Taliesan: My name is Taliesan Keon Salabert. My true family is Faiad. So it would be Taliesan Keon Faiad.
Matt: How long have you been in town? Are you a long term local?
Taliesan: Myself? I’ve lived here for about, I would say three years now.
Maybe a little more. Yeah. Three years. My father and I came here. We owned a – semi owned – a place, I guess, because we’ve lived with many people most of the time because we came (here) from the New South Wales fire. That spread across, to the Gold Coast and all that. It was pretty wild.
We were not the first, just one of the first to get hit by the fire. And, that’s a story. We pretty much came across. We’ve lived in Tasmania before and we absolutely love Tasmania. But as soon as we came back across the ferry or spirit of Tasmania, we had COVID hit.
It was an experience, but I mean, that’s our life. That’s what I call it. We stood strong in St Helens for maybe a year or two before moving with a friend who helped us greatly – and continued to help us through another couple of years. But then, you know, you get people that show their true colours all the bloody time.
My father’s ex veteran and all. He’s got, an amputation just below the knee. And, I think it was a disease he had. A rotting of the foot. Happened in New South Wales. For about two to four years, or however long we lived up there. Feels like four.
He had this rotting of the foot, but none of the doctors would help him. So we came here, lived for three years, and we met some lovely people. Met some not lovely people as always. It’s been pretty fun. We are heading to Vietnam permanently soon.
I myself have been all over the country and pretty much all the states. Except Adelaide, thank God. Roads are like spiderwebs. Could not deal with that! I’ve been in 12 schools. And all over Australia. Throughout my life, my experiences (I’ve met) so many people that are just horrible.
Until my father brought me to Vietnam to get the hell out of here, just for, I think it was a couple of weeks. Best couple of weeks I’ve ever had. I completely changed. I wasn’t stuck in the house anymore. I wasn’t stuck in a box, because I disliked coming out to this, because my mind runs quickly and thinking about a lot of things.
As soon as I went to Vietnam, my lord, first day, first day we met some really lovely people. He showed me around a lot, around the places, and instantly fell in love with it. The power cords are horrifying though, they’re like all over the place. You’d think that if something happens, that’s it, everyone gets absolutely shocked!
There’s just love and care really, because people actually come in like if there was a (car) crash. So many people all around, even the homeless, would just gather in and fix up the person who was hit or whatnot, pull them away, and then traffic would continue while authorities would come and help them.
And it was amazing. It was pure. Everyone had a role. Like, people litter – or what we would call litter – throwing trash out their car windows or whatnot onto the street. But the homeless that don’t have a home, that don’t have anything in their lives, would actually be given the opportunity to clean up the streets for – of course it’d be small cash – but it’s something at least. Instead of going to some sort of governmental facility or whatnot to help them, like Centrelink – which is pretty much death in my opinion.
Because we’ve been in homelessness and stuff over at Darwin and a lot of places. We’ve always had to live with other people, always had to do this and that. But Vietnam is a completely different story. Those people thrive. It doesn’t look like it, but they’re in a much better state than we are, by far.
And that’s the kind of place I kind of want to live in. Hard working and people that are just communicative with each other and how it’s all based around family, but it’s not just your own family. You make the family that you see or are given, basically. And at all times you find a person you want to speak to and boom, there you go. You pretty much call them your brother, sister, or whatever. Even your father, or mother. There’s a lot of people over there that are my brothers and sisters. Hugely (important) to me. It’s gonna be the best years of my life. Our life. By far.
