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Pinkham Simmalavong OAM Oral History (1935-2026)
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DescriptionThis interview consists of four audio recordings. Pinkham Simmalavong was interviewed on 28 October 2003 at Cabramatta by Diana Giese.Interview SummaryMs Pinkham Simmalavong OAM was born in Laos in 1935, and attended school there. In 1957-58, she took part in a Teacher Exchange Program at schools in the United States, in places including Washington, DC and Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was to return to the United States in the early 1960s to gain a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, and in the early 1970s a Masters in Education. Back in Laos, she worked as a teacher and then in training English teachers, rising in 1967 to Head of Studies of English Language Teachers Training.
When the Communists took over in Laos at the end of 1975, Ms Simmalavong was in New Delhi, India, with her diplomat husband. He was recalled. They did not, however, wish to live under the new regime, so went to Bangkok. Then they decided to seek refuge in a democratic country. Australia was chosen because of relationships built up through her husband’s training under the Colombo Plan, and her own connections with it. The couple arrived in Australia as political refugees in 1977.
Ms Simmalavong’s career since then reflects her deep involvement with the Lao Community as it resettled in Australia. She worked as an interpreter with the second group of Lao refugees to arrive here, in 1977. She was based at the CES office at Westbridge Hostel in Villawood. As a Teacher’s Aide and Education Officer, she provided the linguistic and cultural background of Indo-Chinese children and parents for other teachers and welfare workers. From 1984-88, she was an ESL teacher at Cabramatta Public School. She moved into Multicultural Education work in the TAFE system before taking early retirement in 1991.
She has also been tireless in her voluntary work for the Community. She has advocated for admission of Indo-Chinese refugees under the special humanitarian and family reunion programs. Through committees of the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW, Fairfield Council and the Refugee Council of Australia, she has contributed to refugee resettlement programs. She helped set up the Lao Refugee Association which became, in 1980, the Lao Community Advancement Co-operative, serving as its President from 1984-87. She also helped set up the Lao Ethnic School and the Lao program on SBS. As LCAC President, she lobbied to obtain land on which the impressive Lao Cultural Centre, comprising the Temple, Hall and monks’ residence, now stands. She has also been a committee member of the Buddhist Council of NSW. She was part of the formation of the STARTTS service to help torture and trauma survivors. She has also helped establish housing for the elderly.
For her services to the Lao and Indo-Chinese communities, Ms Simmalavong was honoured in 1990 with the OAM.
Childhood in Laos: Her family was ‘average’. Her father was educated in the Temple, and ordained as a Buddhist monk, but her mother couldn’t read or write. She has one older brother, and five or six other siblings passed away when she was still young, from malaria and diarrhoea. Under French colonialism, there were very few doctors and nurses, so they relied on herbal medicine. Some Lao doctors had been trained in Cambodia and Vietnam, where there were more facilities than in Laos, which was tiny compared with the other Indo-Chinese colonies. The country also had to rely on Cambodian and Vietnamese ports for trade and relations with the outside world, since it was land-locked. Her father taught her how to spin cotton, and her mother taught her how to weave. Her brother was not interested in education, because he didn’t like the teacher. They attended public school, six years in primary school and four in junior high school. There was no senior high school in her home town in the ‘40s. They learnt their own language in primary school, then later on French, and from the 4th Year onwards, instruction was in that language. Her brother went to live with their mother’s relatives in the capital, Vientiane. She was a good student, and when she went on the junior high school, her education was supported by her father. He worked making bamboo roof coverings, earning ‘just enough to feed the family’.
Political situation: The Japanese invaded and occupied the country when she was in Year 2. Before Lao classes, they were made to study Japanese, ‘taught by a military officer who carried his sword’. In the south of the country, people were ‘terrified’, especially those who had connections with France. When the Japanese were driven out, she went back to her studies in Year 3. Some of her friends didn’t return to school. Although the family had ‘limited means’, they wanted her to be educated, even though others in their village suggested that women didn’t need much education: since they already had a male governor, mayor and so on, ‘they don’t need women…I don’t care’ (laughs).
Women’s place in Lao culture and their education: Men ‘allow us’ to manage things within the family: ‘they earn the living, but it’s up to the women to manage the family –how you spend the money, everything’. Even after she graduated later from her American university, there was still some discrimination in the country between those who had been French-educated and others who had trained in Russia or America. In the ‘60s, when she returned from education in the US, the University of Michigan set up a project in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia to train teachers of English, using English to teach.
