The first creative writing exercise we take them through is a poem constructed by answering a series of questions. Anyone with the most basic grasp of English can write this poem and, as I discover that morning, some of the most simple ones are the most moving. When adjectives and other literary flourishes are stripped away, only feelings and everyday objects remain.

In just a few hours with these students in the school library I learn so much about the world, things I probably should know but really don’t. Like the Hazara students whose families were persecuted by the Taliban; how they fled Afghanistan by going over to Pakistan, living there indefinitely in refugee camps until their application to settle in Australia was approved many years later.

I chat with one boy about how he misses freshly baked Afghan bread because he’s written it down in a story about his family. We agree that if he lived in Sydney or Brisbane he’d be able to find some easily, and I tell him I know exactly where to find a good Afghan bakery in Auburn. Refugee resettlement has transformed Coffs remarkably in recent years, but not enough to warrant its own Afghan bakery. Not yet, anyway.

I’d visited Coffs only once before, 20 years earlier, a brief stop at the town’s infamous Big Banana on the 10-hour drive from Sydney to the Gold Coast. It was the only time we ever visited because family holidays were rare. My parents were always working, often on weekends as well, and for a time Dad even worked two full-time jobs going straight from one to the other with a short nap in between.

Later that afternoon we visit Coffs Harbour High, where teacher Kate Pullinger has gathered together a large group of students interested in creative writing. Only three look like recent arrivals to Australia, while the rest seem to be largely white or Aboriginal. I gravitate toward the three, instinctively protective, sitting down with them to support them in their writing.