Will Australia let me Come Home, or are we Phuced?

My journey to re-unite with my beloved Mick continues. It is not looking very positive. For those of  you who read my previous blog post, here is the latest update.

I did receive a reply to my first application to return to Australia. As I suspected, I was denied re-entry to the country based on the fact that I had not provided enough evidence of our relationship. I was not entirely surprised but I was astonished to receive the email reply from the Department of Home Affairs sent to my email, but addressed to a Mr. Tu Phuc Dat Pham. I have never known this man and as far as I know, I am still a woman. I couldn't help but feel as though my application had not been handled with much care. Attached to my email was a copy of my original application that contained all of mine and Mick's most private information, like our passport numbers, addresses, birthdates, etc. I couldn't help but wonder who had been privy to all of this private information about us and it continues to worry us.

I contacted the Department of Home Affairs in Australia to tell them about this concern and was told they would send me a new copy of the email addressed to me. That did not really instill much confidence in regards to my very real concerns. I wondered if Mr Tu Phuc Dat Pham received a letter to Mrs. MacFarlane? I wondered if this was a clerical error or had my original application been intercepted by hackers? There have been several cyber security breaches within Australian government websites of late and was I a victim? Should we be worried about identity theft? Had my application been truly considered?

I reported that I had sent a second application as I was concerned I had not received any reply at all up until then and so now I requested that they link my first and second application (which included stronger documentation proving our de facto partnership - wills, power of attorneys, joint bank accounts, etc), so that my second application might get moved further up the queue rather than starting the waiting process all over again. Mick visited our member of parliament, Llew O'Brien's office in Maryborough to show them a copy of the mis-addressed reply letter and the admin staff there also said they would "see what they could do". In both cases, we were told that no one had access to my applications. Hmmmmm, no one but Mr Tu Phuc Dat Pham, I thought. He now possibly had a copy of my entire personal information and identity.

I have had some time now to contemplate all of this. My letter arrived at a very odd hour. In the past, all of my correspondence with the Department of Home Affairs and Australian Immigration have arrived during standard business hours - Monday-Friday, 9-5. This reply letter arrived in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. I suspect it came from a time zone outside of Canberra or Sydney, but have no idea where in the world, although if I were to do some further sleuthing, would likely be able to determine approximately where it had originated - most likely from some offshore operation who I have since learned are actually processing these very important applications. It is extremely distressing to imagine that decisions about my life...our life together, are being made by someone sitting in a cubicle outside of Australia in some foreign country who is being paid a wage per application. (I don't know about you, but if that were the case and I was getting so much per application, I would be cranking them out faster than a great white headed for a surfer's leg at Bondi).

We have never had an opportunity to speak to a real human being about our relationship. We have never had the chance to explain how our lives have been affected. How our life together has been halted. How we have gone from being connected as a couple on a daily basis, to being half a world apart with no light at the end of this crazy tunnel. As each day passes we become sadder and lonelier and more heartbroken. The insensitivity surrounding the entire decision making process is astounding.

I decided to google Mr. Tu Phuc Dat Pham. I learned some interesting things. Pham is a common Vietnamese surname. Good to know. However, the combination of Tu Phuc Dat Pham is not. I ask you now, dear readers, to read this name slowly. Once. Twice. Three times. I don't want to spell it out for you, but I think as you repeat it over and over a few times you will see what it "might" be translated phonetically in English to mean.

I took it a step further and found a story about a name that had been made up as a Facebook profile a while back and was found to be fraudulent. That name was Phuc Dat Bich. Again, not a common combination in Vietnam. I suppose there is some humour here in a very politically incorrect manner, and surely there are many who would laugh. The creator of that name thought so at the very least.

For what it is worth, the creator of the name Tu Phuc Dat Pham,  has succeeded. That is exactly what our efforts to re-unite seem to be at this time, completely..... PHUCED.

Allow me to express my sincere empathy to everyone at the Department of Home Affairs and the staff at Llew O'Brien's office in Maryborough. I do realize that these are unprecedented times for all of us. We are facing chaos and tragedy daily during this Pandemic that none of us have witnessed in our lifetimes. My purpose here is to illustrate our frustration and put a face on the "number" we seem to have become. We just want to resume our quiet and simple life together in our small town in Queensland. I do not have Covid 19, and I would quarantine upon my arrival in Australia (unlike some recent young women who cavalierly toted the illness back into Queensland from Melbourne without a care in the world for their families or fellow Queenslanders.) I am a mature woman from Canada who loves Australia and her Australian partner and I just want to come home.

Please Australia...let me come back!

Original Painting by Cindy Schultz that hangs in our home at Kyeema North

 I don't know what else to do, so I am writing this open letter to the powers that be in the land down under. Let me come back to "my Mick". He needs me. I need him. We have been apart now for over three months. I left Brisbane on March 24, 2020, heeding the call from my Prime Minister in Canada to "come home now". 


I regret that I listened to that now. I wish I had stayed in Australia with "my Mick". His name really isn't Mick as most of you who know me and know him are aware, but that has been my pet name for him on this blog for years now. In case you don't know why I call him "Mick",  it is a reference to Mick Dundee of Crocodile Dundee fame. I had never met a man like him. He is about as rough and tumble an Aussie as you might ever meet. He is what people outside of Australia would see as an authentic fair dinkum Aussie man. He is strong and brave and tough-skinned and funny and he knows how to pick up a snake, fix a broken down car, drive in soft sand, swim like a champion and rescue a Canadian girl like me from Huntsman Spiders and Rhinoceros Beetles. He is all that and more...much, much more.

