When Mach Mach arrived in Australia with his mum and five siblings a decade ago, the south Sudanese family settled in Sydney.

But after a few months, Mach Mach's mother decided regional Queensland, where she has step-siblings, was where the family needed to be.

"Mum said, 'We're going to move to Toowoomba. It's just a little bit easier to live in, it's just going to be better for you guys in the long run'," recalls Mach Mach, now 21 years old.

At first, Mach Mach was sceptical about the move to a regional city, having already relocated to Sydney after years in a refugee camp in Kenya. But today, the environmental science student and Aussie Rules enthusiast says life in Toowoomba has offered opportunities and friendships he's thankful for.

"In the long run, looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me," he says.

Mach Mach is one of a growing number of refugees and asylum seekers settling in Australia's regional and remote areas, largely as a result of government policies pushing for regional settlement.

Mach Mach (left), pictured with his Aussie Rules footy coach Corey Balnaves in Toowoomba. ( ABC Life: Grace Jennings-Edquist )

A decade ago, about one in 10 humanitarian arrivals settled in regional parts of Australia — but in the first three months of 2019, data from the Department of Social Services reveals that figure was up to almost one in four.

These regional communities are generally making new arrivals feel welcome, according to recent research.

But refugees in regional areas face ongoing challenges, from trouble finding work to difficulties getting a drivers licence.

ABC Life is looking at how a few of these refugees are settling into regional Australia — including a closer look at some of the locals making them feel welcome and the roadblocks that remain for regional Australia's new residents.

Regional cities are welcoming refugees

While the experience of settling outside cities is many and varied for refugees, research from the University of Technology Sydney has found new arrivals do generally feel welcomed in many regional communities.

"That stereotype that the bush is redneck and intolerant of racial diversity — that particular view doesn't have much evidence," says Jock Collins, a University of Technology Sydney professor of social economics.

Professor Collins is researching settlement outcomes of refugees in Australia.

Earlier studies show a pattern of lower support for immigration and asylum seeker rights outside Australia's major cities — and settlement experts say in many regional areas, there remain pockets of people who support restrictive immigration policies. (In the 2019 Federal election, a One Nation candidate collected 13 per cent of the votes in the Toowoomba area, for example.)

But Professor Collins's research into the experiences of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan found almost all the adults (96 per cent) in Toowoomba thought their neighbours were friendly, while 81 per cent said it was easy to make friends in Australia — and the Settlement Council of Australia (SCOA) insists there's a growing willingness to welcome new people into regional communities.

That may be because Toowoomba and other government-designated settlement areas were chosen partly because they have a welcoming culture.

They tend to be places where "the community has put their hand up and said, 'We want refugees'," says Nick Tebbey, who served as SCOA's chief executive officer until early 2019.

"Often there has been a need identified for extra people in that location, and often the community has a compassionate attitude," says Mr Tebbey.

Have you settled in a regional area as a refugee? We're keen to hear about your experience, email life@abc.net.au.

Cities with history of migration often have a 'culture of welcome'

Armidale in New South Wales became the latest government-designated refugee settlement area in 2017. Settlement experts point to the regional town as exemplifying a "culture of welcome". ( Supplied: Armidale Rural Australians for Refugees )

This "culture of welcome" is a key ingredient of successful regional resettlement, experts say.

It's most often found in communities with a history of multiculturalism and migration, says University of New England lecturer Sue Watt, whose work focuses on prejudice and immigration.

"People with a multicultural background are more understanding of immigration in general and what migrants face when they come to a new community," she explains.

Armidale, a 24,000-person city in the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, is "a really good example of how it can be done", says Dr Watt.

The city — which has been welcoming international students to the local university for generations — became a government-designated refugee settlement area in 2017, after years of campaigning for the move by local activists. Today, it's home to hundreds of Yazidi refugees who have fled persecution by Islamic State in northern Iraq and Syria.

Among those refugees is Nawaf, a 33-year-old from northern Iraq who arrived in Armidale in late 2018 with his 26-year-old brother.

"It's a very welcoming place and people are very friendly," says Nawaf, speaking through an interpreter.

"We were welcomed by Australian people by inviting them to dinners, parties and things like that," he adds.

"We love it here because it's quiet, it's not very crowded. We have been in the city before, to Sydney — we went for a visit and found we didn't want to leave Armidale."

Growing a culture of welcome

Other regional areas have developed a welcoming culture despite only encountering large numbers of migrants in the last decade or two, experts say.

Toowoomba, for example, used to be fairly culturally homogenous. In 2001, just 8.5 per cent of its residents were born overseas — two and a half times less than the rest of Australia, census data shows.

Former ABC Heywire winner Prudence Melom, who first arrived in Toowoomba as a refugee from Chad in 2007, says the regional city has changed a lot since she moved to the city.

"It was when refugees were first coming Toowoomba so [there was] racism and fear of the unknown, so you'd find people being scared of you because your skin looks different," says Ms Melom, a law student and founder of anti-racism not-for-profit E-Raced.

"I used to be a waitress, and I'd go to serve people food and they'd refuse to let me serve them, and somebody who was white would have to go serve them."

Twelve years after her arrival in the city, Ms Melom believes that "racism does still exist in regional communities", but she says Toowoomba has become far more inclusive than it once was.