Becoming proficient in English and studying in the US: When she became a primary school teacher, she continued learning English, in order to speak it, since in junior high school, she had only read, written and translated it, as taught by French-speaking teachers. Later, she was able to find classes run by American, British and other English-speaking people. She attended after-school classes at the American Embassy, and read books and newspapers also provided by the Americans. When she was 18, 5 people, 2 women and 3 men, were chosen to study for a year on an American Teacher Exchange Program. First they went to Washington DC for a few months of English classes, and then to Ann Arbor, Michigan. She lived with a family where both parents were working for the government. She practised English with their young children and spent hours in the language laboratory. The second year in the US was spent in technical training. She made a lot of friends with teachers from all over the world, including Latin America, Scandinavia and Germany. In 1955, her father passed away, then she and her mother moved to Vientiane and stayed with her brother. Then the second time she was studying in the US, her mother also passed away. In Michigan, she shared a room with younger American students in a big dormitory. She cooked food like noodles to share with other students, but had to use substitute ingredients, paprika for red colouring, and spaghetti instead of noodles, with ordinary milk for coconut milk. This food tasted ‘not so good’. At the end of her course, she was required to return to Laos, but she still has contact with friends from that time.
Return to Laos and teacher training: She was teaching students how to teach English to non-English-speaking people. Other streams were training teachers to teach in French or Lao. The Ministry of Education was headed by a Minister appointed by the Prime Minister, then under him came the Director-General for Education, and the Director for Teacher Training, General and Technical, rather like the TAFE system in Australia. The College had its own Director, then a Director of Studies for each section. She became Head of the English section, and had to oversee teaching and manage staff, but not handle finances.
Communist takeover, 1975: In July that year, her husband was posted to India. Before that, he had worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs in Laos. [Since February 1973] the Left and Right wings of politics were working together in a Coalition government, based on an Agreement of 1972-73. Before that, there had been ‘internal fighting’ for over 30 years, ‘without gaining anything. People were tired.’ The Rightists ‘made too many concessions’, thinking the Left was ‘genuine in its intentions’ of wanting to work together. The Rightists gave up their arms and agreed to be sent north to the border with Vietnam to be re-educated. ‘The Leftists called it a seminar’, but that was ‘misleading’. In fact, they were taken to ‘concentration camps’.
Civil servants, military and police officers, heads of villages and everyone in the old power structure were sent to camps throughout the country. The harshest were in the north where there was no access to the outside world. She was called upon to attend meetings and ‘to listen to the indoctrination’. They were told that they had to work together, since the old system was not good enough. They were told that education (‘brain-washing’) had to go forward. In Mathematics, for instance, they had to calculate ‘how many airplanes were shot down by the Nationalist troops today’. As an English teacher, she was regarded with suspicion: ‘American CIA’. Some of her school friends ‘went to join the Communist side’, and told her that they should all work together, and that she shouldn’t go away.
Leaving Laos: She asked the Minister of Education for permission to join her husband in New Delhi, where he was serving as First Secretary. He had left Phnom Penh only 7 days before it fell to the Khmer Rouge. Saigon had fallen on 30 April 1975, and the Communists had already been in power in Laos since 1973. ‘We were so stupid; we were not as clever as they…the Vietnamese troops were behind those Nationalists, they called themselves.’ Some of her friends taken to the camps never returned, but ‘died there, including the Royal Family’. Some were able to return to normal life after ‘years of patience and hardship’. Many had to bribe their way out. Her argument for leaving the country was that ‘in a diplomatic family, husband and wife have to be together in order to talk to other diplomats, to discuss the country’s progress’. The response was that lots of husbands and wives lived apart. She had to ‘pull strings’ to get permission to leave, and was granted permission the third time she asked. Her daughter Sourina was 8 years old. Together with Ms Simmalavong’s mother-in-law and her husband’s cousin, they flew out in September 1975. The rest of their extended family came out later, through refugee camps. From this time to August 1976, they lived in New Delhi. In August 1976, they went to live in Bangkok, from where they could communicate with their relatives via the underground. On 2 December 1975, a Republic was proclaimed in Laos, and a year later her husband was recalled. Tickets were sent for them from Laos. In New Delhi, they had an American friend and knew the Australian Ambassador, who told them to be in contact if they needed help. They didn’t at that time, however, know how to escape from the Lao to the Australian or American Embassy to seek asylum. By the time they reached Bangkok, ‘the status was different’, so they went straight to the American Embassy to seek refuge there. It was suggested they apply for an immigrant visa to the US, because of her education and friends there. They even found a job for her. Their application went to Vice-President Mondale’s office, but his secretary put it in a drawer and went on holiday. Meanwhile, they investigated the possibilities of France, then one day ‘by chance’ went to the Australian Embassy. In 1960, her husband had received diplomatic training in Australia, and in 1974, she had travelled to Perth and Adelaide as a Colombo Plan visitor. Australia had, however, taken 700 Lao refugees in 1976, and had no immediate plans to take any more. They were told to send a letter by diplomatic courier to the Lao Desk in Canberra, which they did in November 1976. A month later, they were told there was ‘good news’. In January 1977, they had medical check-ups. Then they paid their own way to Australia. ‘We were not sure what status we had.’