I met him in Spain in 1977 when we were just kids backpacking through Europe. I was 19 and he was 20. We didn't see each other again until 1979 when I came to check out Australia. That was when sparks started to fly between us, but as fate would have it, that was not the time for "us" to become "we". We remained friends throughout the years. He was good with Christmas cards. So was I. When I finally became a mother at 36, he already had 3 boys. He called me and teased me about being "a little long in the tooth for babies" by that age. He had had his kids much earlier. I was married. So was he. Life went on. He sent a sweet little t-shirt with a kangaroo on it for my baby from him and his boys. These little connections went on for years. I kept telling myself we were just old friends. I had to. What else could I do? I was a married woman. 

I do recall thinking however, that should something ever happen to my husband, I would very likely think about taking a trip to Australia to see if there was something more there. I knew his marriage had ended, although he never really revealed that directly.

Then the thing I thought would never happen, did. My marriage fell apart. I had started writing this blog and "Mick" started reading it. He started commenting on it...anonymously. It took me a few weeks to figure out who these sometimes annoying comments were coming from, but when I did realize it was this boy/man from my past, we started to talk and talk and talk and before long, "Mick" decided to come to Canada so we could meet up again in person after more than 30 years. Despite the passing of years and hair loss for him and the effects of gravity on me, that old twinkle in his eye was still there and we got that old spark ignited pretty easily. 

For the next couple of years, we had this crazy intense long distance relationship and racked up thousands of air miles and wore out computer keyboards chatting daily on-line until we knew we had to take the next step. Mick took a leave from work for one year and came to Canada and we lived together here until his leave was almost over. He had "proposed" prior to arriving in Canada. Neither of us were too keen to actually get married again in the traditional sense having "been there, done that", so on a beautiful sunny day at the Sandy Cape Lighthouse on Fraser Island, he asked me instead to be his "life partner". That was in 2012. He gave me a ring that he had gotten made, fashioned from a ring I had given him in 1979. There are many romantic stories I could share, but I am saving those for my novel. This is more of a synopsis of how things have developed between us for the powers that be to learn and understand our history together.

In 2013, we travelled back to Spain to visit the town where we had first met. We came back to Toronto from Spain and packed up and moved to British Columbia to see if we might like to start a new life together there. It was a bit early for him to retire, but we wanted to explore our options. He got along great with my brother and so we thought it might be nice to live near him out west. In the meantime, I had taken and early retirement and it was my turn to give Australia a shot. Toward the end of 2013, I left my life in Canada behind and moved in with Mick in Australia. He bought a little house for us and while he worked, I renovated the house and created a "home" for us. It kept me busy and life went on happily for the next 4 years in Maryborough, Queensland. We created a new life together with old and new friends, family time and travel. I went back to Canada each year to visit my family and friends and we both returned for my niece's wedding in 2014. By the end of 2016, Mick was getting ready to retire in 2017, so I came back to Canada ahead of him to begin to search for a house. It was our dream to spend half the year in Australia and half the year in Canada between our two homes. 

We made that dream a reality when I bought a house in May of 2017. He retired in February of 2017, came to Canada and now we could live this amazing life splitting our time between the two countries. Everything was going swimmingly well until March of this year when Covid-19 turned our life upside down. If I stayed in Australia, I would not have any health insurance for any "pandemic-related" illness. If he came to Canada, the same thing would apply to him. In retrospect, what I should have done, was stay in Australia and apply for my permanent residency, something I intended to do "one day".  As the years have passed, we have always known that at some stage we would have to choose which country to spend our final years on this planet. We were leaning toward Australia all along but now that is indeed, the plan. When I do finally get back to Mick in Australia, I will be applying for my PR. We never imagined a scenario like the one that has played out in 2020. 

We are 62 and 63 now. We don't take time for granted anymore like we might have when we were in our 20's or 30's or 40's. We are retired and in the final third of this life now and that makes these last three months seem like an enormous amount of time that has been stolen from us. At the end of 2018, Mick had a heart attack. That was a big wake up call for both of us around the fragility of life and how every day is precious. Together, we made some major lifestyle changes and I am happy to report that Mick is in fantastic health. With my help, he changed his diet, we exercise together and he has never been stronger. And that is why we are so desperate to be back together enjoying each other and living out the next part of our lives in the same country.  Deb and Steve (his real name), Poppa and PoppaDeb (what the grandchildren call us) - we are a team...the "perfect couple" according to a sweet, young neighbour here in Canada.

I have had to apply for entry back into Australia as his de facto partner. I have yet to hear back from the Australian Government as to the status of my application and now I fear that I may not have provided enough evidence of our relationship to warrant approval. I may be wrong and perhaps I am just in a very long queue. I have booked a flight to Sydney September 1st, but without the thumb's up from immigration, I cannot get on that flight. 

I am asking all of our friends and family in Australia to please share our story. My tennis friends, our neighbours, our family in Brisbane, Rockhampton and Gympie, all of our mutual friends in Maryborough - Please share it verbally, share it on social media, share it any way you can to help bring Mick and I back together. 

Please help mend our broken hearts.  Thank you all so very much.

 Happier times...Deb and Steve