Never too late

“I had never been anywhere except home before,” Ha says. “I just sat on the bed, not knowing what to do until it got dark. Eventually I peeked out and saw the other students coming out too. We went downstairs together to find something to eat. It was an interesting experience: a combination of naivete and a completely unknown world.”

Now 69, Ha recently returned to Bond University where, 20 years ago, she set about fulfilling her long-held ambition to become a doctor. Reuniting with four other Bondies from the Class of 2005 – Dr Laura Gordon, Dr Katya Groeneveld, Dr Selina Lim and Dr Charles Molloy – Ha stood out not only for her journey, but for the age at which it began. While her classmates were teenagers when they started their degrees, Ha was 50.

“It’s a long story," she says.

After the Fall of Saigon, and with hundreds of thousands of her countrymen fleeing the new communist regime, it became clear Ha would not be able to return to Vietnam. She switched from studying engineering to medical science, intending to eventually transition to medicine.

But with her parents and siblings in Vietnam struggling in the aftermath of the war, Ha needed to earn an income. After graduating she became a nurse to support them. She would eventually be reunited with her family, with her brothers and sister arriving in Australia as refugees, followed by their parents. 

“It might be difficult to understand today but in Vietnam at that time, family took precedence over other plans,” Ha says.

Yet she never gave up studying.

She trained as a nurse midwife in the early 1980s and graduated with a Master of Nursing from RMIT in 2001. But as the years passed, her plan to become a doctor began to fade.

“I got to 50 and decided, that's it, too late now,” Ha says.

Then came an unexpected turning point: a visit to Melbourne by the late Professor Chris Del Mar, the inaugural Dean of the Bond University medical school. Professor Del Mar was scouting for the university’s first medical students – the Class of 2005.

“He encouraged me to put in an application and less than a week later I got a telephone call to say come for an interview,” Ha says. “And then the following week I was in.”

Studying as a mature-age student had its ups and downs.

“The positive part was I had maturity and, I would say, wisdom,” she says. “And the other side is, you sort of feel a bit too old for this.”

In the years after graduating from Bond, Ha became a GP in Melbourne and even worked in Timor Leste, a country grappling with the aftermath of conflict much like Vietnam did in the 1970s.

These days, Dr Tran works at North Richmond Community Health and has no plans to retire anytime soon. She also works pro bono at the Cabrini Asylum Seeker and Refugee Health Hub.

“I love the opportunity to get to know the patients and their families and listen to their stories,” she says.

Though her journey was delayed, it was at Bond University that Ha finally achieved her goal, and she looks back on her time there with pride.

“It was very special to be in the inaugural cohort,” Ha says. “Professor Del Mar was really proud of us and cared for us in every way possible. The small class sizes meant the students and teachers really got to know each other. I’m glad I never stopped studying.”