Skip to main content
  • dva.gov.au
  • anzaccentenary.gov.au

The Anzac Portal

Home
Home
  • Home
  • History
    • Conflicts
      • Gallipoli and the Anzacs
      • Australians on the Western Front
      • Australia and the Second World War
      • The Burma-Thailand Railway and Hellfire Pass
      • The Kokoda Track
      • Australian involvement in South-East Asian conflicts
      • The Korean War
      • Australia and the Vietnam War
    • Special features
      • Veterans' stories
      • Great War memories
      • Victoria Cross recipients
  • Education
    • Education
      • Year 9 History resources
      • Year 10 History resources
      • Anzac Day resources for primary schools
      • All education resources
    • Competitions
      • Anzac Day Schools' Awards
    • Curriculum units
    • Online activities
      • Coming Home: An investigation of the Armistice and Repatriation
      • Keeping the Peace: Investigating Australia's contribution to peacekeeping
  • Multimedia
    • Audio
    • Documents
    • Images
    • Publications
      • 1916—Fromelles and the Somme
      • 1917—Bapaume and Bullecourt
      • 1917—Ypres
      • 1918—Amiens to Hindenburg Line
      • 1918—Villers-Bretonneux to Le Hamel
      • A Bitter Fate—Australians In Malaya & Singapore
      • Ancestry—Stories of multicultural Anzacs
      • Audacity—Stories of heroic Australians in wartime
      • Australian Flying Corps
      • Australian Light Horse—Palestine 1916–1918
      • Bomber Command
      • Candour: Stories in the words of those who served 1914—18
      • Chinese Anzacs
      • Comradeship—Stories of friendship and recreation in wartime
      • Curiosity—Stories of those who report during wartime
      • Decision—Stories of Leadership in the Services
      • Devotion—Stories of Australia's Wartime Nurses
      • Forever Yours
      • Gallipoli
      • Greece and Crete
      • Home Front
      • Laden, Fevered, Starved—the POWs of Sandakan
      • Memories and Memorabilia
      • North Africa and Syria
      • North Beach Gallipoli 1915
      • Operation Jaywick
      • Resource—Stories of innovation in wartime
      • Royal Australian Navy
      • Royal Australian Navy in the Atlantic and Mediterranean
      • The sinking of the Centaur
      • United Kingdom
      • Valuing our veterans
      • World Wide Effort: Australia's Peacekeepers
    • Videos
  • Anzac Day Schools’ Awards Winners
  • Conduct an event
    • Multimedia
    • Resources
    • Sample Speeches
  • Resources
    • #1MS (1 Minute's Silence)
    • 3-nine-39 radio and video series
    • 60th Anniversary of the Korean War
    • 70th Anniversary Tobruk 1941
    • 70th Anniversary of the battles for Greece and Crete
    • 70th anniversary of the Kokoda campaign
    • 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin
    • 95th Anniversary of the landings on Gallipoli
    • ADSA 2019 Poster
    • Anzac Centenary School Link Program
    • Anzac Day Poster 2019
    • Anzac Day poster
    • Anzac Day poster
    • Australia and the Vietnam War
    • Australian Prisoners of War
    • Australian Service Nursing: Wartime snapshots No.25
    • Australian Women in War
    • Australians at War Film Archive
    • Australians in the Merchant Navy
    • Australians on the Western Front
    • Battle for Leyte Gulf October 1944
    • Centenary of the Flanders Offensive
    • Centenary of the Royal Australian Navy
    • Centenary of the Sinai–Palestine campaign
    • Centenary of the Somme
    • Commemorating Australian Forces in the Vietnam War
    • Commemorating Australian forces in the Korean War
    • Commemorating Australian forces in the Vietnam War 1962–1975
    • Commemorating Australian prisoners of war on the Burma–Thailand Railway
    • Commemorating the Centenary of the Gallipoli Landings
    • Commemorating the Malayan Emergency and Indonesian Confrontation
    • Commemorating the centenary of the Armistice: Wartime Snapshots No. 24
    • Commemorating the first convoy of Australian troops to the First World War
    • Commemorating the return of Australian forces from Afghanistan
    • Control
    • Discovering Anzacs Exhibition Tips and Tools (Learn Area)
    • Discovering Anzacs School and Community Toolkit (Learn Area)
    • Discovering Anzacs Video Tutorials and Timeline (Learn Area)
