Bhutan to Blacktown: Losing Everything and Finding Australia

By James Button and Om Dhungel

I lost my possessions, my salary, my status, my career, my country. And in that fall, I gained everything.

Bhutan is known as the land of Gross National Happiness, a Buddhist Shangri-La hidden in the Himalayas. But in the late 1980s, Bhutan waged a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign against its citizens of Nepali ancestry. Forced to flee Bhutan, Om Dhungel spent six years as a refugee in Nepal before he arrived in Australia. Today Om is a respected community leader in western Sydney, consulted frequently by government and settlement organizations on refugee policy. Written with Walkley Award-winning journalist James Button, Bhutan to Blacktown tells of Om Dhungel's remarkable journey from a village on the Himalayan ridges and life as a refugee in Kathmandu, to, eventually, Blacktown, Australia. It is a story of grit and determination, humour and irrepressible optimism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1742237894
• ISBN13: 9781742237893
• Release Date: May 2023
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.3"