🎹 Gaza Refugee Baher Skaik Gains Residency In Australia Thanks To 'The Piano'

Baher Skaik, a Gaza refugee featured on Amanda Keller’s The Piano, is officially beginning a new life in Australia.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jersey and Amanda jam Nation.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
It was good to see your hit TV show The
Piano get a run on Channel ten News yesterday.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Yes, this is a really nice story when we do
the Piano, and this is a TV show where people
are just told to come down and play the piano.
A casting call, it's not even a casting call. A
call went out saying what do you love about the piano?
What's your connection to the piano? And people were selected
to come down and play public pianos in various parts

(00:32):
of Australia. And when we were filming it, you never
knew who you were going to get, who was going
to come. The producers had curated a group of people
to come and tell their story. And on episode three,
we're filming in Melbourne's Preston Market, so there's someone selling
vegetables and calling out about lettuce and stuff in the background.
In amongst all this, we had a public piano an
upwalk demand called Baha. And five months earlier, he and

(00:56):
his family had fled Gaza. Their house was bombed, his
office was bombed, his piano was bombed. He and his
wife and three daughters were with him and they were
still suffering the effects of well, we've come to Australia,
we've escaped this, but what does this mean? What is
our future? He was a beautiful man to meet and

(01:18):
so this was a story that delighted me when I
saw this yesterday. So tell me a bit about you.
I have just Australia about five months ago. I hadn't
to play a piano since I left the garden.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Not only did it capture the hearts of shoppers, he
called the eye of the Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke,
who decided to pay him a personal visit.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
We were watching and yeah, by the time he finished
playing like we were just a mess. We had just
been trying.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
After a meal and a performed. It's the ultimate surprise.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
I've got the paperwork over there in a bar, any sOliver,
I want to sign the paperwork today, which then means
the next couple of days you'll be off at permanent versus.
It's a nice, nice story.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
If you want to cry all over again. TV does good.
We're doing another series of Piano the Dramma. No it's
called the Piano.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I don't think you're going to do the druma you're
all of them.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
That was a lovely story.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
That's a great story.