Lester Shepherd, outside the Old Cathedral that drew her to Goulburn and led to her meeting her future husband. Photo: John Thistleton.
In her first tumultuous months in Australia, Lester Shepherd found an unlikely lifeline in a Sydney supermarket.
From Indonesia and rounded on every day for her inability to speak English, Lester slipped into the supermarket’s fresh food section each night with an urgent appetite for Australian words.
Lingering around the carrots, cauliflower and broccoli was the only way of learning the language for Lester, who now holds down two jobs in Goulburn.
“Woolies is my best friend,” she said, recalling those hellish days in the present tense. “I go to Woolies every night. I don’t know what carrot is in English, what cauliflower is in English, a round plate, salt and pepper,” she said.
She had already worked hard to fulfil her dream of saving enough money to leave Jakarta and fly to neighbouring Australia for a new life and four distinct seasons.
After a seven-and-a-half hour flight into Sydney, she jumped into a taxi and handed the driver the Croydon address of her only friend in Australia. They had come from the same hometown – Lampung.
They had hung out together in Jakarta while at university, but unlike her friend, Lester’s parents could not afford to pay for her studies in Australia.
They didn’t know their youngest daughter, the black sheep of the family, was saving to leave. She told her mother at the last moment, when it was too late to stop her.
“I hoped to get a job as soon as I arrived in Australia,” she said. “Thinking back, I must have been mad; I must be crazy.”
That was in 2011. A week after landing she managed to get a job at a Darling Harbour Chinese take-away shop.
“I cried almost every day; I couldn’t understand what to say – they would get cranky with me,” she said.
Her friend had helped her open a bank account, get a tax file number, phone number and showed her landmarks such as the Town Hall in case she got lost.
She shared a crowded flat behind Woolworths Town Hall with people from Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea. They spoke English but she could not understand their accents.
Finding more work in the fast food sector, Lester asked kitchen staff how to say the names of fruit and vegetables.
“If you see it every day, use it every day, read it every day, it will come to you eventually and stay in your brain,” she said.
In time she was working three jobs in fast food outlets and one in tourism.
After several years the competitive jobs market was taking a toll, so she moved to Moss Vale, saved enough to buy her first car and later came to Goulburn, drawn by the Catholic Church, its reassuring Old Cathedral and parish community.
There she met her future husband Jason Shepherd, an active parishioner, member of Goulburn Mulwaree Council and her biggest supporter in furthering her studies in mental health.
That interest had started in her high school years in Indonesia, where her grandparents had settled after escaping from poverty in China. Lester’s mother and father ran a grocery business.
She has four older sisters and an older brother and has always been restless. “The naughty one – that’s what my sister would call me,” she said with a wide smile.
Helping in the business polished her mathematical and packaging skills and led her into accountancy studies at university, but her priority was human behaviour and ultimately studying psychology.
When she finished her university studies, she returned to help her parents, then travelled to Jakarta, the world’s most populous city with 42 million people, and worked for Nokia Siemens Networks, a major global telecommunications equipment company.
Her faith has been Lester’s other constant influence. Although she comes from a Buddhist family, her parents did not force her to become a Buddhist.
“As long as you guys believe in God, that’s all that matters,” her mother had said. She became a Catholic, and these days she has resumed her charitable work with Jason, doing meals on weeks each fortnight, as well as other parish projects.
A waitress at The Edge Restaurant at the Mercure Motel in Goulburn, she says this is her fun job, having become close friends with her workmates.
Lester also holds a Certificate IV in Mental Health, is studying for her Diploma of Counselling and working for Flourish Australia, an apt name for this hard-working newcomer to our country.