Arriving in Australia: They were met by her niece, who had come to Australia as a Colombo Plan student and was living in Wollongong. Their party arrived on Australia Day, 26 January 1977. Their niece was getting married on 29th. After the wedding, they asked themselves ‘Where next?’ A Lao friend brought them up to Sydney, and when they told the authorities what had happened to them, they were admitted to Westbridge Hostel. They lived there for a month before more Lao refugees arrived, many of whom she knew. She became their interpreter.
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She was working with refugees who had survived in crowded rooms in huts in camps, where they cooked, ate, slept and bathed: ‘very harsh conditions of living, and sometimes under the pressure of the local authorities’. She was a strong rock in the centre of the turmoil of the overturn of their society. Once the refugees arrived, she tried to help them live peacefully. They needed to understand the welfare system, and because of her English facility, she could ask questions and read about it and explain it. Lao people were employed as welfare workers to show people schools or how to go to the doctor. At the Hostel, there was also the CES for help with jobs or unemployment benefits. ‘We must be grateful to the Australian government for providing the shelter and then the assistance when people needed it.’ Once she got her job as an interpreter, they were able to get accommodation outside the Hostel, even though her husband was not yet working. They moved to a government unit in Auburn, where everything was provided for them. They stayed there for 6 months before finding a house in Merrylands.
Finding different jobs and beginning to build community: After a month working for the CES, she heard that Chester Hill North Primary School, near the Hostel, wanted someone to assist them. She then taught teachers and the students there about Lao language and culture, including dance, in her own classroom. ‘The Lao Community and the Chester Hill North Primary School had a very good relationship.’ Principal Bob Collard was ‘very open and receptive to the children’. They were able to use the school for New Year celebrations, fund-raising meetings and festivals. The Good Neighbour Council helped people settle in the community, as did Church groups. ‘We needed a Centre for Lao people to come and meet and talk and discuss the problems’, and Gateway, a Jewish group helped set one up through Ms Chris Brown, whose father had been Military Attache in Laos, who had gone to school there, and who had spent some time in refugee camps. She was employed as a Community Development Worker. They rented a house for a year, formed a committee and did a survey so that they could apply for a DOCS grants to set up a child care and welfare office. The Council of Churches employed Chris Brown and a Lao worker for the Centre in Cabramatta.
Getting land for a Temple under her Presidency of the Community, 1984-87:
Until this point, they had been using the Thai Buddhist Temple in Stanmore, but as the Lao Community grew bigger, it needed a bigger place. They not only had to find land, but also get funding: ‘We wanted to be near the Community.’ They lobbied for land through Minister of Education Radford, who was also Member for Cabramatta, and also worked with the support of other local Members. When she was President, they had a big fund-raiser in the Civic Hall, in 1984, with Hon. Franca Arena MLC, Chris Brown and Dr Andrew Refshauge. [They got land through the Hon. Franca Arena, who organised a dinner in Parliament House, where she had a direct request for the land from the then-Premier of NSW, Hon. Neville Wran]. The Temple now stands where before there were only fields. There is also a Monks’ Residence and they are building a Hall and planning to extend into a garden. Fund-raising was hard at first. Since in Buddhism people ‘believe in making merit by giving donations’, they applied for a monk living in Paris to come to Australia. He arrived in 1984, and they rented 1 Hunter St, Fairfield, and used it as his residence and a temporary Temple. They even held a festival there, with the help of Councillor Chris Hartley, ‘who married a Vietnamese lady and was very good to us’. Within two years, they raised $60,000 to buy property in Page Place in Cabramatta West: ‘Chris introduced us to the neighbours, and we had some functions there.’ In 1986, they finally obtained their land, and Premier Neville Wran came in a helicopter to present blocks to the Lao and [Cambodian] communities at the same time. It took 3-4 years to get plans drawn up and approved. The Monks’ Residence was built first, and 8 monks brought out from refugee camps now live [in different temples].
