Imagine for a moment that you uproot your family and move to a country where the culture, the customs, the language and the food are utterly foreign. Because you live near other families in a similar position, and because you are able to retain some elements of your old lifestyle at home, living is bearable.

But what if, as you get older, you end up in a local nursing home? Because you have not conquered the local language you can't understand what people are saying, can't make yourself understood and at almost every meal you are served food which you find unpalatable? You are lonely and isolated. 

That is the problem facing hundreds of older migrants, particularly from countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, who came to Australia with their families, perhaps 30 years ago. They are playing out the final years of their solitary lives in wretched silence and isolation. 

It is a dilemma few of us have considered. It is not their fault that they have not assimilated. Many were forced to flee their homelands with little more than the clothes they stood in. Others arrived with precious few possessions or resources. 

They have worked hard, educated their children as Australians and helped build the nation. Learning English, embracing local customs and adjusting to western food, were low priorities in their struggle. 

In their declining years the tyranny of age has closed the social doors. All they have to look forward to is the weekly visit from their children and grand children. 

But the Vietnamese community in South Australia is planning to build nursing home facilities, specifically for first-generation migrants who are struggling in their final years. 

The vision is for a 50-bed facility in the northern suburbs which would serve traditional Vietnamese food and acknowledge the customs and traditions of Vietnam. And of course it would allow these dignified elder statespeople of the Vietnamese community to interact, to make friends and mix with people of similar interests and cultural beliefs. 

Former Liberal Legislative Councillor and businessman, Julian Stefani – a long-time supporter of migrant issues – is helping to turn the dream of a Vietnamese nursing home into a reality. It is merely another step in Australia's emergence as a genuinely multicultural community. Ironically, Mr Stefani was also the driving force behind the erection of the magnificent migrant monument quietly unveiled 10 days ago by the governor, Marjorie Jackson-Nelson, at the Migration Museum off North Terrace as a tribute to all migrant settlers in South Australia. 

The monument, in Settlers' Square, as part of the museum, depicts a migrant couple of indeterminate ethnic background, the father holding a battered suitcase, and a child. 

Mr Stefani was no different. His grandfather arrived in Australia with no money, no language, no home and no job. Just hope and a suitcase. 

The migration monument was crafted by sculptor Aurelio Forte-Laan in the city of Asiago in North Italy, near Mr Stefani's family home. 

The Migration Museum in Adelaide, opened in 1986, was the first of its kind in Australia. 

The museum attracts 160,000 visitors a year, many from interstate and overseas, and has become an important repository for the cultural heritage and traditions of the many migrants who have settled in South Australia. 
But while the museum mirrors the achievements of migrants from the past, the need to build nursing homes for people of specific ethnic backgrounds underlines the ongoing challenges of an emerging and maturing multicultural society.