After the end of the Vietnam War over a million South Vietnamese fled their country, piling onto small fishing boats, and set out on the South China Sea in search of safety.

Many of them made it to Australia, as well as America, Canada and France, but the UN estimates that over 200,000 Vietnamese asylum seekers were lost at sea.

The Vietnamese Community Association has now unveiled a monument in Perth to remember those who died, as well as celebrating the welcome they got in Australia.

At the base of the sculpture there are two plaques - one reads "In memory of the Vietnamese refugees who perished in the exodus since 1975," the other "This monument represents our gratitude to Australia, for embracing the Vietnamese refugees into this great nation."

Dr Anh Nguyen is the president of the association's WA chapter. He fled the country in 1978 with his wife, and remembers a terrifying journey.

"It was very rough. One second we found our boat on top of a mountain of water, the next second the mountain was over there.

"The boat rose up and down about thirty metres and the skipper said he didn't know why we survived. The big waves tried to swallow us but somehow we were lucky."

His wife's family, who embarked on their journey two weeks after him, were not so fortunate.

"We never heard from them again," Dr Anh says.

"We asked to the Red Cross to find them but there was no trace.

"The monument will be a tribute to Australia, and also will remind the next generations, and the public, about the ordeal that the first Vietnamese settlers went through on the high seas and in the jungle.

"It marks our footprint in Australian history."

Mai Nguyen (no relation) was just six years old when her parents decided to risk the perilous journey to give her a better future. They arrived in Perth on Valentine's Day 1982.

"The main reason we left was for my future," she says.

"My mum and dad had connections with the former [South Vietnamese] government in Vietnam, so at the end of the war in 1975 the experiences for people like them were not good.

"My dad was imprisoned for some time, so my mum was left pregnant with me, alone for a few years.

"They could not see me having a good future in Vietnam, my education would have been quite limited and they saw the chance to escape a horrific situation experience in Vietnam."

Her parents made the difficult decision to leave their family, friends and home behind forever.

"My parents knew, when they made that decision to get on the boat, that it was a life or death situation. Either they would make it and we would live or we would die at sea.

"And we could have died, and we chose the chance to live in different conditions to what we were living in, in Vietnam.

"We took that big risk."

Mai says she was too young to feel the full horror of the journey, but she recalls the fear of the people crammed in the small fishing boat around her as they journeyed across the ocean.

"I remember the discomfort of travelling by sea in a small boat, the smell of oil, the shortage of food and water.

"During the time we were at sea we were lost. We were at sea for six nights.

"I can remember the fear from people around us, crying and praying to God.

"We managed to get to one of the islands in Malaysia and our boat came near to shore.

"The officials came out and told us to sink the boat and my dad decided he would take me, swim to shore and leave my mum at the boat and come back to get her.

"She was the last person left on the boat because I nearly drowned and he forgot all about her.

"When he got me to shore he was trying to resuscitate me but she managed to swim to the shore by herself.

"When they did put their feet on the ground they told me later that they loved it so much.

"It was the feeling of surety that they were safe, they had reached land and foreign land became their freedom."

Mai now has a daughter of her own and says she feels the Vietnamese community has done well to establish themselves here.

"We're ever grateful for the Australian government and the Australian society who have embraced us all this time. They've nurtured us and now they're nurturing my child.

"They have accepted us, tolerated our culture.

"We've worked very hard to fit into the wider community and I believe we have successfully integrated into the wider Australian society now."

For Anh Nguyen too, despite the memories of terrible times and extraordinary human loss, the unveiling of the memorial is a happy occasion.

"We have the monument we have been longing for, not just for us but to say thank you to Australia, and the general public who in the last decades opened their arms to welcome us.

"Because of that we were reborn in this country and we are thriving."