Use of Temple today: People come every day to pray and bring food to the monks, who also go out onto the streets with their bowls three times a week. The Temple is also used every month for a festival. The Hall, estimated to cost $500,000 in 1997 has now cost over $700,000, but is not yet finished. ‘We do it as we have funds available,’ relying on voluntary labour. The Hall is used for festivals and religious and music classes. Language classes [will be] held upstairs and include Australians who are ‘welcome to learn’. As Public Officer since the building of the Temple, she has tried ‘to build our own people to be able to reach out’. She has now delegated this role to Nith and Ramphay Chittasy. They help the Community reach out through inter-faith initiatives and organisations such as Women for World Peace.
Lao Community Advancement Co-operative: She now serves on the Advisory Committee rather than the Board and is called on two or three times a year for advice. Her role is now more with the Temple, where she is responsible for visitors, such as groups of students and elderly people from other communities, including Chinese Australians from the city who ‘come and pay respects, as they’re Buddhist too’.
Her other voluntary work: In the 80s, she helped in setting up the SBS Lao program and STARTTS, which helps victims of torture and trauma. ‘It’s a bit difficult for our people to understand the role of STARTTS.’ They used to have a full-time bi-lingual worker there, but Lao people didn’t use the service, so it was seen as impractical. ‘There is probably a stigma attached…counselling is not something that is familiar to our people even if they have problems. They tend to keep it within themselves, or within their family. They don’t go out and talk to other people about it.’ People who really need this sort of help are now in their 60s and 70s.
Indo-Chinese Elderly Hostel: This joint initiative of the Lao Community, the Khmer Community, the Vietnamese Community and the Indo-China Chinese Association has just been completed, and 5 people have been taken in, after assessment by a team at Liverpool Hospital as frail aged. They also have [Lao] aged care units in Hasluck St, Bonnyrigg. At the beginning, it was said people wouldn’t live in such units without their families, but ‘now they see it’s good’. The Elderly Hostel project is ‘a big achievement for me personally’ over 14 years. She likes to see things through successfully, so has spent a lot of time with the project ‘in spite of my husband nagging me’, since he has to chauffeur her to meetings.
‘It has taken lots of time and effort and headaches to arrive at this completed stage’ in the Elderly project. They gradually hope to fill the available beds. ‘I also consider my achievement to be able to bring in my children’s generation to take over the responsibility and to continue with community development.’ She can also see this generation thinking of their own children and grand-children in continuing to preserve their culture and language.
Preserving Lao culture and blending it with Australian traditions: Language and the Buddhist traditions that go with it are most important. ‘Being Lao’ means that you have a special way of speaking and thinking: ‘gentle, kind, loving kindness…Buddhist values’. They ‘also need to learn to be Australian…you have to take the best from both cultures.’ From Australian culture, they can take ‘democratic freedom and opportunity to live your life to the fullest’.
Discussion of the characteristics of a well-lived life: It is important to respect each other and to respect your families, on both sides equally: ‘parents, relatives and the community’. ‘It’s not a marriage between two individuals; it’s the families, the extended families, the community.’
Future development of the Australian community, drawing on the rich traditions of our new cultures: ‘Each culture enriches another’, including ‘the Buddhist ways’ of the Lao, Thai, Cambodian and Burmese cultures.
Transmission of music, dance and textile traditions: Although there is not time for a full-time dancing or weaving school, these arts will survive as long as people still wear traditional costumes and go to weddings, as they still do regularly in Australia. In 1984, as Community President, she applied for Australia Council funding to buy looms and begin weaving. They rented a house to do this, but the looms were ‘borrowed’ by an Australian artist and ‘disappeared…very, very unkind of them’. The lady who was in charge of the initiative also now lives in Thailand, ‘so there’s nobody to continue with it’. Successful dance and music groups continue in Australia. Her grandson ‘banged the gong’ in a recent [concert] and her grand-daughter dances at Lao New Year and at weddings.
Lao Community is very focused and unified: ‘We have something that is nice and beautiful, and we want our children to maintain it. We would like to share it with other people.’
Challenges for next 10 years: She hopes they will not let material challenges take away other challenges. She hopes that children who live away from the Community in other areas will not be distracted by activities such as sports. ‘I can see it takes a generation to realise that culture should be preserved.’ They also invite other ethnic groups into their community to celebrate events such as mixed weddings. Her husband’s grand-niece married a Chinese Australian two weeks ago, ‘and he had a Lao wedding, and wore traditional male Lao wedding costume’.
