A poem by Lang Leav: ‘Cabramatta was dubbed Australia’s drug capital. But it was also a place of refuge’

The Ocean Never Stops Asking

In the summer of ’97,
when day after day,
the sun beamed down its fury,
I was seventeen, tired of seeking refuge
from the incendiary heat
in the air-conditioned cool
of a Westfield shopping mall,
two train stops away from Cabramatta.
When my friend said, we’d go to Cronulla.
Can you imagine the audacity!
Us, treading on the sanctity
of their white sand beach,
an aberration among
their white, tanned bodies,
our foreign faces stinging
from their proverbial taunts,
go back to where you came from,
rubbing salt in our tender wounds.
Yet we persisted, seduced by the cool,
bubbling waves, the tickle of a breeze.
Bravely, we stepped over fault lines
between the bitumen and the shore,
between southwest Sydney and the Shire,
we crossed the threshold into the water
to be baptised by this country we loved
more fiercely than we were allowed,
this continent squelched into a misshapen heart.
In Siem Reap, on the Tonlé Sap river,
Dad lived in a house, perched on stilts,
from the bamboo planks of the makeshift deck,
he’d jump straight into the water,
to the water, he’d lost so much
but the ocean never stops asking.
I grab a fistful of sand, perfect and golden,
and place it into the mouth of the sea.

In my poem, The Ocean Never Stops Asking, I reflect on a quintessentially Australian pastime: a day at the beach. However, for children of immigrants in the 90s, this ordinary activity could be fraught with tension. Cronulla beach, famous for being accessible by train, proved irresistible to teens seeking relief from the blistering heat of an Aussie summer. Still, the beach had an undercurrent of danger well before the eruption of the 2005 riots. Yet we continued to flock there, drawn to the water by an innate, primal urge, undeterred by the open hostility of the locals.

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After all, we were no strangers to peril, having grown up in a suburb dubbed as the drug capital of Australia. But for all its faults, Cabramatta was also a place of refuge and belonging – a contradiction I explore in my recent novel, Others Were Emeralds. Like my characters, my friends and I were regular teens, preoccupied with schoolwork, crushes and peer groups. Unlike typical teenagers, we were the children of refugees from war-torn countries who had suffered unimaginable horrors.

For much of its terrifying reign, the Khmer Rouge destroyed photographs in an attempt to erase the past. Consequently, I have never seen pictures of my parents before the war. I can only grasp fragments of my family’s history through the stories they tell.

One such story, told by my father, paints a vivid picture of his childhood home. He describes how, for half the year, the patch of dirt under his stilt house remained dry and barren until the monsoon came and the Mekong River swelled, filling up the adjoining rivers. A body of water would appear beneath him as if by magic, transforming his cherished boyhood home into an idyllic playground. I often imagine the ramshackle house on stilts, standing proud and sturdy before the devastation of Pol Pot and his killing fields. I picture my father as a boy, just on the cusp of manhood, poised to jump.

• Australian Poetry Month runs throughout August and includes festivals, events, workshops and a commissioned poem of the day brought to you by Red Room Poetry. Find out more here