For ageing refugees, a new life in Australia can be difficult, even depressing.
One Victorian agency says it is elderly new arrivals who are especially neglected, with most programs aimed at families, children and single men.
Now, the agency is reviving an intricate art to help some older refugees feel at home.
Luke Waters reports.
Even at 86 years old, Karen refugee Sar Aw Lay approaches his task for the day with determination.
The one time elephant trainer explains through an interpreter how he relishes the basket weaving classes he supervises at the Geelong-based, refugee integration agency Diversitat.
(Interpreter) "He says he really enjoy, he really happy, to share his ability with his friends."
That has not always been the case.
Diversitat worker Robyn Martinez says she watched the octagenarian descend into depression in the months after he arrived in Australia.
"He said that he had lost himself, he wasn't part of anything anymore, and maybe he shouldn't have left Thailand from the refugee camp."
Sar Aw Lay mentioned basket weaving as a familiar activity, so Diversitat purchased the materials.
And Robyn Martinez says the small community of ageing Karen refugees, originally from Myanmar, embraced the activity with enthusiasm.
"We didn't know. That was like a secret strength they all had. And they came along, and they rushed to the corner of the room where the materials were and quickly made things. And we even had products in two hours."
The results -- baskets, boxes, floor mats and the like -- are sold at a local craft market, with half of the proceeds funding new materials.
The other half is donated to the Thai refugee camps many of the Karen and Karenni refugees once occupied.
Diversitat chief executive Michael Martinez says ageing refugees have been neglected for a long time.
He says the basket weaving activities, however modest, highlight the lack of things being done to keep them involved.
"There should be more emphasis on the fact that the refugee mix involves older people and that there is often a lack of understanding of their needs."
Now, Sar Aw Lay helps other new arrivals, like a 67-year-old Karen refugee named Pa dit, through a skill they once used for survival.
There are also gardening and sewing activities, and Robyn Martinez says the sense of purpose the activities deliver can transform lives.
"For someone who is vulnerable to dementia, working in the mind and the hands and the body, and coming and going and being active, that's great."
And, for now, it is also keeping history alive, using simply word of mouth to pass on the generations-old weaving patterns.