    • Gallipoli and the Anzacs
    • Great Debates: The Anzac Legend
    • Great Debates—Conscription
    • Here they come—A day to remember
    • INTERFET: History in Focus
    • INTERFET—International Forces for East Timor
    • Indigenous Service
    • Investigating Gallipoli
    • Kokoda: Exploring the Second World War campaign in Papua New Guinea
    • Korea—A Cold War conflict (1950–1953)
    • M is for Mates—Animals in Wartime from Ajax to Zep
    • Ode of Remembrance: Wartime Snapshots No.26
    • Reflections: Capturing Veterans' Stories
    • Remembering Them app—Education Activities
    • Remembrance Day Poster 2019
    • Remembrance Day Posters 2018
    • Remembrance day
    • Schooling, Service and the Great War (Primary Resource)
    • Schooling, Service and the Great War (Secondary Resource)
    • Symbols of Commemoration Cube Education Activities (Secondary)
    • Symbols of Commemoration Cube—Education Activities (Primary school resource)
    • The Flanders Poppy—A symbol of remembrance
    • The Nominal Roll of Australian Korean War Veterans
    • The Nominal Roll of Australian Vietnam War Veterans
    • The Nominal Roll of Australian World War 2 Veterans
    • The Sinking of HMAS Sydney
    • The War that Changed Us Education Activities
    • Their Spirit, Our History
    • Wartime snapshot #23—1918-2018: Centenary of the Final Campaigns
    • We Remember Anzac (Primary Resource)
    • We Remember Anzac (Secondary Resource)
    • We'll Meet Again
    • Women in War radio series
  • Gallipoli and the Anzacs
  • Australians on the Western Front
  • Australia and the Second World War
  • The Burma-Thailand Railway and Hellfire Pass
  • The Kokoda Track
  • Australian involvement in South-East Asian conflicts
  • The Korean War
  • Australia and the Vietnam War
  • Australia and the Vietnam War
  • Events
  • Locations
  • Resources
  • Australia and the Vietnam War
    • The Vietnam War
      • Background
        • Australia, communism and Southeast Asia after Dien Bien Phu
        • Ngo Dinh Diem visits Australia
        • Ho Chi Minh
      • Australia enters - 1962
      • The Australian Army Training Team Vietnam
        • Three members of the team
      • Bien Hoa Province
    • All the way with LBJ
      • The Americans' war - At home and overseas
      • Rest and recreation in Sydney - 'R and R'
    • Armour
      • Conditions
      • Supporting armour - engineers
    • Artillery
    • Royal Australian Navy
      • Vung Tau Ferry
      • On the gunline - destroyers
      • Clearance divers
      • Helicopter flight
      • 9 Squadron RAAF detachment
    • Royal Australian Air Force
      • 35 Squadron
        • Crash landing at A Ro
      • 9 Squadron
      • 2 Squadron
      • Other RAAF Personnel
      • RAAF 1975
        • Operation Babylift
        • Life in a dangerous city
        • The end in Vietnam
  • Events
    • Phuoc Tuy Province
      • Nui Dat
        • Settling in
        • A minefield
        • Entertaining the troops
      • Vung Tau
        • Settling in
      • Civilian aid
    • Combat
      • The other side
      • Patrolling
        • Fire support bases
      • Viet Cong tunnels
      • Battle of Long Tan
        • The battle
        • The other side
      • Operation Bribie
      • Battle of Coral/Balmoral
        • Coral attack 1
        • Patrolling
        • Coral attack 2
        • Balmoral attack 1
        • The bunkers
        • Balmoral attack 2
        • The final actions
      • Battle of Binh Ba
        • The battle begins
        • The second assault
        • The battle winds down
        • Aftermath
    • The Tet Offensive
      • Baria
      • Long Dien
      • Other task force actions
    • Conscription
      • The Birthday Ballot - National Service
      • Moratoriums and opposition
        • The draft resisters union
        • The case of John Zarb
      • 'Save Our Sons'
        • The Fairlea Five
    • Public opinion
    • Vietnamisation - pulling out
    • Aftermath
      • Veterans
        • 'My Vietnam'
      • Australian Vietnam Veterans Reconstruction Group
      • Agent Orange
        • Vietnamese victims
  • Locations
    • Commemoration
  • Resources
    • Vietnam war myths
    • Roll of Honour image gallery
      • Profiles
    • Vietnam War stories

