'So many of us want to open the doors to our own country. But they are locked.'

Picture the scene.

There’s a mum trying to cross the very busy and dangerous road outside my house with her young children. She looks terrified and her children look so little and vulnerable.

She’s doing the best she can but she is so, so tired, she barely has the strength to hold onto them. I don’t know her – she’s not one of the mums from around here.

Her children were in great danger in her home and she has grabbed them and fled. She’s trying to get to me because she knows my family will take her in, give her children somewhere safe and warm to sleep, food to eat, and get them the medical care they need after what they’ve been through.

She’s right – I will. Her instinct in trying to make it to my house was right, because my family have so much we can share with her and her children. Even if she didn’t get to us, the people next door would take her in. So would most people in our street.

I’m so worried she won’t make it across that road though. I’m terrified those little children will die out there before they get to the safety of our home.

I’m standing at the gate waiting for her, urging her come, you’re almost here, you’ve almost made it. But someone is standing in my way. Someone is blocking me from opening my own front gate and welcoming this little family in to safety. Even if they make it across that dangerous road, I can’t let them in. I’ll have to watch them be sent off to hell on earth, indefinitely.

Because that road outside my house? It’s actually the ocean. The mum is a refugee, trying desperately to get her children to safety, away from the terror of war that raged around them in their home.

You can watch footage from the Melbourne Light the Dark vigil below. Post continues after video.

But the part about me, and my family, and my neighbours? That’s all true. There are so many of us who want to be able to open the door to OUR country, to share our safety and good fortune, with families like this, but we are being prevented by our own government. I am so very angry about this. And I beg the public figures of our country to make a loud and passionate demand on behalf of mums and dads and children who need our help. Australia desperately needs some moral leadership.

Our politicians aren’t going to provide it, so it’s up to everyone else with a voice – the entertainers, the writers, the singers, the journalists – to step in.

To open our arms and shout loudly: We want to help. We demand to help.

Do you think the Government should up the refugee quota to accommodate the Syrian crisis?