Wagga Wagga has been refugee settlement area for over four decades, and has been receiving Yazidi asylum seekers since August. More than a dozen families have already found new homes in the city’s suburban neighbourhoods.
Australia is accepting them as part of the 12,000 they promised to resettle from the conflict in Syria and Iraq.
Targeted by IS for their faith, hundreds of thousands fled their traditional homelands in northern Iraq after a massacre and mass kidnapping in Sinjar district. Many, especially children, died from thirst and hunger on the way.
“We didn't have shoes, no water, no food. The situation was bad. There wasn't enough water."
“Whoever had cars, they left - taking whoever they could,” Khalaf Suleyman told SBS. “But in my village there were hundreds left behind. The men were killed and the women were taken away. I knew some of them.”
Fleeing Sinjar, his family spent nine days on the mountain.
“We didn't have shoes, no water, no food. The situation was bad. There wasn't enough water. The adults didn't drink. We would fill bottle caps with water and give it to the children, so the children wouldn't die,” he said, sitting on the verandah of his new home.
“At night, it was so dark, so quiet. In the morning, I saw hundreds that had died. They would say this child has died from hunger, this old man has died from thirst.”
The Suleyman family, including Khalaf’s five children, now live in Mount Austin, a southern suburb of Wagga Wagga. They arrived in Australia two months ago, after spending more than two years in Turkey on the run.
His six-year-old daughter Nimat still sings the Kurdish songs she heard in the refugee camps there, but now she is also learning English. She takes extra classes at the local primary school.
Yazidi refugee children in English class in Wagga Wagga. Source: SBS
“I was very scared because I was very small then,” she said of her time on Mount Sinjar. “IS was shooting at us and we saw their cars coming towards us, so we ran away.”
There, in August 2014, aged four, she saw the frail and elderly who died from exposure buried in the rocks.
“My shoes wore out, there were holes. So I wrapped fabric around my feet. Some people’s feet were bleeding,” she said.
“They don’t seem to be that traumatised,” Debbie Worgan, Nimat’s ESL teacher, said with surprise.
She said the new intake of Yazidi children are settling in really well.
“They're lovely kids and they've got such a positive approach and attitude to school. They're not shy or timid as we thought they might be. They've jumped right in, they're making friends. They're learning really quickly,” she grinned.
“IS was shooting at us and we saw their cars coming towards us, so we ran away.”
They’re culturally very similar to the local Australian students, she said.
“They've got a similar sense of humour, similar sense of right and wrong. They're just like Australian kids who've been away for a long time and forgotten how to speak English."
The Riverina area is now taking in more refugees than ever, according to Wagga Wagga’s Multicultural Council.
“When I was growing up here, I really didn't see anyone who didn't look just like me,” council manager Belinda Crain said.
"In the last 15 years - we've settled people previously, but not to the level that is now. So if you walk down the street, you see people from other cultures.”
Some 3,000 asylum seekers - from countries including Burma, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq – have already been resettled there.
Many families, especially those from rural areas in their home countries, chose to be settled in a regional city rather than a metropolitan area.
“Occasionally there's some negativity, but overwhelming it's positive,” Ms Crain said.
She said the refugee community adds to the city's diversity and has led to job creation within the local economy.
Refugees are given assistance with finding a rental home and support with administrative tasks, such as signing up for bank accounts or registering for Medicare. After the first month, they manage their own finances and futures, receiving the same regular Centrelink payments as an equivalent Australian family would receive.
While the basic necessities are put in place by the Multicultural Council, it is the local volunteers that create homes for the asylum seekers, Ms Crain said.
Volunteers also assist families with grocery shopping, helping them find culturally specific ingredients and cooking implements, and, crucially, they offer a route into the local community.
Families are settled in homes within walking distance of shops and intensive English lessons, so they have their own independence without need for a vehicle. As a result, many live close to each other in several suburbs.
The council has sought to place them close to other members of their community, but not in clusters, so they live amongst Wagga Wagga’s more established residents, aiding integration.
“It's a rich tapestry of people - there aren't pockets of people or refugees - they're all included in the city,” Deputy Mayor Dallas Tout said. “It's just a part of the city, how it's always been.”
He said recent community consultations stressed the need for even more inclusion.
As the Yazidi community grows, they are more able to support each other in building their new lives, but they still need time to heal.
“What happened, I will never forget,” Mr Suleyman said. “But coming here, I know there is peace, a future for my children. But in my mind, I know my brothers are still there and lots of Yazidis are still there. I think about them a lot.”
