Port Stephens celebrates Australia Day

“You can do better than that,” the mayor of Port Stephens Bruce MacKenzie said.

“Aussie, Aussie, Aussie?”

The crowd replied, ‘oi, oi, oi’!

Among them was Tso family from Raymond Terrace.

Robin is the minister of the Presbyterian Church, also at Cardiff.

His wife Vanessa and their two eldest children, Alistair, 3, and Lauren, 2, also took the oath. Benjamin, 1, was born here.

Robin and Vanessa have each seen their share of the world, with her being New Zealand-born and raised in Canada.

“It only took a few months before we had the feeling we didn’t want to live anywhere else than in the Hunter Valley,” she said.

Little did the crowd at Riverside Park know Lauren responded to the mayor’s ‘Aussie’ chant.

“We didn’t know Bruce was going to do that,” Vanessa said.

“But we had been teaching Lauren because we thought she’d need it at some stage.”

Robin said the family had talked about citizenship and its importance.

“When I was born in Hong Kong it was still a British colony,” he said.

“For me and many others there’s a real identity crisis growing up there.”

He was later schooled in Canada and moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to become a minister of the gospel.

“It was only after I moved to Australia that I was praying for a wife,” Robin said.

The pair met online, while Vanessa was a kindergarten teacher in South Korea.

“Australia is the best place for our family, everyone in this country gets a fair go,” he said.

“This [citizenship] is something that I want for my children and to live in a country that doesn’t look down on other people.”