Oren was living in the middle of Melbourne with his partner during the COVID pandemic, when the city was put into regular lockdowns. This heightened the feeling of being stuck in a concrete jungle, and though not the only reason, it got Oren thinking about making a change. In 2021 he followed his partner down to Tassie, where she did a permaculture course and they did a farmstay down at Cygnet for 8 months...and the rest is history, as they say.

Oren originally came to Australia to study Audio Engineering, and music and sound have been very much a part of his life. Indeed, some of his teenage musical influences lead him to questioning some of the aspects of Israeli society. This questioning came to a head when he left school and faced the obligatory 3 years' military service. Through a mixture of protest and negotiation, he ended up spending his time in a desk job in the Air Force. By the end of it, he was ready to jump back into the world of music and entertainment, and 18 months later he made the life-changing decision to move to Melbourne.

Original music produced and composed by Oren Gerassi.https://borcho.com/ear-stimulants/

Niall grew up in Belfast in the 90s when the bloody sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics still permeated almost every aspect of Northern Ireland society. His family didn't belong to either faction and never bought into the toxicity created by the historical sectarian biases.

Living in such atmosphere, Niall always thought to get out, and in his early 20s moved across to Brighton in the UK.

With a passion for music, the strong artistic community in Brighton was really appealing, but also expensive. That love of music and the arts would also be what eventually attracted him to come and live in Hobart, after a visit during Dark Mofo, which was part of a break to recover from burnout.

Niall was eventually move to Hobart with his partner and get a job at the Museum of New and Old Art, before a recent career change.

Music credit - "Flux and Form" by Northern Irish band Tracer AMC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouXm_Pa5Its

Ayman's first experience of Australia was arriving at Sydney Airport with no English or knowledge of his new country, getting very lost and missing his connecting flight to Hobart.

His lack of English was a problem at first, but his soccer skills helped him get involved with the local soccer community and this opened up social networks and job opportunities that Ayman took advantage of.

Ayman grew up in Khartoum, but at around the age of 18, the threat of enforced military service became very real and he decided to escape to Egypt. After two years there, he was accepted as a refugee and was able to join his brother in Tasmania.

Since arriving in Tasmania about a year ago, Michael has got somewhat accustomed to people questioning whether Benin is a real country - an indication of how little known his homeland is in Australia.

Benin is a small country in West Africa, squeezed between the much larger Nigeria and Togo. It was formerly part of the much larger Kingdom of Dahomey and was also one of the centres of the Atlantic slave trade. A legacy of this is seen in places like Haiti, Cuba, Brazil and New Orleans, where Voodoo is still practised, a belief system originating in Benin. In western culture this has become associated with pushing pins into dolls, but in Benin it is still a very much accepted bona fide religion.

Michael's story is remarkable other ways though. From a tough time as a child at a boarding school in Nigeria, to University studies in Ghana, where he'd secretly hoped to further his soccer career, he eventually got a scholarship to study agriculture in Israel. During his year in Israel he fell in love with a Filipina, and she was the eventual inspiration for him to come to Tasmania.

He arrived in Tasmania to study, but with no contacts, little money, no secured accommodation and no partner ( her visa was rejected). His strategy for dealing with this situation and getting on his feet in Hobart was pretty unique and a really great story, which I'm not going to spoil here.

Photo : Andrew Wilson Photography

Bhutanese now make up Tasmania's largest refugee community, and also on of the major migrant populations living in the state. Yet many Tasmanians know little about them and their story.

In the early 90s many Bhutanese of Nepali ethnicity, were expelled from country, often with threats or actual use of violence, and forced to live in refugee camps in Nepal. For many years they lived in limbo in these camps, hoping to one day return to their former homeland.

In Khadga's case, he and his family lived in the camp for 19 years before being accepted for settlement in Australia. Through the research he had been able to do at the time, Khadga had come to the conclusion that Tasmania would be the best place for them to settle given it's similar climate and topography to Nepal.

Initial adjustments were tough but Khadga succeeded in getting first a qualification in Child Care, and then Nursing and Paramedics. He currently works as an Aged Care Nurse, but also is a co-owner of a business providing disability care.

Although Estonia is a small country far away on the other side of the world, there has been a long-standing, though small Estonian community since the aftermath of WW2, when many migrants from the Baltics settled in Tasmania.

