(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Forty years ago the tanks of communist North Vietnam rolled into the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon.
It marked the end of the Vietnam war.
In the decade that followed, around two million Vietnamese fled the country, seeking refuge.
Australia welcomed tens of thousands.
Some came by boat.
Others flew.
All faced the challenge of making a new life.
Phillippa Carisbrooke reports.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
Dung Le has called Australia home for 31 years.
Like so many Vietnamese refugees, he arrived with virtually nothing.
Today, he owns a beauty school and a chain of nail bars.
Mr Le was 15 years old when South Vietnam's capital Saigon fell.
He was living in the South Vietnamese city of Nha Trang.
But three of his siblings were at university in Saigon.
For a month, the family held grave fears for their safety.
"Terrible. A big worry. Because we couldn't contact them. (We thought) they might try to escape from Saigon to overseas somewhere, you know?"
Mr Le's brother and two sisters made it home safely.
But not before their father, a major lieutenant in the South army, was seized.
"After two weeks, the Communists from the North, they come in, and they took my father away to put in the concentration camp to brainwash (him) for nearly eight years."
In 1982, Mr Le fled to the Philippines with his young family.
Two years later, they flew to Melbourne to start a new life.
Before the fall of Saigon, around 700 people born in Vietnam lived in Australia.
In just six years, that figure swelled to 40,000.
Today, more than 220,000 Australians identify as having Vietnamese heritage.
The community is widely considered a model of successful integration.
A community member and physicist at Melbourne University, Dr Tien Kieu, says the Vietnamese spirit came into play.
"People prepared to sacrifice, to build a future. And they don't demand or ask for things, or take things for granted. They're prepared to work hard, and they do believe that, in working hard, the fruit will come later."
But those who remember the horror of the war do not want it forgotten.
The Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne, the Reverend Vincent Long Nguyen, says this is a time of reflecting.
"It's a time to remember ... remember the pain and the suffering of the victims of the war. It is a time to remember the sacrifice and the valour of our soldiers."
A total of 521 Australian soldiers died in Vietnam.
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