When Lorrie Bell first laid eyes on two children brought to Australia to recover from the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, she saw one thing in their eyes: fear.
Misha and Maria are two of more than 1 300 so-called Children of Chernobyl brought to Australia over the past quarter-century to rejuvenate their health, physically and emotionally.
Unlike most of these children, Misha and Maria have stayed after arriving fifteen years ago.
Ms Bell says fear instilled everything they did when they arrived.
“They questioned everything from a point of fear. There was so much poverty where they came from. There was so much looking over your shoulder. Things like, if they saw anybody in a black four-wheel drive, they thought it was the mafia,” she says.
Their story begins with an Australian charity, the Victims of Chernobyl National Relief Fund, formed to bring children out of the irradiated regions for seven-week visits, aiming to give them a breath of fresh air.
It would find host families and fly the children to Australia. The host families would then take care of them, taking them on outings and even organising long-overdue dental care.
Nikolai Grigorovitch, the Fund's president, says that breath of fresh air was intended to be both figurative and literal.
“First of all, they breathe clean air. Secondly, they eat non-contaminated food. So, whilst we don't claim a miracle, at the same time, we can see the difference in the child when he first arrives and when the child goes back."
25 years after the nuclear disaster on April the 26th, 1986, the Children of Chernobyl still come to Australia.
Ms Bell was raising four children in the south-west Victorian coastal town of Warrnambool, when friends of the family called to say they had four children from the Victims of Chernobyl charity staying with them who would like to come and see the ocean.
An intended weekend stay became a week.
Ms Bell would fill the fruit basket, and, within half an hour, the fresh, uncontaminated fruit would be gone.
When the children left, she suggested to her husband they host their own group of Chernobyl children, counting on help from volunteers at the reiki meditation centre they ran in town.
Misha and Maria
Before it could happen, the Victims of Chernobyl charity called to say it had a child who needed a home.
Misha, then 12 years old, had gone to a home thinking he was to be adopted. But when social welfare informed the family they could not adopt him, the whole plan fell apart.
The Bells agreed to take him in while his visa status was sorted out.
“We had to keep on renewing his visa,” Ms Bell says.
“We had to actually go before a tribunal, which was the most horrendous thing for both of them, to say that what we were doing was okay. We hired an immigration lawyer to work it out - because they had no papers. We had no adoption policy, they had no right to be here, but it was crueller to send them back than to keep them here.”
Neither Maria nor Misha - or Mikhail, now that he has grown up - wants to talk about their long journey.
But Lorrie Bell has agreed to tell the story.
Maria was 10 years old when she joined the family, less than two months after the Bells learned of her while picking up her brother.
The pair joined a family which had four children, including two adopted kids, forming what Ms Bell calls a patchwork family that has grown up to be a close one.
But for the six long years between arrival and permanent residency, even if Maria and Mikhail had a home, they were still stateless.
“They belonged nowhere, legally. It was really tough for them. You know, they'd go to get a school pass, and they'd need some form of identification, and you'd stand behind them and say, "I'm it. I'll ... I can identify them, but that's it. There's nothing." So, you know, when they got permanent resident that [changed],” Ms Bell says.
For those six years, Lorrie Bell says, she and her husband kept buying visas and paying immigration lawyers to keep the fight alive.
Now, she says, Australian citizenship should finally come within the next 12 months.
Regardless, peace has already come with the permanent residency.
And Lorrie Bell says Mikhail and Maria have never failed to show their deep gratitude, looking for every chance to help their foster parents back, at home or at the centre.
Now 27 years old, Mikhail has become a talented cabinet-maker and still lives near the family home.
Maria, now 25, still lives at home and works in retail, enjoying the people it brings her in contact with.
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