Yasmeen Islam arrived in Australia in February 1971 from Dhaka, East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh) with two very young children to meet her husband.
"Those days hardly any people used to go overseas ... just for studies maybe, but not for living. In geography we used to read about Australia; it is a very strange place. It is a western world, it is a continent, but it is very strange. The animals there are different, the trees are different and everything there is totally different from other continents. So I was a bit scared too ... not scared in a sense that it is a civilised world, but it will be different ... and it is, and I appreciate that now, that it is different."
"We have got a neighbour - her name was Nola ... And she used to take us to the only spice shop ... Because spice is so important ... it seems like life cannot be lived without spice ! ... I said, 'Is there any spice, Nola?' She said, 'Yes, I know there is shop in Bondi, and that shop is an Indian Jewish shop, and only that shop sells spice, and I'll take you'. So she took us, me and my two children ... my husband and everyone ... in a little car we went to Bondi from Kingsford."
"...the love and respect for a human being is something I wouldn't have known it so well unless I'd come to Australia. I was always [a] very good person, but it's nothing unless we came to Australia. When I came to Australia I learn how important the human being is because back home there are people ... we just ignore them, but I don't ignore them any more. This is the main thing I learnt from Australia."
