It was a visit that reminded them of their homeland thousands of kilometres away.
Years after fleeing their native Tibet, they took pleasure in once again being amongst mountains, and free from persecution.
Many of the Tibetan refugee children have relocated to Australia, most congregating in Dee Why on the Northern Beaches, after spending years as refugees in India.
The 22 children and 10 parents were hosted in the Mountains by the Karuna Foundation in Katoomba (a Sanskrit word meaning compassion) and enjoyed a weekend of cubby house-building, campfires, pizza making and bushwalks.
They, in turn, thanked their hosts by preparing traditional meals and performing Tibetan cultural shows in full traditional costume.
Their parents have tried to put painful memories behind them in Australia and said the visit to the Blue Mountains, the first for all of them, had reconnected them with their homeland.
Nara and Malcolm Pearce from Karuna co-ordinated the visit with the Tibetan Community of NSW spokesman Phurbu Khonnyi,* a 29-year-old artist, who has his own harrowing tale of escape from Tibet.
He spent two months as an eight-year-old walking in the Himalayas, along the 5700-metre-high Nangpa La Pass from Tibet to Nepal and then on to Dharamsala in India - the home of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
He said he walked past frozen bodies, hiding during the day and walking at night while tied to a rope with his father and two older brothers to ensure they didn’t fall down a crevasse.
His father left the three boys in India, aged 8, 11 and 13, and returned home where he was “tortured and died”. He hasn’t seen his mother since and his brothers are scattered to the winds — one in Europe and the other still in India.
“It’s the kind of journey you can’t forget. We walked together mostly at night, tied together on the icy mountain. My father needed to go back for my mother. My parents made a decision to send us to get basic human rights. It’s a very common story,” he said.
Thinley*, 53, was a nun in Tibet but was jailed for seven years after being involved in a peace protest. She has a gold tooth in the front of her mouth — one of three teeth that needed replacing “during interrogations by the Chinese that involved the butt of a rifle,” she says with the help of a translator. She “was not allowed to return home”.
For three days they all relaxed a little, enjoying the bush, the mud brick houses that reminded them of Tibetan homes and being spoilt.
“It’s a great opportunity to all be together and share our culture ... the children are stressed as migrant families from India and from Tibet, even if some of the kids don’t understand what their parents went through,” Phurbu Khonnyi said.
In Sydney many still lived in “rather cramped accommodation” and struggled to make ends meet, Mr Pearce said.
“We like to do these kinds of programs to help disadvantaged children from refugee backgrounds,” said Mrs Pearce, who has been running the camps for 30 years.
“We came to Australia to get a better life,” says Tenzin Youden of his family’s journey to Australia.
The Chinese Government consistently denies that it persecutes Tibetans.
*The Gazette has been asked not to reveal the Tibetan adults full names.
