Like migrant birds flying south in winter, a number of Taiwanese emigrated to Australia-a distance of 7,300 kilometers-at a chilly time when Taiwan's political, social and educational systems were in a state of unrest.

The timing seemed perfect.

Pre-1970, Australia's immigration policy excluded people from non-European backgrounds. However, the White Australia Policy was abolished in 1972, and multiculturalism-respecting the diversity of different ethnic groups-became the order of the day. In 1981, immigration schemes for business and skilled migrants were further opened up, attracting diverse talent and capital investment. Australia also began to promote its education system to attract foreign students, and today the nation is home for migrants from over 180 countries around the world. In fact about one-fifth of the nation's population was not born in Australia.

Brisbane's Sunnybank in the city's south is known as "Little Taipei." You can buy a huge variety of Taiwanese goods, even red bean cakes. And you don't even need to speak English.

Being part of Oceania, Australia is geographically close to Asia, yet its population and culture are mainly European. Because of this apparent contradiction, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad once described Australia as "an orphan of the Asia-Pacific region."

Lin Song-huann, chief of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia, notes that while the Australian economy was traditionally based on agriculture, these days mining and service industries have taken precedence. And the Four Asian Tigers have become its major trading partners. The Australian government has realized that forging good relationships with Asia is essential to looking after the nation's economic interests in the Western Pacific-a region which is experiencing dramatic growth. Consequently, Australia has opened its doors to immigrants in recent years, with 40% of migrants coming from Asia.

While Australia was beginning to develop this closer relationship with Asia, a wave of emigration was emerging in Taiwan.

In the late 1980s, Taiwan experienced enormous change in a number of spheres including liberalized politics, greater freedom for political dissent and media, rapid economic growth and a booming stock market and construction industry. On the other hand, the island was suffering the effects of the unstable cross-strait relationship, worsening crime rates, increasing exam stress on students, and deteriorating living conditions. Together, these factors led some better-off residents to think about moving out of Taiwan, finding their utopia offshore.

"People who have emigrated once are very likely to do it again," says Sunny -Chuan, a Brisbane restaurateur. His parents fled to Taiwan from mainland China, but during the presidency of Lee Teng-hui, the couple migrated to Australia because they didn't trust Lee's government. -Chuan later joined his parents permanently in Australia to take care of them (they were having problems with the English language and driving their car). Sometimes it seems that God is playing tricks on you: they felt like outsiders-mainlanders-when they were living in Taiwan. Yet now living in Brisbane where a large number of ex-Kao-hsiung residents have settled, they still feel on the fringes of the community. They really don't know where home is.

Australian census figures show that in 1981 there were only 877 immigrants from Taiwan living in Australia. However, after several waves of Taiwanese immigration in the 1990s, by 2001 that figure had risen to about 22,000. Australia introduced more stringent immigration rules in 2003, slowing the increase; the total is now about 30,000 persons.

Australia has a high proportion of migrants, with one in five residents born overseas. Diversity and tolerance have become major characteristics of the Australian culture.

Hsu Jung-chung, a professor in the Office of Research and Development at Tai-pei Municipal University of Education, is currently researching Taiwanese emigration. He points out that Taiwanese migrants to both Australia and Canada share a similar profile, in that they generally possess professional skills and substantial assets-they could be regarded as "middle-class" migrants.

Australia has a number of attractions for Taiwanese.

Lin Song-huann points out that Australia is a lucky country in the sense that its people have been able to live comfortably relying mainly on simply agriculture. The focus today is more on the mining industry, but the country is still blessed: rich natural resources such as coal, iron ore and natural gas have created enormous wealth for the nation.

Professor Hsu notes that Aussie Taiwanese have often moved for quite different reasons from other immigrants. They want citizenship and/or a good education for their children, but are generally not trying to improve their lives in any economic sense.

