The 18-year-old Amornrat Sricamsuk first came to Rockhampton in 1992 with her family's concerns still ringing in her ears. They warned she might be taken away as a victim of 'woman trafficking'.

Amornrat explains that she grew up in the small rural town of Roi Et, about 45 minutes by plane north-east of Bangkok, and her siblings, apart from her youngest sister, had not progressed beyond primary school.

Dawn Hay meets former student Amornrat and her family during their visit to Rockhampton

So it was no surprise her family was concerned when she agreed to accept an AusAid scholarship to study half a world away at CQUniversity, after completing a year in the Faculty of Nursing at Khon Kaen University.

Despite attending language classes, Amornrat says she was still nervous when she started her nursing degree and considered going home many times after struggling to keep up.

"I was in the first group of the international students to come into nursing and I really struggled with my English," she said.

However, nursing academic Dawn Hay and others in the faculty spent a lot of their time helping her work through the basics of the course, so she could gain confidence get up to speed.

Dawn was the ideal mentor, having herself spent 15 years working as a nurse and a midwife in Nauru in the Central Pacific region, where she guided the health workforce to gain their overseas nursing and midwifery credentials.

"Working in the Pacific, I learned about cultural sensitivity and understanding and learned that language should not be a barrier to communication. I learned to watch facial expressions, to speak directly and slowly and to get people to repeat things to ensure I had the message right; much laughter and goodwill went into communicating and learning from each other," Dawn said.

"Amornrat was highly motivated and willing to listen and was like a sponge for information. It was a pleasure to be part of her university learning. We had many conversations to ensure Amornat not only understood the academic language but also the everyday Aussie language."

After completing her degree, Amornrat returned to Thailand. She worked as a research assistant for an Australian lecturer working in Thailand and also as a volunteer nurse to gain her Thai nursing experiences and obtain her Thai nursing licence. She then obtained a position as a nursing lecturer at the Faculty of Nursing, Khon Kaen University.

Amornrat came back to Australia, this time to Brisbane, where she worked as a nurse and completed first a Masters in mental health and subsequently a PhD on domestic violence through Griffith University.

It was while in Brisbane that she met her future husband Erico Saito (her full name is now Amornrat Sricamsuk Saito), who was a student from Brazil.

Now living back in Thailand, Amornrat has progressed to become an experienced nursing lecturer and is now a program coordinator for Mental Health Nursing at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and supervises 15 Masters students.

She and Erico now have a toddler-age son called Matthew and recently visited Rockhampton while on holiday in Australia.

"I had to visit Dawn because she made my life change by looking after me when it was so hard to study and I was thinking of going home," Amornrat said.

"I really appreciate the start I had by coming to CQUniversity to study my Bachelor of Nursing degree."