When the Communists took over in Laos at the end of 1975, Ms Simmalavong was in New Delhi, India, with her diplomat husband. He was recalled. They did not, however, wish to live under the new regime, so went to Bangkok. Then they decided to seek refuge in a democratic country. Australia was chosen because of relationships built up through her husband’s training under the Colombo Plan, and her own connections with it. The couple arrived in Australia as political refugees in 1977.
Ms Simmalavong’s career since then reflects her deep involvement with the Lao Community as it resettled in Australia. She worked as an interpreter with the second group of Lao refugees to arrive here, in 1977. She was based at the CES office at Westbridge Hostel in Villawood. As a Teacher’s Aide and Education Officer, she provided the linguistic and cultural background of Indo-Chinese children and parents for other teachers and welfare workers. From 1984-88, she was an ESL teacher at Cabramatta Public School. She moved into Multicultural Education work in the TAFE system before taking early retirement in 1991.
She has also been tireless in her voluntary work for the Community. She has advocated for admission of Indo-Chinese refugees under the special humanitarian and family reunion programs. Through committees of the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW, Fairfield Council and the Refugee Council of Australia, she has contributed to refugee resettlement programs. She helped set up the Lao Refugee Association which became, in 1980, the Lao Community Advancement Co-operative, serving as its President from 1984-87. She also helped set up the Lao Ethnic School and the Lao program on SBS. As LCAC President, she lobbied to obtain land on which the impressive Lao Cultural Centre, comprising the Temple, Hall and monks’ residence, now stands. She has also been a committee member of the Buddhist Council of NSW. She was part of the formation of the STARTTS service to help torture and trauma survivors. She has also helped establish housing for the elderly.
For her services to the Lao and Indo-Chinese communities, Ms Simmalavong was honoured in 1990 with the OAM.
Childhood in Laos: Her family was ‘average’. Her father was educated in the Temple, and ordained as a Buddhist monk, but her mother couldn’t read or write. She has one older brother, and five or six other siblings passed away when she was still young, from malaria and diarrhoea. Under French colonialism, there were very few doctors and nurses, so they relied on herbal medicine. Some Lao doctors had been trained in Cambodia and Vietnam, where there were more facilities than in Laos, which was tiny compared with the other Indo-Chinese colonies. The country also had to rely on Cambodian and Vietnamese ports for trade and relations with the outside world, since it was land-locked. Her father taught her how to spin cotton, and her mother taught her how to weave. Her brother was not interested in education, because he didn’t like the teacher. They attended public school, six years in primary school and four in junior high school. There was no senior high school in her home town in the ‘40s. They learnt their own language in primary school, then later on French, and from the 4th Year onwards, instruction was in that language. Her brother went to live with their mother’s relatives in the capital, Vientiane. She was a good student, and when she went on the junior high school, her education was supported by her father. He worked making bamboo roof coverings, earning ‘just enough to feed the family’.
Political situation: The Japanese invaded and occupied the country when she was in Year 2. Before Lao classes, they were made to study Japanese, ‘taught by a military officer who carried his sword’. In the south of the country, people were ‘terrified’, especially those who had connections with France. When the Japanese were driven out, she went back to her studies in Year 3. Some of her friends didn’t return to school. Although the family had ‘limited means’, they wanted her to be educated, even though others in their village suggested that women didn’t need much education: since they already had a male governor, mayor and so on, ‘they don’t need women…I don’t care’ (laughs).
Women’s place in Lao culture and their education: Men ‘allow us’ to manage things within the family: ‘they earn the living, but it’s up to the women to manage the family –how you spend the money, everything’. Even after she graduated later from her American university, there was still some discrimination in the country between those who had been French-educated and others who had trained in Russia or America. In the ‘60s, when she returned from education in the US, the University of Michigan set up a project in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia to train teachers of English, using English to teach.
Becoming proficient in English and studying in the US: When she became a primary school teacher, she continued learning English, in order to speak it, since in junior high school, she had only read, written and translated it, as taught by French-speaking teachers. Later, she was able to find classes run by American, British and other English-speaking people. She attended after-school classes at the American Embassy, and read books and newspapers also provided by the Americans. When she was 18, 5 people, 2 women and 3 men, were chosen to study for a year on an American Teacher Exchange Program. First they went to Washington DC for a few months of English classes, and then to Ann Arbor, Michigan. She lived with a family where both parents were working for the government. She practised English with their young children and spent hours in the language laboratory. The second year in the US was spent in technical training. She made a lot of friends with teachers from all over the world, including Latin America, Scandinavia and Germany. In 1955, her father passed away, then she and her mother moved to Vientiane and stayed with her brother. Then the second time she was studying in the US, her mother also passed away. In Michigan, she shared a room with younger American students in a big dormitory. She cooked food like noodles to share with other students, but had to use substitute ingredients, paprika for red colouring, and spaghetti instead of noodles, with ordinary milk for coconut milk. This food tasted ‘not so good’. At the end of her course, she was required to return to Laos, but she still has contact with friends from that time.