Australia's education infrastructure has a great number of good-quality public high schools, and has a reputation for a high standard of academic performance in the tertiary sector. Seven of Australia's universities have been ranked at some time among the world's top 100. In addition, Australia is an English-speaking country and university tuition fees are lower than in the UK or US.

Jenny Chen, who emigrated 11 years ago, feels very fortunate for her children who have enjoyed a happy childhood in Australia. She says that when her children were in high school, there were lots of extra-curricular activities available, including tennis and basketball, a choir, and an orchestra. "This would have been utterly impossible in Taiwan where students study, study, study!"

With a vast land mass and rich natural resources, Australia is "the lucky country," its people able to enjoy prosperity and a generous welfare system. Australian native animals, the koala and kangaroo, also enjoy happy and carefree lives.

It is estimated that there are about 30,000 Taiwanese migrants in Australia, most of whom have settled in the three most populous cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Brisbane has the largest number of Taiwanese migrants (more than 10,000), and is where migrants have tended to cluster.

Why do they choose one of these three cities? According to Hsu, the reasons- -include Sydney for business opportunities, Melbourne for their children's education, and Brisbane for its warmer climate.

Brisbane, the state capital of Queens-land-the "Sunshine State"-has an area of 1331 square kilometers, and a year-round pleasantly warm climate, enjoying sunny weather 300 days a year.

Chiou Chwei-Liang, an honorary research consultant at the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, was one of Brisbane's earliest Taiwanese migrants. He says that when he first arrived in 1971, Brisbane was a pretty but very quiet town with only around 300,000 residents. But now the population has grown to 2 million, and is expected to reach 2.4 million in a decade.

Perhaps because Brisbane and Kao-hsiung share a similar climate and environment, the southern part of Taiwan and especially Kao-hsiung have provided many of Brisbane's Taiwanese immigrants. As early as 1997, when Wu Den-yih (currently Taiwan's premier) was mayor of Kao-hsiung, the Brisbane-Kao-hsiung Sister City Relationship was established. When the then mayor of Kao-hsiung, Yeh Chu-lan, visited Brisbane in 2006, Chiou organized the setting up of a memorial stone to celebrate the relationship in the city's South Bank Riverside Park, which has since become an attraction for Taiwanese tourists.

The Taiwan Women's League of Queensland has played a major role in providing education and support for the women of migrant families whose husbands live overseas. Michelle Chu, president of TWLQ, is seen on the left in the front row.

Like sunny California in the US, Brisbane tends to attract migrants. But no matter what the country, those from Taiwan tend to cluster together. "Taiwanese migrants have brought their old lifestyle to a new land, and a strong and quite unique branch of Taiwanese culture has emerged as a result," says Hsu.

Brisbane's Sunnybank is known as "Little Taipei." The visitor will find restaurants, supermarkets and shops with Chinese signs, displaying Taiwanese-style business models to attract Taiwanese customers.

The Welcome Fresh Food Supermarket and Formosa Asian Market, providing a wonderful variety of Asian groceries, are among the Sunnybank retailers. There are also dental clinics, bakeries, and restaurants run by Taiwanese, so shopping in Sunnybank Mall is almost like being in Taiwan.

Besides importing the Taiwanese lifestyle, the authentic flavors of hometown cooking are equally indispensable. Lai Lai Chinese Gourmet Restaurant in Sunny-bank Plaza, a buffet-style establishment, provides genuine Taiwanese-style food, just like being at home.

Restaurant owner Sunny -Chuan has run the restaurant for six years since he took over ownership from a former chef of the Sheraton Hotel, Taipei. -Chuan, who has a background in interior design, says that running a restaurant is similar in some ways to interior design: "You have to provide a product or service to satisfy customers within a certain budget."

Their busiest time is around the Chinese New Year. This year they had to have two separate sittings: as soon as the first 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. sitting was finished, hungry customers were queuing up for the second. That one night's turnover was around A$30,000 (about NT$900,000).

Australia has a high proportion of migrants, with one in five residents born overseas. Diversity and tolerance have become major characteristics of the Australian culture.

