Krishan Mohamed and his family have found a new home in Tamworth

Now, he cannot imagine living anywhere else.

Mr Mohamed said what really made him want to stay was the friendliness of the locals.

"When I first came here I didn't have anybody," he said.

"But I would go to the gym or go for a run. So, one evening I went for a run down to Bicentennial Park. When I started running and passing people, everybody would say, hi or ask me how my day was going. That doesn't happen anywhere else.

"Everybody in Sri Lanka would be running with their headsets on and be in their own worlds. But here, they would smile and that made me feel very welcomed here."

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Growing up in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, Mr Mohamed always imagined carving out his own version of the "Aussie dream".

"I always wanted to live here," he said.

"During my school terms [at university] I had friends who had migrated to Australia, but due to family commitments and everything, it wasn't easy to get here."

Soon after the birth of his two children, Mr Mohamed and his wife decided it was the best time to make his dream a reality.

"So after my kids were born then I thought, okay, maybe this is time if I'm going to make the decision," he said.

"I didn't want to bring the kids when they were big, because they will lose a lot. If they were here at least in primary school years, they could actually adapt."

Mr Mohamed said the visa application process took around four to five years.

One of the biggest hurdles Mr Mohamed faced was passing his English qualification.

"We speak English at home. So basically everyone in Sri Lanka can speak a bit of English. But for us to come here we had to pass IELTS [proof of English language proficiency]," he said.

"That was the hardest part to get through and I took the test three times."

Eventually he was granted a regional skilled migrant visa.

"This visa meant I had to live in a regional NSW area, where I had to live for one year and work for one year," Mr Mohamed said.

"I was given a list of regional postcodes and Tamworth was on the list and I had a friend living here with his family and he said 'if you want to come to Tamworth I can help you out'."

After moving to Tamworth, Mr Mohamed struggled with job interviews.

"The way interviews are conducted are totally different compared to Sri Lanka," he said.

"It's a really new experience for me, facing interviews here, like the questions are different and the way they want our answers to be structured is different."

Scrolling through Facebook one afternoon, he discovered a post for Toastmasters.

"I didn't even know what Toastmasters was and I thought maybe I'll go and sit in one of their meetings and see how it is," Mr Mohamed said.

Through attending the Toastmasters meeting, he was able to improve his English and learn more about public speaking.

"I learned a lot about how to structure my speeches and how to speak to a group of people, how to maintain eye contact, the body language and vocal variety like that, that they helped me a lot," he said.

Since then, Mr Mohamed has become has become a valuable member of the community through both his work at Tamworth TAFE campus and his volunteer work.

"I joined the Peel Valley Lions Club and I'm doing a lot of charity work there and making a lot of friends through there," he said.

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