, which includes a gift shop and café. For the last three years, it has been voted Best Australian Large Nursery.
View the advertisement featuring John (JPG 660kb).
Ebrima King Marong - The Gambia
Born Wasulung Kunda, The Gambia, 1971
Arrived in Australia 1998
‘The King’ is a big man with an expansive, charismatic personality – all of which sits perfectly with his life as a musician. Playing in two bands that are working constantly, he is a very busy man. Ebrima married an Australian girl in The Gambia and came out here to live; bringing with him his African music that is now making a big impact in the live music scene around Melbourne. Long live the King!
View the advertisement featuring The King (JPG 681kb).
Nooran al-Qarakchy - Iraq
Born in Australia
For Shi’ite Muslims, the Iraq War was meant to bring stability and an end to persecution; but for Nooran's mother Fatima and millions of other Iraqis, all it brought was chaos. Her husband Naval, a pharmacist in Saddam’s Iraq, fled to Syria then made his way to Indonesia, where he joined another 200 Iraqis fleeing the war. From there they took a boat ride to uncertainty. Two years later, after spending a lengthy period in detention, including four months on Christmas Island, naval was able to prove his case as a refugee and was granted a permanent visa. Fatima has a Master’s degree in microbiology but is working as an Arabic interpreter and playing a lead role in helping Iraqi refugees to rebuild there lives in the Shepparton region.
View the advertisement featuring Nooran (JPG 578kb).
Nthoanaki Thaba - Lesotho
Born Mafeteng, Lesotho, 1978
Arrived in Australia 2005
Nthoanaki’s name is pronounced N-Twa-Na-Kee but she’s happy for people to call her Toni. She met her husband Andrew in Lesotho when he was working for the Anglican Church at a new hospital in the mountains. Andrew was undertaking a photojournalism assignment for AngliCORD, an overseas relief and development agency, to raise funds for HIV projects in Lesotho. Andrew is currently at Melbourne University’s Trinity College studying for a Master’s degree in Divinity. In the meantime, Nthoanaki is waiting on being granted her permanent residency.
View the advertisement featuring Toni (JPG 512kb).
Ruben Gilles - Suriname
Born Paramirabo, Suriname, 1970
Arrived in Australia 1994
Ruben is one of life’s great enthusiasts. A Creole (an African American father and a Dutch mother) from the former Dutch colony of Suriname, Ruben’s family moved to Holland in the mid 1970s where he completed his schooling. His life experience has been a varied one, from playing drums in a Nigerian rock band to becoming a stock manager in Parish for the American retail giant The Gap. Through a French girlfriend working at The Gap, he met an Australian photographer working for fashion designer Colette Dinnigan. He says: ‘This guy was just great and he convinced me to try Australia, so I did’. Upon arriving in Melbourne, Ruben knew he’d made the right decision. ‘It just embraces you’, he says. After first working with a promotions company, he decided to join the Victoria Police. ‘I wanted a job where I could use all my skills at one time, along with an adventure’. The other members of his family have now followed him to Australia.
View the advertisement featuring Ruben (JPG 464kb).
Salem al Jaber and Hajar Kadhim Qasem - Iraq and Kuwait
Salem al-Jaber
Born Najaf, Iraq, 1977
Arrived in Australia 2007
Salem's family fled from Iraq to Iran after the failed Kuwaiti invasion, only to find that the Iranians didn’t want them and wouldn’t let them work. They couldn’t return to Iraq for fear of persecution by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Salem knew some friends who had made the treacherous trip to Australia by fishing boat from Indonesia, and so began the risky business of following them to the ‘Promised Land’. The boat was overloaded, unseaworthy and lacking in food, water and cover for its human cargo. They were spotted by an Australian navel boat and so began a three-day tow to Broome. There the boat people were offloaded and taken to Derby, where they were detained in tents in the harsh Western Australian summer. After 12 months in the detention centre, Salem was released and sent to Melbourne. He is now a production coordinator in a textile business.
Hajar Kadhim Qasem
Born Kuwait City, 1982
Arrived Australia 2007
Hajar lived next door to Salem in Qom, Iran, for several years. They didn’t get to know each other until Salem returned to Qom to visit his family after he had been granted refugee status and had settled in Australia. They were married on 26 January 2007 – Australia Day.
View the advertisement featuring Salam and Hajar (JPG 579kb).
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