Om Dhungel on losing everything and finding Australia in 'Bhutan to Blacktown'

Good Reading Podcast

Bhutan is known as the land of Gross National Happiness, a Buddhist Shangri-la hidden in the Himalayas. But in the late 1980s, Bhutan waged a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign against its citizens of Nepali ancestry, including Om Dhungel and his family. Bhutan to Blacktown tells Om Dhungel’s remarkable story — his journey from a remote village to a senior position in the Bhutanese Civil Service, to life as a human rights activist in Nepal and, eventually, to his work as a community leader in Blacktown, western Sydney. Every step prepared Om for the central role he would play in settling more than 5000 Bhutanese refugees, in one of the most successful refugee initiatives in Australia’s history. Written with Walkley Award-winning journalist James Button, Bhutan to Blacktown is a story of grit and struggle, humour and irrepressible optimism — and how losing nearly everything shaped one man’s character and fate. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Om Dhungel about the period of Nepalese ethnic cleansing that forced him to reconsider his life in the Buddhist nation of Bhutan, his role in resettling the Nepalese in Australia, his role as a community leader in Blacktown and what community means for him.