While Taiwanese migrants sometimes feel alien in the new environment, they have created a close-knit community amongst themselves. As Hsu describes, the places where the first generations of the Taiwanese diaspora chose to settle have created an "anchor effect": the next generations tend to follow. To be near friends and family, naturally Taiwanese migrants gather in the same areas, and their primary goal is usually to build a dream house.

Zheng Yu-qin, for example, bought a piece of a land and made plans for their house after she became a citizen in the third year of her stay. The two-story, 660-square-meter mansion is located on a 1000-square-meter plot of land, and cost NT$15 million to build.

Compared to other ethnic Chinese migrants, Taiwanese value land ownership very strongly: "Only one who owns land can be said to possess a fortune." Statistics for 1996 show that the rate of home ownership was 75.3% for Taiwanese immigrants, higher than the 71.2% for the Australian population in general, and much greater than the 59.9% average for mainland Chinese.

"Luxury living-a large lounge and dining room, six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a large study, two garages, a modern kitchen, a sparkling swimming pool, and barbecue facilities, as well as a tennis court and a garden." This description of an extremely attractive luxury house appeared with photos in the real estate section of a local Chinese newspaper. But with experience, Taiwanese migrants are gradually coming to realize that the cost of living in such a palace is enormous.

The longer the average Taiwanese family has been in Australia, the more they tend to shun such luxurious living and move into smaller, more practical houses. Maintaining a large swimming pool is a huge burden on its own.

"It's no less work than looking after an old and frail family member," says Yang Ya-fei, who moved to Australia more than a decade ago. The pump needs to run at least eight hours a day, and the pool needs constant cleaning to prevent the growth of algae. "When Queensland was in drought a few years ago, we couldn't fill the pool because of water restrictions, and cracks appeared in the structure of the dry pool."

So luxury homes with pools and large trees are usually avoided by experienced Aussie Taiwanese when they're house hunting.

Yang and her son have lived in Brisbane for 10 years, but her husband still works in Taiwan. Her son has recently completed a degree in mining engineering, and has moved out of town to work, coming home only once a fortnight. So she often finds herself alone and lonely in that big, de-serted house.

With a vast land mass and rich natural resources, Australia is "the lucky country," its people able to enjoy prosperity and a generous welfare system. Australian native animals, the koala and kangaroo, also enjoy happy and carefree lives.

It is said that the longer people remain in a room full of scented flowers, the less their enjoyment of the fragrance becomes. Aussie Taiwanese who initially migrated looking for a nice climate, blue skies and beautiful beaches, gradually tend to forget after a period that they are living in "paradise." They are rarely to be seen surfing or sunbathing on the famous Gold Coast beaches, renowned for their endless blue sky, and clean and soft sand. They may live in the Sunshine State, but have little interest in enjoying nature.

The fronds from Mr. Guo's coconut palms used to fall into his neighbor's garden, so his neighbor, who was usually polite when they occasionally met, rather inconsiderately threw them back. Mr. Guo decided to cut down the two coconut palms in his front yard and replace them with two banana trees. Then in order to make better use of his land-and also to pass the time-Guo planted more than a hundred pineapple plants, and now it's harvest time. The back garden looks just like an organic orchard, where passion fruit, papaya, dragon fruit and mangos vie for space and sunlight. The harvest not only satisfies his family, but there's plenty to share with friends.

"Identifying a Chinese-owned house is very easy: if you look at the back yard, and see vegetables growing, it's a fair bet that the house belongs to a Chinese." Wang Jin-wan, who moved to Australia six years ago, understands the Chinese attitude of not letting land lie fallow. She wonders why the local Australians let their avocados fall on the ground, and then spend money buying commercially grown avocados in the supermarket.

Taiwanese migrants have their own ideas about how to manage their land and houses. The first generation often had difficulty adapting to Australia's values and lifestyle: Australians are generally respectful of equality, law-abiding, outdoors and sport loving, independent, considerate of others' privacy, and extremely friendly.

