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The smell of dinner for a growing family of six is wafting through the house in Melbourne's outer west.
It's the typical routine for any family in suburban Australia, but for the Manuellas, it's still completely new.
It was barely two weeks ago that Telieta Kaumaile and their four children arrived.
Telieta says it's a reality still dawning on her.
'It's not like we're just coming on a vacation, it's like we are staying. It's a new home and it's a new journey. We realised that in the past few days. Tuvalu will always be in our heart and our home, but Australia is another new chapter to our family journey's life.'
The Manuellas are here on a special new visa stream, called the Falepili Mobility Pathway.
It's available to 280 Tuvaluan applicants each year, decided by random ballot.
Telieta worked for Tuvalu's department of labour, while her husbad Kaumaile was in the government's public works department with a background in architecture.
The couple decided they would be among the more than 8,700 people to apply for the visa.
'We came to the conclusion that in case we were selected, it would be a good opportunity in terms of better life, better education for our children, better job opportunities.'
The prospect of being chosen was a one in more than 30 chance.
Kaumaile recalls the moment he heard the unlikely news his family had been successful.
'I was actually in the shower *laughs* ... It was funny, I was in the shower and then came out of the room, and my wife was on the phone. I saw her face was like changing, it was like surprised. So I said 'oh, what happened?' and I thought something happened to her family or relative. But actually she just told me that we're on, we got an email saying that we'd been selected.'
The new visa grants migrants from Tuvalu permanent residency in Australia.
Professor Jane McAdam, Director of the University of New South Wales' Evacuations Research Hub, explains the visa doesn't require applicants to have work or study plans already arranged.
'It provides opportunities for what we call livelihood diversification, it enables kids to go to school in Australia, for people to acquire further skills and training which they might want to use here, but equally might want to take back to Tuvalu, and I think that's why this is something that the Tuvaluan government actually requested from Australia, because it sees it as embedding that skills diversification, that broader opportunity for remittances to be sent back to Tuvalu to support the economy there, rather than this being a one-way street for people to leave Tuvalu.'
The Tuvaluan diaspora in Melbourne is small but tight-knit.
The Manuellas consider themselves lucky to be staying with a relative, Niuelesolo Boland.
He's also deeply involved with the community and helps newcomers from Tuvalu adjust to life here.
'I personally think that the Australian government could do a little bit more. I think it's falling back on the Tuvaluan diaspora in Australia to pick up the burden. Like a lot of them are looking at forms like 'what is this?' you know? Coming from Tuvalu where we don't even have tax file numbers you know? Or a Medicare scheme. So to them it's totally foreign.'
While the Falepili Mobility Pathway has proven hugely popular in Tuvalu, one expert has taken issue with the random nature of the visa ballot system.
Dr Yvonne Su, from Harvard University's School of Public Health, points to the fact this visa was partially designed to assist those on the frontline of climate change and rising sea levels.
'Climate change is not random. Climate change doesn't just happen to anybody, unfortunately, right. So, because climate change is not by chance, it frightens me that we've allowed the people on this visa, that I have to say has been branded with climate change resilience as a big part of it, and saying climate mobility and saying you're protecting them from climate change as a big part of it, you're saying that could be by chance.'
But the Federal Minister for Pacific Affairs, Pat Conroy, says the random nature of the ballot is critical to the treaty.
'The thing that we definitely need to avoid is brain drain. If you didn't have a ballot system that introduced an element of random selection, in the end the people who would qualify first for this visa would be the people with the highest educational and professional qualifications within Tuvalu, and that would lead to a brain drain.'
Back in Melbourne, both Kaumaile and Telieta are grateful, but also deeply aware of the threat climate change poses to their home country.
'In another 50 years they say Tuvalu will be gone. But my countrymen they're still fighting, at the moment they're still fighting. But we just fought for the betterment of our family, to come here and use this opportunity.'
