(For Australia Day – Monday, 26 January 2026)

More than twenty years ago, Vietnamese-Australian journalist and songwriter Nguyen Hong-Anh quietly wrote a song in English titled Prayer for Australia. It was never intended as a commercial release. Instead, it appeared on YouTube only a few times, nearly a decade ago, always around Australia Day—as a personal gesture of gratitude to the country that became his second homeland.

Prayer for Australia is not a patriotic anthem in the conventional sense. It is a prayer, shaped by lived experience: war, displacement, exile, refugee camps, and eventually, resettlement in Australia.

A nation of arrivals

The opening lines set the tone:

We come to this land from everywhere…

Australia is portrayed not merely as a place, but as a meeting point of human journeys—from the north, south, east and west. The lyric “Boat people and migrants old and new” speaks directly to history, acknowledging the refugee experience as an integral part of the Australian story.

For Nguyen Hong-Anh, this is deeply personal. He was himself a boat refugee who arrived in Australia after fleeing Vietnam, carrying little more than the hope of freedom.

Freedom as lived reality

When the song declares “People enjoy freedom”, it is not a slogan. It reflects a reality that the songwriter knows intimately. Freedom of speech, freedom of belief, freedom to participate—these values underpin both his music and his long career in ethnic journalism.

As the founding editor of Tivi Tuan-san, one of Australia’s longest-running Vietnamese-language newspapers, Nguyen Hong-Anh has spent decades defending free expression and community dialogue—rights denied to him in his country of birth but embraced in Australia.

“The land we all call home”

Perhaps the most powerful line in the song is “Australia, the land we all call home.” The use of “all” is deliberate. This is not a possessive claim, but an inclusive one—reflecting Australia’s multicultural ethos.

It is also telling that Nguyen Hong-Anh has never written a song about the Vietnamese cities where he spent the first thirty years of his life. Instead, he has written for Melbourne, the city where he has lived for 45 years.

Melbourne: a city of belonging

In 2016, he wrote Melbourne, My City, first in Vietnamese and later translated into English by himself to be sung. The song paints Melbourne as a place of seasons, rivers, green hills, and cultural harmony—a city that offers peace and dignity rather than spectacle.

It is a love song to a city that allowed a refugee to become a citizen, a journalist, an artist, and above all, a participant in a shared civic life.

Music as a late-life return

Vietnamese music critic Hoai Nam once described Nguyen Hong-Anh as a “gentleman amateur” songwriter. Music was never his profession, but it remained a quiet companion throughout his life. After decades devoted to journalism and publishing, he returned to music in later life, calling it “a late-season inspiration.”

Prayer for Australia belongs to that inspiration—not as performance, but as thanksgiving.

A song for Australia Day

As Australia celebrates Australia Day 2026, Prayer for Australia stands as a reminder that national identity is not diminished by migration—it is enriched by it.

Through this simple, heartfelt song, a Vietnamese-Australian voice joins the larger Australian chorus, offering not demands or declarations, but a sincere prayer:

Australia, God bless Australia.