"Everyone is equal: there are no nobility or privileged in Australia," says Lin Song-huann. When Australia's prime minister goes to a cricket match, there are no bodyguards to clear the way, no VIP seating, and nobody will offer their seats to the prime minister. It's a situation that is often hard for Taiwanese to believe.

Australia's laws and regulations are very strict and rigidly enforced. Since most Taiwanese tend to bring their old habits with them when they migrate, many find themselves in trouble for speeding, or for watering plants during water restrictions; some have even been reported to the police for not mowing their grass. And you are not permitted to cut down your own trees: you have to get permission from the local council, and the work has to be done by expert tree fellers. For those who want to build their own houses, it's necessary to get to know Australia's laws and regulations about housing. It could, for example, take up to three years just to purchase a piece of land and gain environmental impact assessment approval for building.

With its famous river meandering through the city center, Brisbane is quite picturesque. Modern migrants are like the boats in the stream: coming and going as they please.

Most Aussie Taiwanese participate in their local Taiwanese communities to avoid becoming isolated and marginalized before they are able to adapt to life in their new country.

The Taiwan Friendship Association Queensland (TFAQ), established 23 years ago with Chiou Chwei-Liang's assistance, was the first Taiwanese community organization in Queensland. The structure of TFAQ has undergone some transformation: Anthony Lin, a 38-year-old lawyer and a second-generation migrant, is now president.

Women's associations also play a significant role. The Taiwan Women's League of Queensland (TWLQ), established 17 years ago, currently has 306 members, only about half of the five or six hundred members experienced in its heyday. Michelle Chu, president of TWLQ, explains that Taiwanese migrants tend not to live permanently in any one place, so in recent years, migrants from China and Hong Kong have gradually filled the ranks of the TWLQ.

Chu says that members are mainly mothers, most of them with husbands living abroad, so they are often lonely and depressed. Coming to TWLQ helps them interact with others, have a chat with friends, and learn some skills. As a result, they find more meaning in their lives.

A variety of courses are run during the week at TWLQ, including weaving, quilting, flower arranging, Chinese ink painting, oil painting, Taiwanese cuisine, -Yuanji dance and qigong exercises. Courses in English language, such as Learning English through Comedy and Advanced English, help migrants meet the needs of daily life.

The Taiwanese Australian Business Association Queensland and TFAQ are responsible for organizing activities for major Chinese celebrations, providing opportunities for Australian Taiwanese to get together and chat about home. Wilson Lu, president of the Australian Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce Queensland, says that the ROC 100th year flag-raising ceremony was held outside the Taiwanese Community Center on New Year's Day in 2011. About 6-700 people gathered in light rain at the ceremony at 6:30 a.m. to sing the Australian national anthem and then Taiwan's. As the Taiwan flag rose, many people were moved to tears.

Brisbane's Sunnybank in the city's south is known as "Little Taipei." You can buy a huge variety of Taiwanese goods, even red bean cakes. And you don't even need to speak English.

After moving from the White Australia Policy to welcoming Asian migrants with open arms, in 2009 the then Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd introduced the "Big Australia" policy, aiming for a total population of 35 million (currently about 20 million) by 2050. But in 2010, after Australia's first female prime minister, Labor Party leader Julia Gillard, came to power, the policy was abandoned. Gillard has argued that Australia should not rush into expanding its population, mainly because although labor shortages exist in some areas, there are few employment opportunities in others. A flexible but stable population strategy and the correct skilled worker strategy will help to achieve a balance.

Australia Asia Group, an agency specializing in Australian immigration policy, points out that Australia's immigration regulations change constantly, with the latest version to be released in July this year. But generally the investment threshold of the business migration stream will probably continue to rise because of the appreciation of the Australian dollar. And for the investment migration stream, which can be accessed through investment in either business or national bonds, the waiting period may be up to two or three years due to the limited intake.

