In his first weeks in Australia on a student visa, Om Dhungel wanted to get a job to send money to his family in Nepal, all refugees driven out of Bhutan. But people here struggled to understand his accent. Sometimes, they would mistakenly call him Tom.
Soon after arriving in Sydney, he spotted a vacancy sign on the street, and excitedly pulled his borrowed car in to apply for a position – but it was a motel sign, not a workplace. “I laugh at it now, but I actually cried after that,” chuckles the slim, moustachioed and bespectacled 61-year-old, almost 25 years later.