Return to Laos and teacher training: She was teaching students how to teach English to non-English-speaking people. Other streams were training teachers to teach in French or Lao. The Ministry of Education was headed by a Minister appointed by the Prime Minister, then under him came the Director-General for Education, and the Director for Teacher Training, General and Technical, rather like the TAFE system in Australia. The College had its own Director, then a Director of Studies for each section. She became Head of the English section, and had to oversee teaching and manage staff, but not handle finances.
Communist takeover, 1975: In July that year, her husband was posted to India. Before that, he had worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs in Laos. [Since February 1973] the Left and Right wings of politics were working together in a Coalition government, based on an Agreement of 1972-73. Before that, there had been ‘internal fighting’ for over 30 years, ‘without gaining anything. People were tired.’ The Rightists ‘made too many concessions’, thinking the Left was ‘genuine in its intentions’ of wanting to work together. The Rightists gave up their arms and agreed to be sent north to the border with Vietnam to be re-educated. ‘The Leftists called it a seminar’, but that was ‘misleading’. In fact, they were taken to ‘concentration camps’.
Civil servants, military and police officers, heads of villages and everyone in the old power structure were sent to camps throughout the country. The harshest were in the north where there was no access to the outside world. She was called upon to attend meetings and ‘to listen to the indoctrination’. They were told that they had to work together, since the old system was not good enough. They were told that education (‘brain-washing’) had to go forward. In Mathematics, for instance, they had to calculate ‘how many airplanes were shot down by the Nationalist troops today’. As an English teacher, she was regarded with suspicion: ‘American CIA’. Some of her school friends ‘went to join the Communist side’, and told her that they should all work together, and that she shouldn’t go away.
Leaving Laos: She asked the Minister of Education for permission to join her husband in New Delhi, where he was serving as First Secretary. He had left Phnom Penh only 7 days before it fell to the Khmer Rouge. Saigon had fallen on 30 April 1975, and the Communists had already been in power in Laos since 1973. ‘We were so stupid; we were not as clever as they…the Vietnamese troops were behind those Nationalists, they called themselves.’ Some of her friends taken to the camps never returned, but ‘died there, including the Royal Family’. Some were able to return to normal life after ‘years of patience and hardship’. Many had to bribe their way out. Her argument for leaving the country was that ‘in a diplomatic family, husband and wife have to be together in order to talk to other diplomats, to discuss the country’s progress’. The response was that lots of husbands and wives lived apart. She had to ‘pull strings’ to get permission to leave, and was granted permission the third time she asked. Her daughter Sourina was 8 years old. Together with Ms Simmalavong’s mother-in-law and her husband’s cousin, they flew out in September 1975. The rest of their extended family came out later, through refugee camps. From this time to August 1976, they lived in New Delhi. In August 1976, they went to live in Bangkok, from where they could communicate with their relatives via the underground. On 2 December 1975, a Republic was proclaimed in Laos, and a year later her husband was recalled. Tickets were sent for them from Laos. In New Delhi, they had an American friend and knew the Australian Ambassador, who told them to be in contact if they needed help. They didn’t at that time, however, know how to escape from the Lao to the Australian or American Embassy to seek asylum. By the time they reached Bangkok, ‘the status was different’, so they went straight to the American Embassy to seek refuge there. It was suggested they apply for an immigrant visa to the US, because of her education and friends there. They even found a job for her. Their application went to Vice-President Mondale’s office, but his secretary put it in a drawer and went on holiday. Meanwhile, they investigated the possibilities of France, then one day ‘by chance’ went to the Australian Embassy. In 1960, her husband had received diplomatic training in Australia, and in 1974, she had travelled to Perth and Adelaide as a Colombo Plan visitor. Australia had, however, taken 700 Lao refugees in 1976, and had no immediate plans to take any more. They were told to send a letter by diplomatic courier to the Lao Desk in Canberra, which they did in November 1976. A month later, they were told there was ‘good news’. In January 1977, they had medical check-ups. Then they paid their own way to Australia. ‘We were not sure what status we had.’
