The memorial would also commemorate those who died in the brutal prison – or “re-education” – camps set up after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

The Illawarra’s Vietnamese community has raised the money to build it and has been pushing for years to win permission from Wollongong City Council for a place to build it.

Now a site has been decided upon, in MacCabe Park not far from the Cenotaph, and a development application is in for the modest memorial, which stands 2.5m at its highest point.

Vietnamese Community in Wollongong president Teresa Tran said the memorial would be able to explain the reasons for the Australians going to war in Vietnam, as well as pay tribute to their Vietnamese comrades who died in the war.

“During the war they fought side by side, so this would be a place we can remember them, they lie together,” Ms Tran said.

“In Vietnamese culture, if we don’t have a place for them to rest, and burn incense, their spirit is not free.

“We have a history to tell about why Australians went there – and if people had a memorial you could see that history.”

The memorial would also mark the deaths in prison camps of thousands, who were told they could stay to help rebuild the country. Ms Tran’s father, and father in law, were in the defeated army and both spent many years locked up in the camps.

The Illawarra Vietnam Veterans Association (VVA) is fully behind the push for the memorial, which was knocked back by council when originally proposed for a site on Flagstaff Hill adjacent to the Australian Vietnam memorial.

VVA President Ian Birch said: “the tenacity of the Vietnamese community is incredible in terms of working towards an end,” he said.

“We have a memorial to pay our respects to the 521 Aussies who didn’t come home. The Vietnamese want to do the same.”