People ask me this a fair bit. Out of everywhere in the world my family could have ended up, why here? Why Australia?

Honestly, I wish I had a more interesting answer for them. The truth is a lot simpler and a lot less deliberate than people expect.

There Wasn’t a Shortlist

My parents weren’t sitting around a table comparing job markets or weather or cost of living, the way you might if you were planning where to retire. That’s not what this was. We were a family running from a war, and Australia is where we landed.

I think people want the story to sound more calculated than it actually was, because that makes it a tidier story to tell. But I’d rather just be honest about it, even if it’s a bit messier than the version people expect.

What I Actually Know, and What I Don’t

I’ll be upfront here—I don’t have some detailed account of other countries that were considered before Australia. That decision was made by my parents, in 1985, under an enormous amount of pressure. I was a very young child. It’s not something anyone sat me on down and explained at the time, and to be honest, it’s not something we’ve gone through in detail since either.

The One Thing I Do Know

What I do know is this: we ended up in Australia, and it gave my family the one thing we needed more than anything else at that point.

Safety.

I think it’s worth saying that plainly, because there’s a real temptation, when you tell a story like this years later, to dress it up—to make it sound like a deliberate, well-considered choice between several great options. Ours wasn’t that. It was survival first. Everything else came after.

So Why Did Australia End Up Standing Out?

Even without a list of other countries to measure it against, there are things about Australia that became obvious pretty quickly once we’d arrived. Looking back now, decades later, I can point to a few of them.

Stability, More Than Anything Else

The biggest one, for me, is stability. That’s the word I keep coming back to whenever I think about this.

After leaving a country in the middle of a civil war, just being somewhere that wasn’t at war felt like enough on its own:

• No constant fear
• No wondering what the next day would bring
• Just the basic, almost boring, ability to live your life without something terrible happening around the corner

I know that probably sounds like a low bar. But when you’ve come from somewhere that couldn’t offer you that, it stops being a low bar and starts being everything.

Somewhere to Actually Build With

Beyond just being safe, Australia also gave my family something to actually build with:

• Decent schools
• The chance to find work, even when we were starting from absolutely nothing
• A place where putting in the hours could genuinely lead somewhere, instead of just keeping your head down and hoping

None of it happened fast. I want to be clear about that too. This wasn’t some quick turnaround story where everything suddenly fell into place. It took years. But the fact that it was even possible — that’s really what made Australia the right place for us, even if nobody ever sat down and chose it off a list.

What Grew Out of That Decision

Here’s the thing though — even though the original move to Australia had nothing to do with career opportunities, that’s exactly what ended up growing out of it.

The Long Way Round to Building

I left school and became a mechanic first. Mastered that within about six months. Then I studied a bit of business management, and after that I basically just kept working through trade after trade:

• Carpentry
• Plumbing
• Electrical
• Concreting
• Tiling
• Gyprock
• Bricklaying
• Rendering

I wanted to understand how all of it actually worked, not just the bit I happened to be paid for.

Foreman, Then My Own Business

Within about three months of stepping into the building side of things properly, I was made foreman on a 120-unit development. That was a big jump, honestly, for someone that new to the industry.

By 2006 I’d built up enough experience and enough confidence in myself to go out and start my own contracting business.

None of that happens without the stability Australia gave us to begin with. You can’t really build a career, let alone a business, in a place where you’re not even sure you’re safe. Australia gave me calm ground to actually stand on and build something from.

Where the Business Stands Today

That business has now done more than 1000 projects across New South Wales, Rural Victoria, and Queensland—homes, duplexes, big industrial areas, heritage works, remedial works, maintenance/strata works, subdivision, and multi-unit developments too.

Every single one of those projects exists because, decades ago, my family got the chance to build a life here in the first place.

The More Personal Reasons I’ve Stayed

Career stuff aside, there are more personal reasons Australia has stayed home for me, long after the original reasons for coming here stopped being relevant.

Where My Family’s Story Actually Played Out

This is where my parents settled. Where my father worked, building buses, right up until he was eighty, before he finally retired. Where our whole family’s story has actually played out—from arriving with almost nothing to where things stand now.

The Small, Ordinary Stuff

It’s also just been the backdrop for the small, ordinary stuff that matters to me:

• Fishing trips
• Family picnics on the weekend
• Sponsoring a few local sporting clubs around Sydney, because giving something back matters to me, probably because I remember what it was like to rely on other people’s goodwill when we first got here

Hundreds of Small Decisions, Not One Big One

If I’m honest, staying here was never really one decision. It was hundreds of smaller ones, made over years.

Every project I finished, every client or subcontractor I built a decent relationship with, every club I sponsored — each one added a bit more to why this isn’t just where I happen to live. It’s home, properly.

Being Honest About the Whole Thing

So if you’re asking why I chose Australia, I can’t give you some neat story about weighing up options and picking the best one. That’s just not what happened.

What actually happened is that Australia turned out to be the place that gave my family safety, right when we needed it most, and then gave us — and later, gave me — the room to build something real on top of that.

It’s not a glamorous answer. But it’s the true one.

And more than twenty years into a career I’ve built entirely here, on this soil, I think what’s come out of it speaks for itself.

FAQs

Why did Ibrahim George Dardas’s family choose Australia specifically?

There wasn’t a deliberate comparison between countries — it was where the family ended up after fleeing the war in Lebanon in 1985, and it gave them the safety they needed most.

Did Ibrahim George Dardas’s family consider other countries before Australia?

He doesn’t have a detailed account of other options that may have been considered — that decision was made by his parents under enormous pressure, and it wasn’t something explained to him as a child.

What did Australia offer that made it the right place to stay?

Beyond safety, it offered decent schools, the chance to find work from nothing, and an environment where hard work could genuinely lead somewhere.

Did the move to Australia influence his working life?

Directly — without that settled ground to build on, he doubts the run from mechanic to multi-trade tradesman to business owner happens the way it did.

What keeps Ibrahim George Dardas in Australia today?

Family roots, his father’s years of work here building buses, and the everyday things that matter to him — fishing trips, family picnics, and sponsoring local sporting clubs around Sydney.

Was staying in Australia one big decision for Ibrahim George Dardas?

No — he describes it as hundreds of smaller decisions made over the years, each one adding to why Australia became home rather than just a place to live.