Felisbelo Correia
| Town/City | Sydney |
|---|---|
| First name | Felisbelo |
| Last name | Correia |
| Country of Origin | Portugal |
| Date of Birth | 1945 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1975 |
| Submitted by | Helen Correia |
Story
Felisbelo Correia was born in 1942, the third child in a large family of eight children, in a village called Paradela, located in the North-East region of Portugal near the city of Miranda do Douro. In the post World War II period, the family moved to the nearby village of Vilar-Seco, where he attended school and worked the land with the rest of the family. After being conscripted to the Portuguese army in his early 20\’s, he was later stationed in what was then the Portuguese colony of Portuguese Timor (now Timor Leste). It was there that he met and married Um Fun Tin, a local ethnic Chinese woman, and started a family.
In 1975, amongst the turmoil and conflict that surrounded the Portuguese decolonization of East Timor, he and his family left the war torn country as refugees and were gratefully brought to Australia aboard a RAAF aircraft. With no more than the possessions they could carry, they began their life in Australia in a migrant hostel near Perth, working hard to learn the local language and appreciate the culture in which they found themselves. They later settled in the Fremantle area, amongst the familiar settings of the local migrant communities, and began to rebuild their lives.
They became Australian citizens in the early 1980\’s and, valuing a good education, Felisbelo and his wife worked hard to support their children to take advantage of the benefits of schooling. He himself had not had the opportunity to complete more than two years of high school, so he strived to see his children successfully complete university studies and subsequently make a strong contribution to the country that they now called home.