Kessr Ali came to Australia in 2001 on a three-week holiday, and met the love of his life.
Today, the 34-year-old juggles family life, a day job, a business on the side and volunteering with the CFA.
He talks to Charlene Macaulay.
What’s your connection to Wyndham?
I’ve lived here for more than six years.
I migrated from the UK, and I’ve always been in Hoppers.
My in-laws live here; my wife is from the area, and, after living with me in the UK, she wanted to come back and study, so I moved back with her.
How did you meet your wife?
I was here on holiday in 2001 and she was a friend of the family with whom I was staying.
We just met by chance and hit it off.
I was here for three-and-a-half weeks, and then we had an MSN-chat relationship, and we used phone cards and texting [to stay in touch].
There was no What’s App or anything like that then.
We did long distance for about a year and a half, and then we got married.
We both have a Pakistani background, so we went from England to Pakistan, and then we went back to the UK and we lived in Manchester for about six years.
We now have our daughter, Amelia, who is three.
How does Hoppers Crossing differ from Manchester?
In the UK, where I grew up, the houses are all semi-detached, whereas here, almost every house is separate from every other house, and everything is a lot more spaced out.
I didn’t like that things shut really early here.
In the UK, there’s this one road we used to go to with restaurants and stuff, and it never shuts.
Now that Pacific Werribee has expanded, it doesn’t sleep.
The cafes are still open; it’s great having some place to go after 7pm.
You’re a CFA volunteer – how long have you been doing that, and what made you sign up?
I was on the 2015 recruit course for Hoppers Crossing, and I graduated from that in August 2015.
Coming from the UK and leaving my family behind, I felt like being in the CFA.
I was able to get into a community, and the mateship that comes with being in the brigade has been really, really good.
I certainly feel like I am part of something again.
Tell me about some of the call-outs you’ve been to.
I think the biggest one this year for me was that truck fire on the Princes Freeway back in April.
That closed down the freeway, inbound, for about three hours.
When we got there, it was a case of getting water into the truck … it took about half an hour, because we had to saturate everything that was in there.
You also run your own business – tell me about that.
It’s not very big.
It’s called My Compufix and it’s about providing honest, hard-working IT support to families and small businesses.
I’m a one-man band, so I don’t go for the big companies, I go for the kind of people who need help and don’t know who to turn to, or find other companies too expensive.
I really want to bring customer service [in IT] back.