Conditions for the skilled migration stream have become more stringent than in the past, requiring an IELTS test scored at seven (of nine) in listening, speaking, reading and writing. The lists of occupations have also been tightened; the most popular categories, chefs and hairdressers, for example, have been removed.

Australia's attraction is declining. And in recent years, due to Taiwan's political stability and economic recovery, the number of Taiwanese who want to emigrate to Australia has declined. Also, because the children of first-generation migrants have grown up and graduated from college, the more elderly migrants are starting to move back to their hometowns. The return to Taiwan has begun.

According to a survey done by Professors Hsu Jung-chung and Jiang Honglan on the intentions of Taiwanese migrants to return home, it was found that 32.3% are considering a return. Among these, 14.3% claim that the move is for employment, and 10.3% simply want to return to their hometowns.

Hsu describes this phenomenon as leapfrog migration. "This model means that migrants lose cultural identity and integration opportunities for adapting to their new home. However, with more direct air travel opportunities opening up, new communications technology, and boundaries between countries disappearing, cross-border migration has become as frequent and usual as movement within a nation."

Chiou Chwei-Liang notes that when Taiwanese migrants come to Australia, they first buy a house, and then enjoy a relaxing lifestyle. But in 10 years or less, they become bored, and their money is disappearing faster than expected. They begin to feel stressed, and if they become ill, they need an interpreting service when they see a doctor. Certainly they lose all sense of identification with Australia.

"If you don't have an income in Australia, inevitably you will feel stressed," says Hsu. In the past few years, those who find it difficult to adapt to the Australian lifestyle, and those who want to return to Taiwan, have already gone home. Those who remain have to strive to find a job, or start a business because of the high cost of living, with the Australian dollar, the cost of air travel and everyday commodity prices all rising.

With a vast land mass and rich natural resources, Australia is "the lucky country," its people able to enjoy prosperity and a generous welfare system. Australian native animals, the koala and kangaroo, also enjoy happy and carefree lives.

From a 34th-level window of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Brisbane's central business district, you can watch the Brisbane River meandering through the city center, spanned by the elegantly gray Story Bridge: a picturesque scene. With only 150 years of history, Brisbane is a rather young city, and the story of Taiwanese migration is even younger: just a short 30 years. Like the boats traveling to and fro on the river, Taiwanese migrants also come and go due to factors of time and space.

In our global village, being buried in one's native home is no longer particularly relevant to many, and migration is no longer a one-way ticket. Increasing numbers of scholars who research migration patterns believe that traditional migration, where migrants move away from their home nation and become completely cut off from their hometowns, striving to integrate into the new culture, is dying. A new approach to international migration which combines the networks, cultures and lifestyles between the two countries will become increasingly common. For cross-border migrants of the future, the identification of "home" with any particular nation will also become increasingly uncommon.

Taiwanese migrants to Australia have already adopted this more flexible approach to come and go freely: an international "two-way street."

Among Taiwanese migrant families, many men who have left behind their careers in Taiwan have little to do but gardening, fishing and playing golf.

Brisbane's Sunnybank in the city's south is known as "Little Taipei." You can buy a huge variety of Taiwanese goods, even red bean cakes. And you don't even need to speak English.

Beaches stretch invitingly along Australia's Gold Coast. In a -setting like this, why do Aussie Taiwanese find it so difficult to put down roots in Australia?

Among Taiwanese migrant families, many men who have left behind their careers in Taiwan have little to do but gardening, fishing and playing golf.

Among Taiwanese migrant families, many men who have left behind their careers in Taiwan have little to do but gardening, fishing and playing golf.

Brisbane's Sunnybank in the city's south is known as "Little Taipei." You can buy a huge variety of Taiwanese goods, even red bean cakes. And you don't even need to speak English.

Though a luxurious house may seem very attractive, it is neither easy nor cheap to maintain. And when you want to sell it, it's not easy to get rid of.