The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (38 page)

‘What do you say, Rocky? Shall we go help?’ And right on cue he’d start chirping away like he understood me.

‘Where are the kids?’

Chirp, chirp.

‘In the old abandoned mine?’

Chirp, chirp.

‘And tunnel twelve has collapsed due to the inherent structural weakness of the original ferric iron?’

Chirp, chirp.

The agent and producers loved it. I got the part, and Christina sent me a card: ‘Sorry I freaked out, I do have a phobia.’

The show was a wonderful experience and Dad used to love watching it, seeing me using the animal handling skills he’d taught me as a kid. One day I had to act with a carpet python that was three metres long. We had a professional snake handler who passed me the snake and reassured me about other basic facts.

‘He went to the toilet yesterday, which means he’s good for another month or so,’ he said.

A month?
Phwoar.
Imagine what a month’s worth of snake poos would smell like. I hadn’t even thought about a snake having bodily functions but was relieved to hear that his system was okay.

As we did the scene, I felt this slick of wetness roll down my back.

‘Ughh! Something stinks,’ the actor playing opposite me sniffed. Then I saw the cameraman and sound operator pointing at me, unable to decide if it was horrific or hysterical.

‘Oh, dude! That snake’s shitting all over your back …’

For the record, a month’s worth of snake poo is the worst smell on planet Earth.

You lying bastard
, I thought to myself, looking around for the snake handler who was suddenly nowhere in sight. The crew were wetting themselves as I took a quick shower, changed into a new shirt and re-shot the scene. I couldn’t wait to go home and use Mum’s back-scrubbing brush for a full thirty minutes to get the stench off me.

Mum and Dad always told us kids to ‘Do as much as you can to give back to this beautiful country that gave us a second chance.’ So we all do a fair bit of charity work.

In 2003 my brother Khoa and I volunteered for a charity called Open Family, and they decided to start up a ten-week course of drama classes for ‘at-risk street youth’. It was basically going to be a couple of hours a week. The kids would make a ten-minute video, which would be a bit of fun and help boost their self-esteem. But once they got into it, the kids—being kids—didn’t want to make a ten-minute video, they wanted to make a feature film.

Part of me loved their have-a-go attitude.

‘It’s all well and good that they want to make a movie,’ I said to Khoa when we were talking about it, ‘but feature films cost a few million dollars, and we’ve got a budget of $340.’

‘These are amazing kids, Anh,’ Khoa said to me. ‘They’ve lived extraordinary lives, some had been street kids for a long time, others were on parole. They all have amazing stories to tell.’

So it was Khoa who convinced me that it was worth giving this a go. With a starting budget of $340, we set out to make a feature film. Khoa would direct the film, I was going to help him produce it.

‘To thine own self be true’—our humble mother’s words of wisdom. We followed our instincts and an amazing serendipitous chain of events occurred that gave a bunch of street kids and their first-time director and producer a chance at making a movie.

The local paper got wind of this great little project and did a write-up about us, providing a phone number for anyone who wanted to be involved. The next day we got a whole lot of phone calls from people who wanted to help out; from volunteers to fresh film graduates willing to lend their services. The most amazing phone call was from the owner of the local pub who called up and offered to sponsor us with $5000, on one condition: he got to be called executive producer.

‘Sir,’ I said to him, ‘for your $5000, we’ll call you whatever you want.’

A year and a half later we released the film, calling it
The Finished People
. We gave it this title because many of the street kids referred to themselves as ‘finished people’ as they thought that their lives were as good as over. Our feature-length film played at proper theatres and everything. Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton from
The Movie Show
reviewed it and both of them gave it four and half stars out of a possible five. Margaret called it ‘one of the best Australian films of the year’. We got nominated and won a whole bunch of film industry awards and it really was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. Little did I know it would lead on to the happiest day of my mum’s life.

I’d always had a great relationship with my brother Khoa—even after his Siamese fish got mine pregnant. After working so closely with him on the film, I realised just how special a person he really was. I watched as he mentored these street kids; looked after them and took them under his wing and gave them a love and respect that they’d never experienced before in their lives, not even from their own families. One of the kids came up to me one day and told me that if it wasn’t for Khoa, he would’ve committed suicide five times over.
Wow
.

Seeing how beautifully Khoa looked after these kids, combined with his generosity in giving and helping charities in general, I thought I’d nominate him for what is probably the greatest award that a kid in Australia can win: Young Australian of the Year.

