Lodoe Wangmo moves slowly through her three-bedroom unit in Melbourne, troubled by chronic back pain. She’s a woman of few words, and when she does speak, her voice is soft.
“I am very happy here, I can enjoy the freedom and liberties that I couldn’t in Tibet,” she tells SBS News in Tibetan.
She arrived in Australia in 2016 on a refugee visa with her husband and two children. But she carries the emotional scars of her past.
Lodoe says she grew up virtually alone after her mother died when she was a young child and her father and brother were forced into labour camps during China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. 
In Tibet, an autonomous region of China, the Tibetan Red Guards closed monasteries, smashed Buddhist statutes and forced monks and nuns to return to secular life. Lodoe says she fled in 1992 because of the continued repression in the region by the Chinese Communist Party.
Lodoe Wangmo says she's 61, but her paperwork says otherwise. Source: SBS News
“There was no basic human rights and no freedoms in Tibet.”
Her past, though, also haunts her in other, more unique ways. Her official Australian identification documents say she is 41 years old - except she’s not.
“Every time I have to show my ID information, which says I am 41, I feel like I am telling a lie," she says.
Lodoe's Australian ID says she was born in 1979, making her only 41. Source: Supplied by Danyal Syed
“Looking at my physical appearance, of course, I am a lot older - I am 61.”
Every time I have to show my ID ... I feel like I am telling a lie. - Lodoe Wangmo
Tenzin Lobsang Khangsar, the president of the Tibetan Community of Australia (Victoria), says Lodoe's case is one of dozens across Australia, unique to the Tibetan diaspora. He explains where the confusion has come from.
“This cohort of people mostly fled Tibet in the 1990s, many were political prisoners who went to India via Nepal on foot. In India, there were requirements to obtain a so-called registration certificate in order to legally stay there, and you had to be under the age of 21 in order to get the certificate."
He estimates more than 100 people in Australia are similarly impacted and has been helping some of them to rectify it.
Trapped by the past
, a 2016 report by the US-based Tibet Justice Centre with support from Boston University School of Law, notes: “between approximately 1979 and 2003, Tibetans arriving into India from Tibet through Nepal were not officially provided with any identity papers by the Indian government".
It goes on to say an “informal practice” emerged whereby Tibetans would apply for a registration certificate by pretending to be born in India, a practice which India turned a blind eye to for many years.
Lodoe says when she arrived in India, she felt she had to say she was significantly younger in her desperation to legally stay in the country. She says she also falsified her records to say she was born in India, rather than Tibet, in order to comply with the rules at the time.
A Tibetan flag is carried in Sydney in 1999. Many Tibetans fled their homeland in the 1990s. Source: Torsten Blackwood/AFP
Gabriel Lafitte is a former development policy consultant to the Tibetan government in exile - known as the Central Tibetan Administration - and the author of books on Tibet. He says such practices were common.
"You have to understand that India never signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, so what that means is that all people who have sought refuge in India are technically there illegally and could be sent back at any time.
"The Tibetans that fled to India without valid documents were extremely vulnerable to shakedowns by local gangs and corrupt police so they were desperate and willing to do whatever they could for the short-term peace of mind of being able to stay in India."
Proving someone's actual age
SBS News has seen a letter sent to Victorian community president Mr Khangsar by the Central Tibetan Administration.
It states: "Before the year 2003, registration certificates are issued only to Tibetans who are born in India after they reach the age of 16 ... Therefore, Tibetans who have escaped from Tibet and reach India before 2003 state their birthplace as India and reduce their age to obtain the certificate."
SBS News has not been able to independently verify applicants had to be under the age of 21 in order to be eligible for a registration certificate.
Mr Khangsar says correcting someone's date of birth details has proven difficult as the Department of Home Affairs requires original documentation from Tibet, such as birth certificates.
"The problem for many of these people is that such evidence either never existed or has been lost during the refugee's escape.
"A person can rarely access any existing records left in Tibet without putting family or friends at risk."
Lodoe says she has no records which prove her age because she was born in a remote area of Tibet which did not provide hospital registration records.
She says her biggest concern now she's in Australia is access to age-appropriate medical services. She has battled a number of health concerns from chronic pain to gastric issues and also suffers from insomnia and anxiety as she continues to deal with the trauma of her past.
Under the refugee visa, she qualifies for Medicare but says it is difficult to articulate her medical concerns to health practitioners, particularly when her documents don't show her true age.
Karl Shami, a lawyer with Maurice Blackburn, is assisting members of the Tibetan community in Victoria with their applications to have their real age recognised.
A woman with Tibetan flags at a street market in McLeod Ganj, India, earlier this year. Source: AFP/Getty Images
He says the applications, by their nature, will be challenging to mount and will be assessed individually.
“We are dealing with a group of people who fled their home country many years ago and they have come from a country which doesn’t keep strong records in the way that we might here in Australia.
“So, a lot of that information might be lacking or doesn’t exist, making it quite difficult for them to piece together their supporting documentation and evidence.”
Lobsang's story
Only a couple of floors above Lodoe, in the same Melbourne apartment complex, lives Tibetan refugee and artist Lobsang Dhoyou. His unit is decorated with traditional Tibetan art, most of which he has made.
He shows off his decorative papier-mâché masks of deities, often used for 'cham' dances performed by Tibetan Buddhist monks.
He has been trying since he arrived in Australia in 2014 to change his official identification documents but has had no luck. His documents state he is 46 - he says he is 56.
Lobsang Dhoyou has previously failed in getting his birth date changed. Source: SBS News
“I put in an application to the immigration department which was previously rejected. They found I did not have sufficient evidence to prove my actual age," Lobsang says in Tibetan.
“But I worry about my health, and worry that without correct identification documents, it will be an uphill journey getting my health cared for.”
They found I did not have sufficient evidence to prove my actual age. - Lobsang Dhoyou
The devout Buddhist activist protested for Tibetan independence at the 1988 rallies in the capital Lhasa. He was arrested by local authorities and imprisoned for two and a half years.
He says while in jail he was tortured and after his release had little choice but to leave Tibet. He escaped across the Himalayan border with Nepal on foot and then fled to India.
“After I arrived in India, I needed to obtain the registration certificate to allow me to legally stay in the country, and so I had to reduce my age so that I could fit into that system.”
Lobsang says he too has little documentation from Tibet to prove his actual age other than a household register book, but due to translation errors of his Tibetan name to Chinese when he lived in Tibet, and then his Chinese name to English, the Australian Government did not accept it.
For Lodoe and Lobsang, who both understand only a little English, they hope that by doing their best to speak out about their situation will help their community to resolve the issue.
Lobsang's documentation says he is 46. He says he is 56. Source: Supplied by Danyal Syed
The Home Affairs Department told SBS News it is aware members of the Tibetan community in Australia have experienced difficulties in providing sufficient identity documents to satisfy the evidentiary requirements under the Privacy Act 1988.
The department said it has worked with individuals to explore options under the ImmiCard program. An ImmiCard is issued to certain visa holders who don’t have and can’t obtain a passport recognised by the Australian Government, according to the department's website.
The department said its policy for correcting personal information is "evidence-based to ensure the integrity of maintaining a single identity record for each non-citizen in Australia" and each case will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
