New Life In Australia

• Benny Leung, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2008

I was migrant to Australia a couple years ago, I chose Australia just because I believe Australia have the best environment, better food resources, and other geographical unique features and advantages. Australia is a really big country, mainly filled with a lot dry deserts with droughts, different kinds of floras and faunas, also, different people from different countries too!
There is always a reason that why I migrant to Australia. Australia owns the best exclusive flora and fauna in the world. Their native Kangaroos and Emus are revered all over the globe. Those are only some of the important representative animals that used as a symbol of the Australia, other unique native animals such as the lazy clumsy Koala, and the musical genius Lyrebird are significant to Australia as well.
Settling in Australia is quite challenging, I spend around two months to do so, rented a relatively small apartment for shelter, found a suitable job for a living, everything seems fine, and so I started thinking about how to adapt to this new country Australia, Australians and their lifestyle.
It was really bad at the beginning, I suffered the worst alienation from people, and I almost hated this country. People treated me unfairly due to the difference of my nationality, the different way that I used to live, and an occasionally darker skin colour. Terrible things from people like unfair payment, disrespectful attitude, isolation and ignorance, and all other bad things that you can imagine, all these issues makes me feel like I’m locked inside a dark, tiny room that cannot communicate to the world, which almost turned me into an insane.
After a long while, I kind of get used to it. I tried to eat different foods, and the most popular one was fish and chips. I also tried to dress like other people did, watching ‘Big Brothers’ and ‘Australian Idols’. And I drank a lot beer, too!