By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
AS A 10-year-old Maria Napoleon had little idea of the human catastrophe she escaped in a small boat when she landed in Darwin’s port in 1975.
She, her brother Manuel, adopted sister Ines and grandmother and aunt had fled their East Timorese home just weeks before Indonesia brutally invaded the island.
“I didn’t realise the significance of it at that time. Now it starts to hit home,” Ms Napoleon said.
“We wouldn’t have been processed to leave if we didn’t have Portuguese blood.”
Her story, as well as the words of other East Timorese families who settled in Casey, are set to be recorded for posterity by Gleneagles Secondary College year seven students.
The interviews will be written up by the 25 students and published in a book by Wild Dingo Press by the end of the year.
Ms Napoleon said the rickety refugee boat from East Timor was picked up en route to Australia by a European container ship.
She remembers being on deck with hundreds of asylum seekers and not allowed to eat the only food available which was rationed to the youngest children only.
It was then a case of famine-followed-by-feast.
When settled in an army camp in Darwin, Ms Napoleon had never seen so much food.
She hid stashes of food in her clothes, not knowing where she would be taken nor when the next meal would arrive.
A prized piece of memorabilia is an evocative black-and-white photo of her brother Manuel stepping off onto Darwin wharf for the first time.
Ms Napoleon has been back to visit her mother in the Ermera district in Timor Leste twice, while Manuel has re-settled home to run a successful tourism business.
The project was co-ordinated by the Friends of Ermera group and supported by a City of Casey grant.
