In this episode we talk about home, and what home means when you lose it. 

Ben Quilty, one of Australia’s most well-known artists, followed the Syrian refugee exodus, and shares the raw emotion of witnessing a young Syrian girl draw two bloodied bodies. Ben was travelling with Man Booker Prize winning author Richard Flanagan at the time through Lebanon, Greece, and Serbia. He was so moved by what he saw, he decided to return to Lebanon to produce a book of drawings from Syrian children on their memories of Home.

We also hear from Alice Pung, a Melbourne-based lawyer and award-winning writer whose parents fled Cambodia in 1980. She was called Alice after Alice in Wonderland. For her dad, Australia was like a wonderland, a distant land of hope and promise. But even Wonderland had its dark side. Alice was born just one month after her parents arrived in Australia in 1980, and experienced the best and the worst of the nation’s attitudes towards migrants. From her childhood in multicultural Braybrook Victoria to the racism Pauline Hanson brought into the public discourse during the 1990’s, Alice shares her journey.

Season 2 of The Yak will run From May to September and episodes will come out fortnightly.

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Our incredible audio engineer is Zayne McIntosh 

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