Report: Khaled
On June 13, we went to the Immigration Museum with EAL class to look at the story of Australia. We met Ms Robin, who works at the museum, there. She told us about the different exhibits and what each room contains. In the first room, we saw that there was a video talking about many people from other countries; those who came to Australia after World War 2 to find a better life and to raise their families.
After we finished the video, we went to the next room where we learned about some of the things that people brought with them when they came from their country. Some of them brought shoes made from snakeskin and some items like pictures, and one Japanese family brought a watch with them, while an Islamic family brought a Gameboy and some clothes.
We went to a room which had VR, and when we used it, we saw a man from Iran talking with a man from Australia about Messi, the football player.
We also went to another room which showed the clothing from different cultures like the Jewish people and Islamic people and others. We also saw that after World War 2 in Australia there were many people who were coming from Asia, which sparked some racism.
We learned that the Australian population after World War 2 was just 8 million people so the Australian Government wanted more people from other countries to come and live here to help defend the county and build the economy.
After all of this, we went to Melbourne Central, ate some food and I played chess with my friend Mohamed. After this we finished the day by coming back to the school on the train.
Report: Armita
On Tuesday 13 June, William Ruthven Secondary College’s Year 9/10 EAL class went to the Immigration museum in the city with Ms Han, alongside Vicki. We learned a lot of things about immigration, the people, their biography, and how they came to Australia or why they came. All of them had different stories with different nationalities.
Ms Robin from the Immigration Museum talked about the exhibits and after that we visited different rooms in the museum. One of the interesting things I saw was information about Behrouz Boochani. He is a Kurdish Iranian writer who was detained on Manus Island for six years after fleeing Iran. He currently lives in New Zealand, having been told he’d never be allowed to enter Australia. After the museum, we went to Melbourne Central to eat and then headed back to the school by train.
Report: Joud Alhamami
On June 13, my Year 9/10 EAL class visited the immigration museum. We saw many significant historical things and we also heard some great, sad and inspiring stories. Visiting the Immigration Museum, which used to be an old customs building, opened my eyes.
It gave me the opportunity to see things that happened to people, the way people immigrated to Australia and most importantly, we got the chance to see the history of Australia.
We saw many different artefacts, one of my favourites was the 300-year-old Quran. The passport room was also a favourite; there were so many passports from different countries. There were many stories of how people immigrated to Australia. The story that stuck with me was a story of a 25-year-old woman who was going to die if she stayed in Sudan. So, by herself, she made the difficult decision to move to Australia. She said that moving to Australia saved her life. Ms Han, Vicki and my class headed to Melbourne Central after we finished with the museum. We had lunch and shopped for a bit before catching the train back to Reservoir.