When Prudence Melom first moved to regional Queensland in 2007, she experienced racism. But the former ABC Heywire winner says Toowoomba has changed a lot in the last 12 years. ( ABC Life: Juliette Steen )

The council and mayor have helped shape positive public attitudes toward refugees since they first began arriving in the early 2000s, and the city became a Refugee Welcome Zone in 2013.

Today, more than 20 per cent of Toowoomba's 160,000 residents are foreign-born. The city is a strong example of how regional cities can successfully embrace newcomers, Mach Mach says.

"I think our mayor Paul Antonio has done really well over the years to acknowledge what the refugees bring," he says. "He's been really strong in saying, 'We're glad our city's getting more and more multicultural by the minute'."

'Nobody responds': Coping with employment and language challenges

When Lindalo "Miriam" Mangaza arrived in Australia in 2016, the trained dressmaker studied hospitality and English with a view to find employment.

She's now been applying for jobs for a year without success.

"I have a resume but nobody responds to me," says Miriam, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"I did an interview and now it's been four months. They haven't gotten back to me."

Finding employment is a vital ingredient for successful resettlement, but remains a major challenge facing refugees in regional areas, as Miriam has found. ( ABC Life: Juliette Steen )

Finding employment is a vital ingredient for successful resettlement, but remains a major challenge facing refugees in regional areas — and lack of fluency in English is one frustrating barrier to employment, Professor Collins's research found.

"Most of the refugees that live in regional areas would love to stay there, the key issue is getting a job," he says, adding that his research found refugees in Queensland cities had found employment more easily than those in regional areas.

When refugees in the regions do find jobs, it's often non-skilled areas of work.

The main employer of refugees in Nhill, western Victoria is a duck processing business. A chicken processor is the largest single employer of refugees in Bendigo. Canneries employ scores of refugees in Shepparton, Victoria. And some refugees in Toowoomba work in nearby fruit-picking jobs or meat-processing centres.

Some highly skilled refugees face problems finding professional employment in their areas of expertise, Professor Collins says.

What parts of regional Australia are settlement areas for refugees? There are 25 designated settlement locations across Australia where the Federal government, through various contracted service providers, offers humanitarian settlement services to refugees. They include 14 regional areas: Wagga Wagga, Albury, Coffs Harbour, Armidale, Toowoomba, Cairns, Townsville, Mount Gambier, Darwin, Hobart, Launceston, Mildura, Shepparton and Wodonga.

"We talked to pharmacists, engineers, medical professionals, dentists — and for them the key issue was professional recognition … Often they didn't have papers, often they had just taken off in the middle of the night because of bombing."

While some refugees have a business background, Professor Collins says they can struggle to set up businesses without assistance.

"What's required is programs to assist them to set up businesses in Australia … You could argue that refugees in regional areas can really provide a lot of entrepreneurial business development and innovation in the cities, and that needs to be tapped and assisted in order to unlock that potential," he says.

"This is a group of people that's very entrepreneurial, and part of this is due to the very experience of being a refugee; you've taken a risk, you've had to seek out a better life for you and your family, so that entrepreneurial spirit comes from a place of strength and resilience," agrees Mr Tebbey.

"They don't want to sit around on the dole. They want to give back."

Mach Mach plans to move to a major city to pursue his career, but is thankful for the education and warm welcome he's found in regional Queensland. ( ABC Life: Grace Jennings-Edquist )

A decade after arriving in Toowoomba with his family, Mach Mach has embedded himself in the community: He studies environmental science at the University of Southern Queensland, leads a youth group at a local church and co-coaches his local Aussie Rules football club.

He won a sports scholarship to high school — a far cry from his first experience with sport, which involved using balloons wrapped in rags as makeshift soccer balls in the refugee camp in Kenya.

Mach Mach doesn't plan to stay in Toowoomba forever. He plans to pursue his environmental science career in Melbourne, where he believes the job opportunities are better.

But he's grateful for all the opportunities Toowoomba has offered.

"I really found my place here, whether it was playing sport or whether it was in my community at church. I just think I've thrived here, and at the time when we [first] moved maybe I didn't know that would happen," he says.

"Moving here was a chance we took, and it worked out pretty well for us."

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How government policy drives refugees to regional Australia

While refugees and migrants have historically been highly concentrated in Australia's capital cities and coastal areas, that's changed over the last few years.

Government policies now assign humanitarian arrivals to designated (and mostly regional) settlement areas across the country. That means refugees are often taken directly to regional areas when they arrive. There, they are offered an orientation program, given help finding accommodation and a job, and entitled to 510 hours of English language tuition.

Although they're free to leave their assigned settlement areas, most refugees stay in their assigned locations because that’s where they're offered settlement support.

Others move voluntarily to regional areas after being initially settled in a city, seeking benefits including more affordable housing or a tighter-knit community.

Asylum seekers (those who arrive onshore and are given only temporary visas) are also encouraged to settle in regional Australia through visas such as the Safe Haven Enterprise Visa (SHEV), which requires them to live and work regionally for several years before applying for a permanent visa. But there are often no support systems in place to help them find work or homes and settle in those areas, as asylum seekers don't receive the settlement services offered to humanitarian arrivals.

Travel and accommodation costs for this story were covered by funding from the Michael Gordon Social Justice Fellowship, administered through the Melbourne Press Club.