In the beginning it was really just a way of patting him on the back and saying, ‘I reckon you’ve done great, bro!’ It turned out that I wasn’t the only one who thought he’d done enormously well.

The phone rang and Suzie answered it.

‘It’s Khoa. He sounds angry.’

I got on the phone and Khoa did sound annoyed.

‘Oh man, I’ve bloody won New South Wales.’

‘Yeah, how good’s that?’ I said, feigning innocence.

He was now one of eight finalists for the big national award. At the start of the whole thing, when I called Khoa up and told him that I had nominated him, he laughed for a bit then said, ‘What? You’re joking aren’t you?’ I could tell that he was uncomfortable with it. I tried to soothe him.

‘It’s a real long shot, Khoa. Just a bit of fun, you know.’

‘Thanks, Anh. But it is a long shot, aye.’

He said this to reassure himself. Khoa loves doing good things, but he hates being acknowledged for it. He hates show-offs, he hates fanfare, he hates fakes. The only reason he went along with it was because he thought he had as much chance of winning the award as Jean Claude Van Damme has of winning an Oscar. So when he won the state finals and became one of the favourites to win the big national award, I had a lot of explaining to do.

‘Khoa, wait. It’s a good thing.’

‘How? I’d just rather do my thing, and someone else can get the awards and do all that ra ra, “I’m so great” rubbish.’

‘Khoa, I know you just want to do good things for people. If you win, you can do
more
good for
more
people. The Young Australian of the Year gets more meetings and phone calls than Khoa Do from some charity. So more kids will benefit from your work.’

‘Okay, but if I win the whole thing, you’re dead meat.’

So, there we were—Australia Day, 26 January 2005. Mum, Tram, Suzie and I found ourselves in the nation’s capital at a ceremony with thousands of people awaiting the announcement of the Australians of the year. We were in the VIP section where family members of finalists were allowed to sit. Khoa came over and pulled me aside. He had a huge grin on his face.

‘I never thought I’d be happy to be here.’

‘Yeah?’ I wondered what had changed.

‘The last couple of weeks… I’m starting to realise what a massive deal this is, and umm… thanks for putting my name in.’

‘Wouldn’t it be cool if you won?’

‘That would be very cool,’ he said.

He punched me on the shoulder and I saw a twinkle in his eyes that said, ‘I love you, bro.’ That made me want to hug him and tell him how much I loved him back. Of course, being a bloke, I just punched him back. Harder.

Mum was jumping out of her skin. We had a chat the night before about how great it would be if Khoa won, but how he had done so well already that we were going to celebrate no matter what.

‘Doesn’t matter!’ Mum said, just like when I went for school captain or when Khoa and I sat for those scholarships.

There were a bunch of speeches and then the prime minister stepped up to the microphone.

‘The 2005 Young Australian of the Year is… Khoa Do!’

Jesus Christ! Khoa’s done it. My brother just won Young Australian of the Year.

Khoa, the baby dangled over the side of the boat by the pirates, the toddler that Mum dressed in little girls’ dresses, the fat kid who thought the homeless woman was going to eat him… had just won Young Australian of the Year.

Mum was bawling tears of happiness. So was I. So was everyone.

After the wildlife park show
Don’t Blame Me
finished, I got offered little one-off bit parts in Australian dramas like
All Saints
, and I discovered I really enjoyed acting. I guess it was a deep fondness that began way back in high school with Mrs Borny’s secret drama classes.

I was keen to act some more, but roles really were quite rare for an Asian face like mine, so I thought,
Bugger this, I’ll create my own
. I sat down and within a couple of months wrote a feature film for myself to star in called
Footy Legends
. My brother Khoa and my wife Suzie helped re-write it, and a few years later we had funding and backing from Mel Gibson’s company, Icon, and were ready to go.

The movie was about a bunch of down-and-out friends from Sydney’s outer suburbs who entered a local rugby league competition to try to get their lives back on track. I played the lead character, Luc, who was trying to find a job while bringing up a little sister on his own.

Having been on
The Footy Show
a number of times, I’d met a lot of the greatest players in rugby league history. So I got on the phone and asked a bunch of them if they wanted to be in the film. It was a long shot, but I just thought I’d try. Amazingly, every single player said yes, and we ended up with cameos from players like Brett Kenny, Brad Clyde and Cliffy Lyons.