21. Being Multicultural
Australia had many cultures
before 1788, but modern Multicultural Australia began in 1788, when people came
here from all over the world as officials, convicts, servants or crew members
on ships, and later as migrants or refugees. They were outnumbered by English
speakers and just adopted the customs of the majority British, giving up their
own cultures, knowledge, language and insights. Then in the end, Australians
started to realise what they were losing.
Officially, there was
no White Australia Policy. Still, in the first half of the twentieth century,
some non-white people were given a dictation test in a European language they
were unlikely to know. If they failed the test, as they usually did, they were
not allowed to stay in Australia. This approach was also used for ‘political
undesirables’ like the communist journalist Egon Kisch. Kisch came to Australia
in 1934 to warn about the threat from Hitler’s Germany. He was fluent in
several European languages, and so he was tested in Scottish Gaelic. When he
failed the dictation test, he was ordered to leave Australia. Kisch challenged
the order in the High Court and won, so he was allowed to stay and spread his
message. His challenge made some Australians, especially his left-wing
supporters, even more aware of how unfair the test was. Because there was no
officially named ‘White Australia Policy’, no official action was required to
remove it and so, over time, the White Australia Policy was allowed to fade
away.
Nabbing Nancy
In 1965, a little girl called Nancy Prasad was to be deported from
Australia, mainly because she was an Indian Fijian. An Aboriginal student
activist Charles Perkins staged a ‘kidnap’ of Nancy at the airport to draw
attention to the unfairness of Australia’s immigration policies. To the
demonstrators’ disappointment, the government made sure Nancy left the next
day. She was finally allowed to settle in Australia in the 1970s when she was a
teenager.
The Labor Party was usually the party that supported
equality but, because the unions feared ‘opening the floodgates’ to foreign
labourers, who might work for lower wages, the party was afraid to act.
Instead, former cycling champion Hubert Opperman, as Liberal Minister for
Immigration between 1963 and 1965, oversaw the end of the old policy.
In 1895, the colonial premiers had met to discuss
restricting the entry of all non-white people in the event of federation of the
colonies. In the end, they agreed instead to ban ‘undesirable persons’. There
were probably some who would have suggested banning the Irish, or even the
Scots.
A pipe band after an Anzac Day march in Melbourne. Nobody
would now question the right of these ‘foreigners’ to lead the march.
One thing was certain: with three of the first six governors
(Hunter, Macquarie and Brisbane) being Scots, the Scots would be accepted as
part of the ruling group. Long before other ethnic groups established their
cultures as worthy of celebration, the Scots were being Scottish in public. They
celebrated St Andrew’s Day, marked Hogmanay (New Year’s Day) and toasted Burns’
Night (January 25); they wore the kilt, played their pipes and showed the way
for other cultures, later, to preserve their own cultures, with Highland Games.
Sadly, much of what has been saved can be listed under three headings: “weird
music” (such as bagpipes); “spicy tucker” (think haggis); and “peculiar clobber”
(like kilt and sporran). These three headings are used to stereotype any group,
but as any member of any minority culture knows, a culture is far more than the
sum of those items—but that trio is at least a start. Having a Scots name, I
see stereotyping, but for us, it is harmless: others are less lucky. The Scots,
according to Anthony Trollope, were well represented in the squattocracy:
Most of [the squatters] have, I think, originally come out of
Scotland. When you hear an absent acquaintance spoken of as ‘Mac’, you will not
at all know who is meant, but you may safely conclude that it is some
prosperous individual. Some were butchers, drovers, or shepherds themselves but
a few years since. But they now form an established aristocracy, with very
conservative feelings, and are quickly becoming as firm a country party as that
which is formed by our squirearchy at home.
—Anthony Trollope, Australia and New
Zealand, 442.
Customs officers would examine the papers and backgrounds of
people applying to enter Australia. If the applicants seemed to be ‘the wrong
sorts’, the dictation test would be used to ensure that they failed. Entry was
never refused on racial grounds because, officially, all entrants were given
the same test. In 1901, at the time of Federation, there were two major groups
in Australian politics—the Protectionists and the Free-Traders. The Australian
Labor Party (ALP) was growing, and Protectionist Edmund Barton only became
Prime Minister in 1901 with the support of the ALP.
The ALP had to act in the interests of its greatest
supporters, especially the Australian Workers Union (AWU). This union had grown
out of a number of shearers’ unions in the individual colonies. The AWU feared
the effect of cheap foreign labour on the working conditions of its members. The
original plan was to ban all foreign nationals, but Britain complained that
this would offend British subjects in India and people from Japan—then
Britain’s ally—so the dictation test was introduced instead. After World War I,
with Japan taking over old German colonies in the Pacific, Japan was later seen
as a threat, and World War II seemed to justify that view.
