How country-town carpenter and musician Billy Barker's 'simple gesture' led to a group of Timorese meat workers performing at one of Australia's biggest music festivals just 12 months later.
Timor ese abattoir workers perform for hundreds at Port Fairy Folk Festival after answering call for musiciansThree years into a four-year working visa at an abattoir in south-west Victoria, Jose Da Costa was missing his wife and three children back in Timor -Leste.
Lian Husi Timor at the Port Fairy Folk Festival performing with Warrnambool's Find Your Voice All Abilities Choir.In Timor-Leste, Da Costa had worked for various aid organisations as a project manager and then as a documentary cameraman, but securing the four-year visa to work in Australia as a meat processor was the opportunity he needed to change his family's life.
After growing up on a sheep farm near Casterton, in western Victoria, he moved to Melbourne for study and the music scene.Billy Barker performing at this year's Port Fairy Folk Festival."Melbourne is so vibrant, so multicultural, but I think you need to work quite hard in areas like this to keep those things alive," Barker said.Barker said he'd seen Midfields' Pacifika employees heading off to work in the early mornings while driving to his own day job as a carpenter.
Twelve months later, standing on stage at this year's Port Fairy Folk Festival, Barker told the audience how things had "snowballed". Percussionist David Darba found life without a music community difficult before meeting musician Billy Barker.Darba said he had found it hard to make a new life away from his home in Dili.
Warrnambool Port Fairy Timor East Timor Timor Leste Singing Multicultural Society Feel Good Happy Friendship Migrant Migrant Worker Meat Industry Abattoir Animals PALM Midfields Folkie Port Fairy Folk Festival Festival Folk Music Power Of Music Universal Language Connection Joy Billy Barker David Darba Jose Da Costa Goodnews
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