About Mobile Stories

Interactive student stories from Australia and Timor-Leste

Our backgrounds shape who we are as individuals, what choices we have the freedom to make and what choices we then choose to make.

Australia and Timor-Leste are neighbouring countries yet in terms of size, wealth and power the two nations are worlds apart.

Mobile Stories features 20 video stories, 10 photo galleries and 6 written articles that together explore the lives and subsequent hopes, dreams and goals of university students living in two vastly different cultures. Mobile Stories offers an insight not only to life in the fledgling, first new sovereign state of the 21st century but also to students living and studying in the diverse multicultural region of Western Sydney.

Australia and Timor-Leste are neighbouring countries yet neither knows much about the other. In 2022 Timor-Leste celebrates its 20th anniversary of independence. The country has changed immensely since the devastation following the 1999 independence referendum which led to the intervention of an Australian-led UN peacekeeping force to restore order. While still racked with poverty, the country is now a peaceful democracy, rich in natural beauty, local culture and the warmth of its people.

Western Sydney, on the other hand, has one of the most culturally diverse populations in Australia. Approximately one-third of the Greater Western Sydney population migrated to Australia and many are refugees.

Mobile Stories explores the lives and culture of people not usually represented in mainstream media. In doing so Mobile Stories aims to celebrate both difference and a common humanity.

Mobile Stories is a collaborative project produced by students and their teachers at Western Sydney University. Funded by the New Colombo Plan, a signature initiative of the Australian Government which aims to lift knowledge of the Indo Pacific in Australia, Mobile Stories offers an insight not only to life in the fledgling, first sovereign state of the 21st century but also to students living and studying in the diverse multicultural region of Western Sydney.

In a world covered in national borders, Mobile Stories aims to offer a small but significant example of how two neighbouring countries can come together to share stories of friendship, understanding and hope for the future.