You are here

  • Home
  • History
  • Conflicts
  • Australia and the Vietnam War
  • Events

Aftermath

Local villagers surround Lieutenant John Lucaci, 1st Australian Reinforcement Unit and a Vietnamese monk. 1968

Local villagers surround Lieutenant John Lucaci, 1st Australian Reinforcement Unit and a Vietnamese monk. 1968. [AWM P00602.011]

The conflict in Vietnam ended up engulfing neighbouring Cambodia and Laos. United States and South Vietnamese forces sought to block the flow of soldiers and equipment through these countries into South Vietnam, invading Cambodia and Laos in 1970. In 1975 communist forces prevailed in all three countries causing millions to try and flee the new regimes.

Cambodia sunk into the nightmare of Khmer Rouge rule. Declaring ‘Year Zero’ and proclaiming an austere agrarian socialist revolution, the Khmer Rouge drove the population into the countryside, murdering anyone considered an intellectual, wiping out most of the Buddhist priesthood and ultimately provoking Vietnam into invading in 1979. Enormous refugee camps were set up along the Thai border as hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fled the country with tales of brutality and horror. The camps were overcrowded and sometimes violent and people lived in them for years waiting for resettlement.

Major General M F Brogan, General Officer Commanding Eastern Command, talks with two patients missing a leg each sitting in wheelchairs at the 2nd Military Hospital in Ingleburn NSW 10 March 1971
South Vietnamese refugees fleeing from the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) being evacuated in a RAAF 36 Squadron C-130A Hercules transport aircraft in April 1975
Phnom Penh, Cambodia 1992. Corporal Francine Rigby and Warrant Officer 2 Barry James look for stolen equipment in local shops and markets
Australians serving with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) erecting razor wire around the perimeter of their base camp, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1993
A Vietnamese fishing boat which arrived in Darwin in June 1978 with nine people on board

Two million people sought to escape South Vietnam after the communist victory. Often taking to small, overcrowded boats they sailed into the South China Sea. Some made it as far as northern Australia, others spent years in refugee camps before finally being admitted to third countries. Many never made it that far, in unseaworthy vessels they succumbed to storms or drowned in calm seas when leaky boats sank beneath them. Pirates regularly attacked the slow, defenceless ships, raping the women, taking whatever valuables were on board and often murdering the refugees.

The exodus from Indochina had an impact on the countries in which the refugees eventually settled. Over ten years from 1976, 94,000 refugees from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam settled in Australia. About 2,000 arrived by boat. Accepting tens of thousands of Asian refugees was a large leap for a country that not long before had upheld the White Australia Policy. Not since the migration of large numbers of Chinese during the nineteenth century goldrushes had there been a large influx of Asians into Australia. As a percentage of the population, Indochinese refugees were not a large group, but they were new and they were visible. Small areas of the country, such as Sydney’s Cabramatta, were dramatically changed by their presence. About 155,000 Vietnamese-born Australians live in Australia today.

After the war Vietnam was a country in ruins; physical infrastructure on both sides of the North/South divide had been destroyed. From 1957, the year after elections meant to unify the country failed to take place, until 1972, when the South was left to continue the war without the support of foreign ground troops, some 3.5 million people died in Vietnam, 60,000 were American, 521 were Australian.

Melbourne protests

Banner in Melbourne’s City Square celebrating the communist victories in Indo-China
Postestors in Melbourne's City Square, banner 'No asylum here for Saigon crooks'
Men who once resisted the draft stand together at the anti-Vietnam War Moratorium 20th Anniversary on 11 May 1990 at the Melbourne Town Hall

In Australia support for the war waned as it went on. Many of those who opposed involvement in Vietnam joined the political left, contributing to the election of a Labor Government in 1972. The Vietnam era was a time of social upheaval in Australia, but other western countries, such as France, that had no involvement in this war in Vietnam also experienced rebellion and internal conflict. In Australia’s case, the war galvanised the protest movement, giving disparate groups an organising principle. Those who sought social change across a range of issues unrelated to the war found common cause in opposing Vietnam and national service.

In the United States failure in Vietnam led to isolationism and a reluctance to become involved in overseas disputes. This was to some degree echoed in Australia. Even contributions to distant peacekeeping operations, in the Sinai for example, led to suggestions that Australia was becoming involved in another Vietnam. Vietnam has become a byword for military quagmire, used in regard to Iraq today, it is a shadow that hangs over military endeavour overseas. No one wants another Vietnam.

Related content

Interview 3 Lieutenant Barry Smith, 1st Australian Civil Affairs Unit

Australians at War Film Archive, Interview No.2144

Civil Affairs Officer Lieutenant Barry Smith returned to Vietnam in 1990. During his visit he was shocked to discover the local impact of the loss of so many South Vietnamese men.

Interview 2 David Williams

Australians at War Film Archive, Interview No.2362

Ship’s diver David Williams who served in HMAS Vampire discusses his feelings about the discrimination against Vietnam veterans.

Interview Mick Malone, SAS

Australians at War Film Archive, Interview No.2087

Trooper 'Mick' Malone, 3rd Special Air Service Squadron who served in Vietnam between 22 February 1969 and 18 February 1970, discusses his reaction to Australian protestors.

  • Home
  • History
  • Education
  • Multimedia
  • Anzac Day Schools’ Awards Winners
  • Conduct an event
  • Resources
  • Site info
  • Research tips
  • Contact
  • Copyright
  • Events
  • Accessibility
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy
  • Links
  • Bibliography
  • Anzac Centenary program

Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to us on YouTube