DIKAR (Community Official)
My Story
My name is Dikar Ruba and I was born on Christmas Island in 1963. I live with my parents, brothers and sisters at the old barracks with two bedrooms. Mum and dad have their own room while the rest of us (myself, my brother, Shalat, my two sisters, Nerita and Latiah) shared the other room.
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From there we moved to the Malay Kampung near the settlement. My dad made us (Shalat and I when we were teenage) timber-like boat called the sampan out of timber collected on the island, and we would go fishing in the sampan on the weekends. What we caught we would sell the fish to the locals to help mum and dad out.
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We would play soccer everyday after school. Our soccer ball was made of old newspapers bound together with sticky tapes. As we have no other toys, we made our own toys from wood such as wooden guns and battle ship. That’s where I learnt my skill as a handyman using my hands to work on things with tools.
Other than that we spend the day swimming and going into the forest to get mum banana leaves she would use to wrap Nasi lemak and base for roti sambal to sell.
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We all moved to Australia in 1977 flying TAA and settled in Katanning.