Arriving in Australia: They were met by her niece, who had come to Australia as a Colombo Plan student and was living in Wollongong. Their party arrived on Australia Day, 26 January 1977. Their niece was getting married on 29th. After the wedding, they asked themselves ‘Where next?’ A Lao friend brought them up to Sydney, and when they told the authorities what had happened to them, they were admitted to Westbridge Hostel. They lived there for a month before more Lao refugees arrived, many of whom she knew. She became their interpreter.
[short tape; continues on next]
She was working with refugees who had survived in crowded rooms in huts in camps, where they cooked, ate, slept and bathed: ‘very harsh conditions of living, and sometimes under the pressure of the local authorities’. She was a strong rock in the centre of the turmoil of the overturn of their society. Once the refugees arrived, she tried to help them live peacefully. They needed to understand the welfare system, and because of her English facility, she could ask questions and read about it and explain it. Lao people were employed as welfare workers to show people schools or how to go to the doctor. At the Hostel, there was also the CES for help with jobs or unemployment benefits. ‘We must be grateful to the Australian government for providing the shelter and then the assistance when people needed it.’ Once she got her job as an interpreter, they were able to get accommodation outside the Hostel, even though her husband was not yet working. They moved to a government unit in Auburn, where everything was provided for them. They stayed there for 6 months before finding a house in Merrylands.
Finding different jobs and beginning to build community: After a month working for the CES, she heard that Chester Hill North Primary School, near the Hostel, wanted someone to assist them. She then taught teachers and the students there about Lao language and culture, including dance, in her own classroom. ‘The Lao Community and the Chester Hill North Primary School had a very good relationship.’ Principal Bob Collard was ‘very open and receptive to the children’. They were able to use the school for New Year celebrations, fund-raising meetings and festivals. The Good Neighbour Council helped people settle in the community, as did Church groups. ‘We needed a Centre for Lao people to come and meet and talk and discuss the problems’, and Gateway, a Jewish group helped set one up through Ms Chris Brown, whose father had been Military Attache in Laos, who had gone to school there, and who had spent some time in refugee camps. She was employed as a Community Development Worker. They rented a house for a year, formed a committee and did a survey so that they could apply for a DOCS grants to set up a child care and welfare office. The Council of Churches employed Chris Brown and a Lao worker for the Centre in Cabramatta.
Getting land for a Temple under her Presidency of the Community, 1984-87:
Until this point, they had been using the Thai Buddhist Temple in Stanmore, but as the Lao Community grew bigger, it needed a bigger place. They not only had to find land, but also get funding: ‘We wanted to be near the Community.’ They lobbied for land through Minister of Education Radford, who was also Member for Cabramatta, and also worked with the support of other local Members. When she was President, they had a big fund-raiser in the Civic Hall, in 1984, with Hon. Franca Arena MLC, Chris Brown and Dr Andrew Refshauge. [They got land through the Hon. Franca Arena, who organised a dinner in Parliament House, where she had a direct request for the land from the then-Premier of NSW, Hon. Neville Wran]. The Temple now stands where before there were only fields. There is also a Monks’ Residence and they are building a Hall and planning to extend into a garden. Fund-raising was hard at first. Since in Buddhism people ‘believe in making merit by giving donations’, they applied for a monk living in Paris to come to Australia. He arrived in 1984, and they rented 1 Hunter St, Fairfield, and used it as his residence and a temporary Temple. They even held a festival there, with the help of Councillor Chris Hartley, ‘who married a Vietnamese lady and was very good to us’. Within two years, they raised $60,000 to buy property in Page Place in Cabramatta West: ‘Chris introduced us to the neighbours, and we had some functions there.’ In 1986, they finally obtained their land, and Premier Neville Wran came in a helicopter to present blocks to the Lao and [Cambodian] communities at the same time. It took 3-4 years to get plans drawn up and approved. The Monks’ Residence was built first, and 8 monks brought out from refugee camps now live [in different temples].
Use of Temple today: People come every day to pray and bring food to the monks, who also go out onto the streets with their bowls three times a week. The Temple is also used every month for a festival. The Hall, estimated to cost $500,000 in 1997 has now cost over $700,000, but is not yet finished. ‘We do it as we have funds available,’ relying on voluntary labour. The Hall is used for festivals and religious and music classes. Language classes [will be] held upstairs and include Australians who are ‘welcome to learn’. As Public Officer since the building of the Temple, she has tried ‘to build our own people to be able to reach out’. She has now delegated this role to Nith and Ramphay Chittasy. They help the Community reach out through inter-faith initiatives and organisations such as Women for World Peace.
