The family have returned to the town they were taken from in an early morning raid four years ago, with hopes of changing the system for others
Home to Bilo at last: the Nadesalingam family on stage at the Flourish 2022 festival on Saturday night.Home to Bilo at last: the Nadesalingam family on stage at the Flourish 2022 festival on Saturday night.Last modified on Sat 11 Jun 2022 10.02 BST
Sitting alongside a flank of supporters, Priya wears a dark purple sari, Nades white Tamil attire, and the girls, Kopika and Tharnicaa, also don traditional dress.Priya is softly spoken but radiates strength. The strength of a mother who has watched her children grow up in detention, saw her youngest child, Tharnicaa, rushed to hospital with a blood infection, and fought against all odds to bring her family back to the small country town she calls home.
When you speak to friends of the family, they stress the value the Nadesalingams have brought to Biloela. Before gaining work rights, Nades volunteered for St Vincent de Paul. He later worked a job pushing trolleys at Woolworths and then at the town’s meatworks. “I started writing letters to then immigration minister Peter Dutton, from the perspective of a social worker … should they be forced into danger in Sri Lanka,” she says. “I think I was naive at the time, though, because I thought that was all it would take.”
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