Becoming a migrant was the best thing I’ve ever done – I was lucky that it was by choice | Bertin Huynh

Whenever life was grey in the Birmingham winter, I remembered my parents did a lot more with a lot less when they migrated to Australia more than 40 years ago

Like my parents before me, I arrived in another country with only as much as I could carry. It was colder than I was used to, and a thick coat was one of the first items I bought. I knew no one, everyone I loved was thousands of kilometres away, somewhere sunnier and warmer.

Without the promise of work, home or livelihood, I had packed up my life in coastal Sydney and moved to Birmingham – dubbed the “Venice of the north” for the canals snaking through the city and its suburbs.

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