After growing up Iranian in Ballarat, I know it to be a welcoming place – a hate march won’t change that

Dellaram Vreeland, centre, and her family moved to the regional Victorian city of Ballarat when she was seven years old Photograph: Supplied/Dellaram Vreeland

I was seven years old when my family moved from Melbourne to Ballarat. As a child, the consequences of the move didn’t really sink in. Aside from leaving my friends, moving 90 minutes west of the city was no biggie.

Nor was it to my parents. Both refugees, they had fled Iran more than a decade earlier at the beginning of the Islamic revolution due to their Bahá’í faith – an independent religion originating in Iran whose primary tenet is the unification of humanity.