Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In December, Northbridge lost a much loved patriarch, Tan Tran, and Tan Tran truly was a patriarch—a dispenser of kindness and wisdom to his enormous family that includes 28 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, to Perth's community of Vietnamese refugees and to all those traditionally built Australians who have been attracted like moths to a flame to that little corner shop in Palmerston Street; attracted by the Asian delicacies that were so exotic when Mr Tran opened his shop nearly 35 years ago but equally by the happy and gracious nature of Mr Tran, his extraordinary wife Mama Tran and their hardworking children and grandchildren.

The Tran family arrived in Perth as boat people in 1978. Tan had been a successful businessman in Vietnam, but with his characteristic cheerfulness and capacity for work he willingly took on the most menial jobs to build a foundation for his family. Within five years he had opened that now very famous little shop. David Hobbs, a local resident, sums this up brilliantly:

Mr Tran and his family are good examples of when cultural integration and assimilation travels in two directions—it is not just the case of the 'outsider' integrating into the local western society, what Mr Tran has provided is an example of local western society being invited into and to a degree moving toward an appealing set of values and ideas.

The Tran family's prosperity is underpinned not just by old-fashioned hard work and perseverance. The thing that really strikes one is the extraordinary level of family unity, inspired and driven by the love between Mr and Mrs Tran as the central theme behind this endeavour. To Mama Tran, Mien, Thai, Trung, Ming, Hoa, Phuong, Van, Le, Tammy, James and all the family, we are thinking of you at this sad time but we know that the spirit of Tan is still with you.

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