(Transcript from World News Radio)
Lunar New Year celebrations are in full swing across the country.
But for many modern-day Asian migrants, when they first came to Australia, very few people celebrated it.
Most were too busy trying to make a new life in a new land often with few family or friends.
Ryan Emery reports on the Loong family who now celebrate the occasion with great enthusiasm.
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"Happiness and prosperity! (in Cantonese)"
The Loong family wishing each other, and the SBS audience, happiness and prosperity.
(sound of people at the party)
Four generations of Loongs are gathered around a line of plastic tables in the courtyard of a house in Perth's northern suburbs.
It's a beautiful warm summer's evening, the food is plentiful, the smiles are big and the laughter loud.
In the middle of it all sits patriarch Cheong Loong and his wife Nyet Hin - content and surrounded by children, grandchildren and one great grandchild.
But it wasn't always like this.
For a long while, there was no time to celebrate Lunar New Year, only time for working and saving money.
And no family to celebrate the Lunar New Year with.
Cheong Loong came to Western Australia in 1964 when he was 36.
It meant leaving his wife and six children behind in Kuala Lumpur.
It would be about 12 years before his youngest son joined them in the west.
Cheong Loong says it was hard.
"(with translation) When we first arrived, the most valuable thing was letters from home. I would be very happy when I received letters from home. I couldn't call home because telephone calls were very expensive. Three minutes. Two pounds a minute. Telephone calls were so expensive that I needed to work two or three days before I could make a call for a minute. I only made two phone calls over a period of seven years. I made a phone call when my daughter was born. We seldom made phone calls. "
Mr Loong worked in one of only three Chinese restaurants in Perth.
He was one of a handful of Asian people in the tiny city that was often referred to as a large country town, quite frequently by Perth residents themselves.
Asian cuisine was not high on their agenda.
Cabbage, for example, came in a can.
"(with translation) You needed to work hard. You also needed to handle personal relationship. Back then, I could speak three languages at work, Polish, Italian and English. Now I forgot all these. I could speak three languages. There were different kind of tasks. We were allocated different kinds of work. Many involved food preparation like cutting vegetables. Unlike the westerners, there were many Polish, Italians working together. We all spoke English, but now after so many years, I forgot."
It would be years before Mr Loong would be reunited with his wife and children, many of whom lived with their maternal grandmother in Malaysia.
Michael Loong was only a few months old when his father left them to seek the family's fortune.
"Only starting now that I'm 50, I realise what he sacrificed for us. We didn't realize. We just thought he was there working and sending money home to us."
Mr Loong, now 86, lived in a hostel where you had to pay for everything - including the hot water.
He worked and saved, but he could still only afford to bring, on average, one family member over each year.
But, by 1971, the Loongs started their own Chinese restaurant with the help of a local business partner.
Mr Loong says Perth's appetite began to broaden, but it helped his restaurant was up the road from the University of Western Australia.
"(through translation) They accepted Chinese food. We sold Malaysia food. It was a bit different. Malaysia food was more popular, like chicken rice. Our chicken rice was very famous. Many university students came to eat at my place. If not for the university students, I wouldn't be so famous. The students also introduced people to come here."
Mr Loong stayed in the restaurant business until 1991.
His son Michael says food was, and still is, a big part of the family's lie.
"The first day I come to Australia, I expected to see this beautiful country and I end up in the kitchen on the first day. So we spent most of our time in the kitchen. Because our dad was running a restaurant we grew up in the kitchen, doing our homework in the kitchen and that's how our life is. But looking back at it, I'm a chef now so it's training for me as well so it's all worked out good."
When the family did get away from the kitchen, they went to the horse races on the weekend and the beach.
Mr Loong says he's so used to Australian life that he finds Malaysia is too noisy to live there.
His son Michael says his father has become a passionate Australian.
"We are really Australian now. Even my dad. We were watching the soccer last week and he wouldn't watch the soccer when Australia played. He wouldn't watch it until Australia wins. He'd say: 'what's the score?' and when Australia won he'd watch a replay because he gets so excited because he has so much bad experience of Australia losing. So he only watches when Australia wins, so we are very Australian."
And now they're enjoying the fruits of their labour, and the traditions of their past .. . surrounded by family and friends.
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