Dr Ratna Paudyal’s office at the University of the Sunshine Coast is small, practical, and not quite what most people assume an accounting lecturer’s office might look like. His office features a large bookshelf packed with various accounting textbooks and a small table for meeting with colleagues, just like any other office. However, what stands out more than anything else is the walls: decorated with framed family photographs, colourful drawings made by his children, and numerous awards demonstrating his tireless devotion to educating the next generation of accountants over the past decade. Ratna’s office is a projection of himself as a person and as an educator.

Today, he sits behind his two computer monitors putting the finishing touches on a little side project: a three-minute video highlighting how the power of education can improve the lives of students from regional Australia — a topic very close to Ratna’s heart.

Ratna, despite his illustrious academic credentials and optimistic personality, did not come from a privileged life. Born to illiterate parents in a remote Nepalese village in 1979, Ratna was the fourth of 13 children. His parents married when they were 9 and 10 and his father having two wives: Ratna’s mother and her sister, making Ratna’s aunt also his stepmother.

His childhood home was one room he shared with his family, with multiple children sleeping in one bed. He recalls not having electricity until he was 10, and water was collected from a nearby stream. He walked 5-10 minutes to school barefoot, a much shorter commute than most of his peers, where his academic pursuits were encouraged by his mother who said it was either study or work the family farm.

Ratna chose to study.

“The only way we could improve our lives was being educated and getting a good job,” he says.

After finishing school in 1996, Ratna paid $1 for an 8-10 hour bus trip on undeveloped gravel roads to attend university in Kathmandu, renting a tiny one-bedroom apartment for $40 a month. He worked part-time in construction and private tutoring for primary school students and fellow classmates to pay for living expenses. Here, he found an early passion for teaching.

In 1998, while still studying, Ratna’s family opened a new primary school and asked him to become its principal full-time. He accepted, only returning to Kathmandu to complete his exams. Graduating in 2002 and enrolling in a master’s degree immediately after, he continued to manage the school until 2003, handing it over to his younger siblings.

Returning to Kathmandu, he continued to tutor almost 100 third-year undergraduate students while studying for his master’s. “Each class had 10-15 students and I was teaching 7-8 classes in a day, starting at 4am and finishing at 9pm,” he recalls.

Upon graduating with high grades in 2004, Ratna became an accounting lecturer at the university through a personal recommendation from one of his tutoring friends, beginning a long career in tertiary education.

During this time, Ratna lived through the Nepalese Civil War (1996-2006), when the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launched a brutal armed campaign against Nepal’s monarchy government while promising its impoverished citizens a better life, but Ratna says they were just as corrupt.

“They came to villages asking for shelter, food and money, and if you refused then they physically assaulted, shot or kidnapped you…even I suffered from their brutality, they physically abused me as well,” he recalls. “They took all the school-aged children, nine or 10 years old, to train in the jungle and they provided all the guns and food.”

They formed government in 2008. Today, the Maoist faction is the third-largest political party in Nepal.

These experiences had a profound impact on Ratna and his wife Yashoda, whom he married in 2005, causing them to seek a new life in another country.

In 1998, Ratna met the late Roy Bunney from the Noosa Rotary Club who came to Nepal to build hospitals in Ratna’s home village. Soon after, Ratna joined Rotary and was appointed project manager by Roy for many education projects in Nepal. They became good friends and Ratna learned more about Australia from him.

“I wasn’t hearing anything bad about Australia, even on the news…compared to other countries, and thought Australia was the safest country in the world to live,” he says.

In 2007, due to civil war, lack of opportunities, and corruption, Ratna and his wife immigrated to Australia. He earned a second master’s degree in professional accounting from Western Sydney University in 2011 and then moved to Hervey Bay to work as an accounting lecturer. There, his wife gave birth to two sons and started a beauty business, while he began working on his PhD in microfinance, inspired by Roy’s work and his own life experiences from Nepal. He was awarded his PhD in 2019.

Today, Ratna lives in Sippy Downs on the Sunshine Coast and is known as an accomplished academic and passionate educator among his colleagues and students. He credits Roy, who passed away in 2019, as the man who changed his life for the better, and his wife Yashoda for always being there to support him during troubling times. He also credits his former and current students, his Hervey Bay neighbours, colleagues, and Rotarian friends as the people who made him who he is today.

“Education changed my life. I want to change others through education as well…without Rotary and support from my wife, my life would not be what it is today,” he says. “I sometimes feel like the happiest man in the world. If I were to die today, I would have no regrets.”