by Om Dhungel and James Button
Written with Walkley Award-winning journalist James Button, Bhutan to Blacktown is a story of grit and struggle, humour and irrepressible optimism — and how losing nearly everything shaped one man’s character and fate.
Bhutan is known as the land of Gross National Happiness, a Buddhist Shangri-la hidden in the Himalayas. But in the late 1980s, Bhutan waged a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign against its citizens of Nepali ancestry, including Om Dhungel and his family. Bhutan to Blacktown tells Om Dhungel’s remarkable story — his journey from a remote village to a senior position in the Bhutanese Civil Service, to life as a human rights activist in Nepal and, eventually, to his work as a community leader in Blacktown, western Sydney. Every step prepared Om for the central role he would play in settling more than 5000 Bhutanese refugees, in one of the most successful refugee initiatives in Australia’s history
By RP Subba on March 14, 2025
When I read ‘Bhutan to Blacktown’ authored jointly by Om Dhungel Daju and James Button, the first thing that struck my mind was the puzzling role of co-authorship. James Button’s involvement seems minimal at best. The subject matter, story, experiences and details, drawn directly from the author’s personal experiences, are ...