Australia’s first museum dedicated to the Vietnamese refugee experience opened on Saturday in Melbourne’s Sunshine suburb. Vietnamese Museum Australia was unveiled after a decade-long community campaign, ABC News reported.

The building was constructed on a former council car park. The museum board invited the public to the official opening, together with Wominjeka Plaza, at noon on Saturday 17 October 2026 at 119 Durham Road, Sunshine, in partnership with Brimbank City Council. Sunshine Station is about a five-minute walk away, according to the invitation published by Nhân Quyền.

Victorian Premier Ben Carroll opened the centre on Saturday, alongside MPs from across the political divide. The federal and Victorian governments contributed millions of dollars, together with grassroots donations, ABC reported. The ABC article does not state an exact figure.

Museum chief executive Tammy Nguyen said more than 350,000 people of Vietnamese origin live in Australia and that everyone has a unique story. Her parents left Vietnam on a six-day, seven-night boat journey. The museum, she said, is a living monument to those who left their homeland, often as refugees on overcrowded boats, seeking freedom.

Thousands of Vietnamese refugees reached Australia in the mid-1970s after the war, settling in places such as Sunshine and St Albans in Melbourne, or Cabramatta and Canley Vale in Sydney. The museum focuses on the migrant experience from the 1970s through to present-day achievements, ABC reported.

Liberal MP Trung Luu, who represents the Western Metropolitan Region in the state’s upper house and came to Australia as a refugee from Vietnam, called the day deeply personal. The museum, he said, honours the courage of every family who made that journey.

University of Melbourne professor Lan Anh Hoang said public attitudes towards Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and 1980s were mixed as the country adjusted after the White Australia policy. There was sympathy after the fall of Saigon, she said; as boat arrivals continued, concerns about uncontrolled migration grew. Vietnamese children also faced racism at school, she added.

University of Technology Sydney sociologist Andrew Jakubowicz described the mid-1970s intake under the Fraser government as the first real test of the post-White Australia consensus. Malcolm Fraser became a champion of the diaspora; community members paid tribute at his 2015 funeral, ABC noted.

Image: Philip Mallis, Sunshine railway station, Melbourne, 9 October 2023, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The station is near the museum; it is not the Durham Road building.

Sources consulted: Australia's first Vietnamese heritage museum opens in Melbourne after decade-long push — ABC News; Vietnamese Museum Australia —Grand Opening — Nhân Quyền.