David Nyoul Vincent has just graduated from Melbourne University. As many Sudanese refugees in Australia, he has witnessed the worst that a young boy could see: people being killed by militants, women drowning while running away, his friends dying for lack of medicines.

He even had to fight against thirst and hunger for his own survival in the jungle.

But there’s a quality that is really striking about David.

His ability to leave it all behind, and his commitment to strive to become the best person that he can be.

Australia gave him the opportunity to make that choice.

"When I arrived in Australia everything was new. All the opportunites that I dind't have in the camp, just by landing in Australia, everything was there for me", David told SBS.

The Sudan war forced him to leave at the age of three. He trekked with his father for almost two months without food and little water to seek safety in a refugee camp in neighbouring Ethiopia.

After four years in the refugee camp, David was forced to flee again during the Ethiopian civil war, this time back into Sudan. Separated from his family, David lived in Kenya for 12 years, before getting the chance to resettle into Australia.

"When I first arrived in Australia, the first question that I asked myself was ‘What can I do from now?

"Can I let the past judge who I am? Can I let the past control my future and that’s when I decided the past is the past and I tried to lock it away," he said.

"I want to make up for all the time that I wasted, for the time that I've been in the camp, for the time that I've been suffering. At one stage I felt the power to turn around all the suffering to focus on my work, on my studies and I had that vision for my country that one day we'll have peace in my country."

David now calls Melbourne home and has just graduated with an Arts degree from Melbourne University. For the last three years he has worked with a migrant resource centre and as a volunteer with a charity.

His family is still back in Sudan and he dreams to go back one day to help his people.