When Nausheen Hashmi first walked into a grocery store in small south-west Victorian town Edenhope six months ago, she was on edge, expecting whispers and stares.<\/p>\n
She had lived in Melbourne for three years after immigrating from Dubai to study nursing, knew nothing of Edenhope and worried about how the farming community would accept her as a Muslim.<\/p>\n
And she worried about how her children might fit in at school.<\/p>\n
“On the first day, I was very nervous going around,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I was like, everyone is seeing me, you know, but the people were so good.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Edenhope celebrates Philippines Independence Day.\u00a0 (Supplied: Danielle Grindlay)<\/p>\n
“They made me so comfortable. They were smiling and asking if I needed any help.”<\/p>\n
A sign of how welcoming the community was emerged just a week after the family arrived in town.<\/p>\n
When Ms Hashmi’s daughter required halal meat for a school cooking class, a teacher drove 54 kilometres to the town of Naracoorte in South Australia to buy it.<\/p>\n
“She brought her that chicken to make the chicken parma and I literally cried for that,” Ms Hashmi said.<\/p>\n
“Neither in Melbourne, nor in Dubai, no teacher made that much effort to make the child happy.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Edenhope, on the banks of Lake Wallace, has fewer than 1,000 people, the vast majority born in Australia. (ABC News: Darryl Torpy)<\/p>\n
Changing demographics<\/p>\n
Almost 80 per cent of Edenhope’s 937 residents list Australia as their country of birth.<\/p>\n
Recently, though, the small town on the Wimmera Highway about 30 kilometres east of the South Australian border, has become home to a growing number of migrants.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Grampians Health launched an international recruitment campaign in the hope of attracting healthcare professionals to their regional Victorian centres.<\/p>\n
Now, 41 of Grampians Health’s 120 staff were born overseas.<\/p>\n
“Their contributions span across urgent care, acute wards, aged care and community health services,” chief people officer Clare Woods said<\/p>\n
“We are proud of the diversity within our team and the cultural richness it brings to the care we provide.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
New migrants gather at Edenhope Cultural Fusion Day. (ABC Wimmera: Grace Marshall)<\/p>\n
Ms Woods attributed Edenhope’s success in attracting migrants to the community’s warm embrace.<\/p>\n
“It’s opened its hearts and its minds to the qualities and the cultural experiences that those people bring in,” she said.<\/p>\n
West Wimmera Shire chief executive David Bezuidenhout said migrants had brought vital energy to rural communities experiencing population decline.<\/p>\n
“Migrants enrich the social fabric, introducing new traditions, cuisines and perspectives that foster cultural exchange and community resilience,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Their presence can be the difference between a town fading or flourishing.”Family makes Edenhope home<\/p>\n
Christian Vital and his family only planned to stay in Edenhope for two years.<\/p>\n
He is nurse unit manager in the acute ward at Grampians Health and, after growing up in a busy Philippines city, never imagined a town like Edenhope, let alone that it would become his home.<\/p>\n
“Years passed, months passed, days passed and we’re still here and we’re turning six years this January,” Mr Vital said.<\/p>\n
“The reason we stayed here is not because of location \u2026 we stayed here because of the peacefulness and the people who welcomed us here.”<\/p>\n
Lady Anne and Christian Vital celebrating the purchase of their home with son Paulo. (Supplied: Danielle Grindlay)<\/p>\n
“When we started here, I think we were about the only three ‘Filos’ in town. We never felt that we’re not welcome, we never felt any racism during that time.”<\/p>\n
But the relocation was not without complications.<\/p>\n
In 2018, Christian Vital and his wife Lady Anne made the heartbreaking decision to leave their then four-month-old son, Paulo, in the Philippines with his grandparents and move to Australia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lady Anne and Christian Vital with four-month-old Paulo in the Philippines in 2018. (Supplied: Danielle Grindlay)<\/p>\n
The planned four-month separation dragged out to a year as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.<\/p>\n
The Vitals were finally reunited with Paulo, who now loves Edenhope and never wants to leave.<\/p>\n
“He made friends with the locals and the migrants, so he’s very happy down here,” said Mrs Vital.<\/p>\n
“We just want to really put into his heart that he’s a Filipino and Australian.”Footy ‘helped a lot’<\/p>\n
Moving to another country as a child presents challenges, including learning a new language.<\/p>\n
After Garvit Jayee moved with his parents from India to Melbourne at eight, he quickly picked up English.<\/p>\n
But another move to Edenhope at 12 brought new difficulties as he struggled to relate to his classmates.<\/p>\n
That is, until he joined the local football team and found common ground.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Garvit Jayee (right) has made friends playing for local team Edenhope-Apsley. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
“I didn’t even know what footy was until I came here,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was a little tough at the start. I didn’t fit in.<\/p>\n
“Then teachers and the counsellor, they helped me and then footy helped a lot because I played with my classmates.”<\/p>\n
“It helps me know that I’m acknowledged in this community and there are people that care for us, my family, me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Nausheen Hashmi first walked into a grocery store in small south-west Victorian town Edenhope six months ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,87387,13330,61831,95463,74115,44,27484],"class_list":{"0":"post-139484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-country-town","11":"tag-farming","12":"tag-filipino","13":"tag-migrants-in-regional-australia","14":"tag-muslim","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-regional-victoria"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}