Triin is a more recent arrival, having settled in Tasmania a bit over 10 years ago after a career in professional volleyball in Europe. In fact, volleyball is the main sport for women in Estonia, and was through this that she met her Tasmanian husband, who was also playing volleyball in Europe.

When they both reached the stage in the careers when retirement was looming, they had to make a decision as to where to live together, and Tasmanian seemed to be the most viable option.

Though in some ways, settling down in Tasmania was a relatively smooth process for Triin - she got work quickly and the language was never a problem, but there were some cultural differences that were a challenge to adapt to, not least the very different style of communication and social relations compared with what was the norm in Estonia.

Triin continues to play volleyball in Tasmania and help develop local players with the skills and knowledge that she brings from Europe.

We also discuss the Estonia love of foraging and choral singing, a strong feature of other Baltic cultures also.

Nubar was born in Egypt to Armenian parents, and grew up speaking Armenian, English and French rather than the majority language of the country, Arabic. After the revolution in Egypt in the 1950s and the rise of Arab nationalism in the region, many Armenians perceived they were going to be worse off and chose the emigrate to places like Australia, and Nubar's family was no exception.

Armenians have a long and rich history that goes back thousands of years, of migrating from their homeland in the Caucasus and settling in forming communities in many different parts of the world, but particularly the Middle East and Asia. It's a history well beyond the limits of this podcast, but Nubar's accounts of some of his family's history will perhaps give a taste of that history.

Nubar arrived in Melbourne with his family when was still school age and ended up initially having a career as a drama teacher, before pursuing an interest in filmmaking. This would ultimately lead to work as a lecturer at the Swinburne Film School in Melbourne. He currently lives on King Island, where his wife was born, a fairly remote island to the north-west of the Tasmanian mainland and he has continued to pursue his artistic streak through painting and photography, and has even become something of an expert in growing blueberries.

Although Papua New Guinea is one of Australia's closest neighbours, it's a place and a people that the average Australian is fairly ignorant of. It's probably not well known, but Papua New Guineans make up the largest of the Pasifika communities in Tasmania.

Anne is a PNG born and bred, but now works at the Devonport Library, absolutely miles away both physically and culturally , from her early years living in different regions of Papua New Guinea.

As her father was an Anglican Minister, and later a Bishop, her family moved around PNG every few years, and so she talks about her memories in a small town in the PNG Highlands, contrasted with the city of Lae, the second largest city in PNG. Like many other Pacific Island countries, the concept of family is very different to that in Australia, with family extending to a much wider community and the bonds being much stronger.

Once Anne finished school, she came to Australia to study at Uni. She spent her first few years in Ballarat, but after graduating came to the NW of Tasmania, and after further study and some volunteering, ended up working as a librarian in Devonport.

There could hardly be two more contrasting places than Singapore and Tasmania - one is a busy, crowded and cosmopolitan metropolis located in the tropics, the other a quiet, laid-back sort of place with a more homogeneous population and far more variable climate !

Joanna originally left the hustle and bustle of Singapore to take a restful break in Tasmania on the recommendation of a friend. She was shown around Hobart by a man she later decided she would spend the rest of her life with.

Joanna had studied Design in Singapore, and later Psychology, but she ended up studying Nursing in Tasmania and working in the Aged Care sector. She would eventually combine these experiences to pursue her current career as an environmental gerontologist.

Her experience of Aged Care in Tasmania also proved invaluable when she returned to work in Singapore with her husband and did pioneering work in helping make changes in the way aged care services were delivered in Singapore.

Florian grew up in a the picturesque alpine region of the Austrian Tirol, in a small village near Innsbruck. For many, life in the Austrian alps might be considered quite idyllic, and possibly because of this, locals tended not to stray too far out of their local district. Therefore, when Florian sat down and told his parents he was going to Australia with his Brisbane-born wife, it was a really big deal.

The original plan had been to stay for 2 years, but it ended up getting extended, and after a stint in South Australia, Florian discovered the green hills of northern Tasmania were more to his liking and the connection he felt with the Tasmania landscape eventually lead to staying long term.

Despite some reservations by his parents initially, the long distance from home has actually helped Florian bond more strongly with his family and value some of the traditions of his homeland more than he did in the Tirol.