Immigration to Melbourne (멜번 이민 수기)

On Monday and Tuesday mornings each week, I worked at a hospitality TAFE in the city. This place was a professional training institute made up of five buildings, offering a wide range of courses such as baking, cooking, waiter and waitress training, and barista courses, along with numerous classrooms. After working there for four hours a day, I was able to rest relatively well in the afternoon. From Wednesday to Sunday, I worked full-time at an Italian restaurant. My schedule

A few years ago, I was assigned a morning shift at a hospitality TAFE in the city on a Sunday. I was told to arrive by 7:30 a.m., so I left home around 6:30. I expected to reach Box Hill Station by about 6:45, and since the train (called a “train” here, though it’s more like a subway) would take about 30 minutes, I thought I would arrive on time without any problem. But to my surprise, perhaps because it was Sunday, the first train was not scheduled to arrive until 7:30 a.m.

I joined a non-life insurance company in Korea in October 1981 and worked there as an office employee for 16 years and 3 months, until January 1998. After leaving the company, I worked for seven years as an insurance broker before immigrating to Australia. In total, I changed my workplace only twice in about 23 years. After arriving in Australia, I worked 9 years and 10 months as a kitchen hand in an Italian restaurant, 8 months as a kitchen hand at ANZ Bank, and I am current

After the Chinese boys left and no replacements were hired, the workload suddenly increased. I had to work all day, every day of the week. I was exhausted and wished I could take a break, but that wasn’t possible. A few weeks later, one day a young manager came up to me and said, “You’re actually earning much more than the managers who work here.” In my mind I thought, Well, of course I am. I work that much. I simply laughed it off. But a few days later he asked me if I would

It had been almost a year since I started working as a kitchen hand at the Italian restaurant — though in truth, most of my work was dishwashing. When I first began in January 2006, I worked just five hours on Saturdays. But as the year went on, the restaurant became extremely busy. At one point, I worked as many as 55 hours a week. During that time, all I could think about was how desperately I wanted just one day off. Then one day, one of the three young Chinese men working

Before I began working at the Italian sports club restaurant, a young man I had worked with at a sushi shop once told me he had also worked as a dishwasher in a kitchen but quit because it was too hard. He said most people gave up after two or three months. Hearing that, I remember feeling a sudden fear inside. Yet somehow I managed. Over time, I settled into the job, working anywhere from 25 hours a week to as many as 40. The fear I once felt gradually faded. Still, as if it

After living in Box Hill for a year, we moved to Doncaster, about a ten-minute drive further away. Our previous house had three bedrooms, and it felt cramped for my wife and me, our grown son, and our two daughters. It was also rather modest. Our eldest daughter had just started university, and although she would likely marry and move out in a few years, my wife insisted that, for the limited time she would still live with us, she wanted her to have memories of living in a go

Although this discussion briefly diverges into the topic of the Chinese community, it is widely recognized in Australia that the large inflow of migrants from diverse backgrounds has brought substantial benefits to the national economy. At the time, the central commercial district of Box Hill featured approximately five or six Korean grocery stores, with a similar number of Korean-owned clothing and general goods shops. Many of these businesses were sustained largely due to C

Two months after I immigrated to Australia, our family experienced its first piece of good news.My eldest daughter, who had graduated from Year 12 in Korea, came to Australia that same year and entered Year 11 at a local high school. After just one year and nine months, she was accepted into the University of Melbourne’s Landscape Architecture program, which is often regarded as one of the best universities in Australia and ranked around 24th in the world. Because I had only

The first place we settled after immigrating to Australia was Box Hill, about twenty-five minutes by train from Melbourne’s city center. When you get off the train and ride the escalator up to street level, you arrive at a busy commercial area. On the ground floor are two large supermarkets — similar to Korea’s big discount stores — along with clothing shops, variety stores, a food court, and several produce markets. Once you step outside the station, rows of single-story sho

Life stories from Melbourne, Australia. Work, family, and everyday moments of an immigrant life. On the afternoon of December 5, 2005, as the first snow of the year fell in Korea, I boarded a plane at Incheon Airport.The next morning, I arrived in Melbourne, Australia. As I stepped outside the airport, the air felt unexpectedly cool, even though it was midsummer. That unfamiliar sensation stayed with me. I was forty-nine years old then. I had spent seventeen years working at