People sometimes ask me what it was like, those first days in Australia. What the city looked like. What our first home was. What went through my head when we landed.
Honestly, I can’t tell you. I was one year old.
I don’t have a memory of stepping off a plane, or seeing Australia for the first time, or any of the little details people usually want in a story like this. What I have instead is what’s been passed down to me and what I can piece together from knowing my family and knowing how things generally went for us in those early years.
The Gaps I Can’t Fill In
I want to be upfront about this, rather than make something up to fill the gaps.
I can’t tell you the exact suburb we first landed in, or what our very first place to live looked like. I don’t have a “first impression” to share, because I wasn’t old enough to form one. Those specific details just aren’t things that have been passed down to me in detail, or that I’ve ever actually sat down and mapped out.
Why I’m Not Going to Guess
It would be easy enough to invent something here—a nice little scene about arriving at the airport or a description of our first house. It would probably make for a better story. But it wouldn’t be true, and I’d rather tell you honestly what I do know than dress up something I don’t.
What Actually Happened, as Best I Can Tell It
What I can tell you with confidence is 1985, and I can tell you why we came.
My family left Lebanon because of the war there. Staying wasn’t really an option anymore. I was brought here as a baby, too young to have made that decision, too young to remember any of it firsthand.
The Difficulty Wasn’t a Single Bad Day
If there was a “biggest difficulty” in those early days, I don’t think it was one specific moment. It was the overall situation—a family with next to nothing, in a country they didn’t know, trying to work out how to build something from scratch.
That’s not a dramatic single story. It’s more of a long, grinding stretch of uncertainty that probably went on for years rather than days.
What My Parents Actually Did
Here’s the part I do know well, because it’s been talked about, and because I watched the results of it growing up.
They Started Working Straight Away
My parents didn’t wait around. They started working from the very beginning, because there wasn’t really another option. There was no cushion to fall back on, no time to ease into things.
My Father Set the Tone Early
My father, in particular, spent decades building buses, working right through to the age of eighty before he finally retired. He passed away not long after that. Whatever pace he set in those very first days in Australia, he basically never let up from it for the rest of his working life.
I think that tells you more about what those early days were actually like than any specific story about a first house or a first street ever could. Whatever hardship existed in that period, it didn’t stop him. It just became the starting point for decades of consistent work.
What Life Looked Like Once We’d Settled
I obviously can’t speak to the very first days themselves, but I can speak to what life became not long after, because that part I actually remember.
A Humble Household
Growing up, things were humble. We didn’t have much. But it wasn’t a sad or difficult childhood—it was just modest and shaped heavily by hard work rather than comfort.
The Little Things Alongside the Hard Work
Alongside the hard work, there was still room for the ordinary stuff:
- Family fishing trips
- Weekend picnics
- Good schools and a decent education
None of that undoes how tough those very first days must have been for my parents. But it does tell you that, fairly early on, they managed to build something stable enough for a childhood to actually happen inside of it.
Why I’m Telling You This at All
Even though I can’t give you a personal account of arriving in Australia, I think the honest version of this story is worth more than a polished one would be.
The Real Story Isn’t About Day One
The real story isn’t really about the first day, or the first week, or even the first year. It’s about what my parents did with all the days that came after — the ones I do remember and the ones that shaped everything I’ve built since.
It Set the Foundation for Everything Later
Whatever those first days actually looked like, they were the starting point for a family that eventually built a life here — one that led to me becoming a mechanic, then working through a string of trades, then getting into construction, and eventually starting my own business in 2006.
None of that happens without whatever my parents pushed through in those very first days, even if the details of exactly what that looked like have been lost to time or were simply never things a one-year-old could have held onto in the first place.
The Version I’d Rather Tell You
If you’re after a tidy story about landing in a new country and the exact moment everything changed, I don’t have that for you. What I have is the honest version: a family that arrived here in 1985 with very little, a father who worked without stopping from as early as I can tell, and a childhood that, despite starting from almost nothing, still had room for good schools, family time, and the values that have carried through into everything I do today.
That’s not as neat a story as people sometimes want. But it’s the true one, and I’d rather give you that.
FAQs
Does Ibrahim George Dardas remember his first days in Australia?
No, he arrived as a one-year-old, so he really has no personal memory of the arrival itself. What he knows comes from what’s been passed down to him, piece by piece and maybe a bit out of order sometimes.
What year did Ibrahim George Dardas arrive in Australia?
1985, right after his family left Lebanon because of the war there.
What was the biggest difficulty his family faced early on?
Not one specific moment, more like the whole picture — a family with almost nothing, in a completely unfamiliar place, trying to rebuild from scratch, day by day.
Did Ibrahim George Dardas’s parents start working straight away?
Yes. There was no financial cushion, so both parents began working almost immediately after arriving.
How long did Ibrahim George Dardas’s father continue working?
He spent decades building buses and worked right through to the age of eighty before finally retiring and passed away not long after.
What did life look like for the family once they had settled, you know?
Humble but stable — modest living, good schools, and simple family moments like fishing trips and picnics, alongside constant hard work.
