Over the past few years, a little tradition has been established during my Sydney visits. I jump on a train to meet old friends, Kim and Carl Robinson, for lunch in the suburb of Bankstown.
Carl, originally from the US, was a correspondent in Saigon during the Vietnam War. He and Kim met and married in the 1960s in the Mekong Delta town of Go Cong. After the war they moved to Sydney and we've been friends since the early nineties when they owned one of the few Vietnamese restaurants here - Old Saigon on King St Newtown.
Bankstown is one of the Sydney suburbs to have been transformed by Vietnamese immigrants since the first boat people began arriving in the late 1970s. It’s also a great place to eat Vietnamese food.
In this video, Kim and Carl tell me a little about their meeting and marriage 47 years ago.
Carl kindly sent me some beautiful images from their wedding day in 1969, that I’ve included in the video. The wedding looks like a typical Vietnamese country affair. It’s worth noting Sean Flynn, son of actor Errol Flynn, appears in the group shot. Flynn was a war photographer and disappeared with fellow photographer Dana Stone in 1970, while travelling from Phnom Penh to Saigon. They were never found.
Photo: Mark Bowyer Carl Robinson in Saigon on 30 April 2015 - 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War
We only scratched the surface of the stories of Kim and Carl so I’m planning on meeting them again soon in Cabramatta, another Vietnamese centre in Sydney, for lunch with Kim’s mum, who’s in her 90s.
Apologies for the dodgy framing in the video. The camera doesn't have a viewfinder!
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