Lao Community Advancement Co-operative: She now serves on the Advisory Committee rather than the Board and is called on two or three times a year for advice. Her role is now more with the Temple, where she is responsible for visitors, such as groups of students and elderly people from other communities, including Chinese Australians from the city who ‘come and pay respects, as they’re Buddhist too’.
Her other voluntary work: In the 80s, she helped in setting up the SBS Lao program and STARTTS, which helps victims of torture and trauma. ‘It’s a bit difficult for our people to understand the role of STARTTS.’ They used to have a full-time bi-lingual worker there, but Lao people didn’t use the service, so it was seen as impractical. ‘There is probably a stigma attached…counselling is not something that is familiar to our people even if they have problems. They tend to keep it within themselves, or within their family. They don’t go out and talk to other people about it.’ People who really need this sort of help are now in their 60s and 70s.
Indo-Chinese Elderly Hostel: This joint initiative of the Lao Community, the Khmer Community, the Vietnamese Community and the Indo-China Chinese Association has just been completed, and 5 people have been taken in, after assessment by a team at Liverpool Hospital as frail aged. They also have [Lao] aged care units in Hasluck St, Bonnyrigg. At the beginning, it was said people wouldn’t live in such units without their families, but ‘now they see it’s good’. The Elderly Hostel project is ‘a big achievement for me personally’ over 14 years. She likes to see things through successfully, so has spent a lot of time with the project ‘in spite of my husband nagging me’, since he has to chauffeur her to meetings.
‘It has taken lots of time and effort and headaches to arrive at this completed stage’ in the Elderly project. They gradually hope to fill the available beds. ‘I also consider my achievement to be able to bring in my children’s generation to take over the responsibility and to continue with community development.’ She can also see this generation thinking of their own children and grand-children in continuing to preserve their culture and language.
Preserving Lao culture and blending it with Australian traditions: Language and the Buddhist traditions that go with it are most important. ‘Being Lao’ means that you have a special way of speaking and thinking: ‘gentle, kind, loving kindness…Buddhist values’. They ‘also need to learn to be Australian…you have to take the best from both cultures.’ From Australian culture, they can take ‘democratic freedom and opportunity to live your life to the fullest’.
Discussion of the characteristics of a well-lived life: It is important to respect each other and to respect your families, on both sides equally: ‘parents, relatives and the community’. ‘It’s not a marriage between two individuals; it’s the families, the extended families, the community.’
Future development of the Australian community, drawing on the rich traditions of our new cultures: ‘Each culture enriches another’, including ‘the Buddhist ways’ of the Lao, Thai, Cambodian and Burmese cultures.
Transmission of music, dance and textile traditions: Although there is not time for a full-time dancing or weaving school, these arts will survive as long as people still wear traditional costumes and go to weddings, as they still do regularly in Australia. In 1984, as Community President, she applied for Australia Council funding to buy looms and begin weaving. They rented a house to do this, but the looms were ‘borrowed’ by an Australian artist and ‘disappeared…very, very unkind of them’. The lady who was in charge of the initiative also now lives in Thailand, ‘so there’s nobody to continue with it’. Successful dance and music groups continue in Australia. Her grandson ‘banged the gong’ in a recent [concert] and her grand-daughter dances at Lao New Year and at weddings.
Lao Community is very focused and unified: ‘We have something that is nice and beautiful, and we want our children to maintain it. We would like to share it with other people.’
Challenges for next 10 years: She hopes they will not let material challenges take away other challenges. She hopes that children who live away from the Community in other areas will not be distracted by activities such as sports. ‘I can see it takes a generation to realise that culture should be preserved.’ They also invite other ethnic groups into their community to celebrate events such as mixed weddings. Her husband’s grand-niece married a Chinese Australian two weeks ago, ‘and he had a Lao wedding, and wore traditional male Lao wedding costume’.
Details
IntervieweePinkham SimmalavongInterviewerDiana GieseDate of interview28th August 2003DurationTotal interview: 01:35:07Transcripts availableNoRightsFairfield City CouncilAccess ConditionsAccess open for research, written permission required for personal copies and public useNotesPinkham Simmalavong passed away 7 April 2026
Connections
CollectionAll Oral HistoriesLao Community
Pinkham Simmalavong OAM Oral History (1935-2026). Fairfield City Heritage Collection, accessed 19/07/2026, https://heritagecollection.fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/3599