In 1910, ‘White Australia’ supporters even had their own
music to march to.
During World War II, many refugees reached Australia,
including 4400 ‘Asiatics’. In December 1947, Arthur Calwell, the Minister for
Immigration, spoke of plans to send most of these refugees back to their home
countries, even though some had married Australians. He then made insensitive
comments that upset many people. That may have contributed to the ultimate
failure of the White Australia Policy, although there were other influences.
The Colombo Plan was designed to help restore Asian
economies affected by Japanese occupation and the deprivations of World War II.
It began in 1950 and originally involved sending Australian experts in various
fields to Asia. By 1952, 150 Asian students were studying as undergraduates or
for higher degrees in Australian universities, and the number grew rapidly.
Later, there was a similar plan for people from African
countries that were members of the British Commonwealth—the Special
Commonwealth Assistance for Africa Plan, and a Commonwealth Scholarship
Fellowship program.
(Your author spent the year 1965 greeting and
farewelling the scholars and fellows, and later counted a number of them as
friends, so this is from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.)
These plans worked on two levels. The students were selected
carefully and, once in Australia, they were supported and taught about local
customs and manners. In fact, they were generally given far better support than
most post-war migrants.
In the longer term, many of these talented students
returned home and then rose to prominence in their own countries. By then, they
had a good understanding of Australia, and often had fond memories of the time
they had spent here. They were welcomed to Australia as guests and were never
regarded as foreign job-stealers. Some of the old fears about foreigners were
now dying away.
The dictation test remained until 1958 and after 1963,
under Hubert Opperman, the Immigration Department began easing the restrictions
on people of ‘mixed race’, making entry easier for foreigners with
qualifications.
Sadly, in recent times, we have begun to hear uneducated
people with a Trumpist mindset murmuring about ‘White Australia’, once again,
babbling about the need for a monoculture. I have a policy of never
acknowledging scum by name.
Luckily, the scum are very much a minority in Parliament
(even if they are surging in some polls, as I write this), because Australia still
has only a weak hold on its status as a world citizen.
At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, many people in South
Vietnam feared living under a communist government. Some of them had worked for
the allies, others had fought in South Vietnam’s army against the communists,
and some just did not agree with communism.
An estimated 60,000 South Vietnamese were executed at
the end of the Vietnam War. Another million were sent to ‘re-education’ camps,
where around 160,000 died. About 130,000 Vietnamese who were close allies of
the USA were helped to leave the country and resettle, mostly in the USA. The
Vietnam War was fought to contain international communism and, before the war
was lost, the domino theory predicted that international communism would roll
south, but this did not happen. In 1976, the Vietnamese communist party was
purged when one faction, the pro-China wing, lost power, while the pro-Russia
group took full control. This alarmed China, because there were many people of
Chinese origin in Vietnam.
These people of Chinese origin, known as the Hoa, felt
threatened and, in both Vietnam and China, ethnicity tended to count even more
than politics. There were other problems in nearby countries. In Cambodia, the
Khmer Rouge was trying to persuade the Chinese to remain neutral when war broke
out between Cambodia and Vietnam.
The Vietnamese pressure on the Hoa people increased
during 1977 and 1978, and many fled to China, where they were welcomed, but
then sent to work as peasants on state-run farms. Most of the Vietnamese Hoa
were wealthy traders and merchants and so, rather than work on a farm, many of
them travelled by boat to other places like Hong Kong, the Philippines,
Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Later, some of them sailed even
further.
On 25 December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and forced
the Khmer Rouge out. In February 1979, the Chinese army invaded Vietnam, but
achieved little. The Vietnamese occupied Cambodia for almost ten years. Most of
these incidents were part of a larger fight for supremacy between Chinese and
Russian communists.
It seemed that the ideal of international communism had
been lost. There was still a lot of suffering in the name of communism. Many Vietnamese
‘boat people’ who had reached other Asian nations wanted to settle somewhere
else, and so they looked to their former allies. In the end, the USA agreed to
take 823,000 Vietnamese refugees, Australia and Canada each agreed to take 137,000,
France offered to take 96,000, and Britain and Germany each agreed to accept
19,000. Many more refugees who left Vietnam by boat either drowned or were
killed by pirates. One of the first Vietnamese ‘boat people’ was Hieu Van Le,
who reached Australia in 1977. In September 2014, he became the first Asian
migrant to be sworn in as the Governor of South Australia. He stepped down in
2021, and on his last day in office, he appealed for kindness to refugees
coming in from Afghanistan.
Unlike today’s ‘boat people’, who usually come by boat
from refugee camps in Indonesia, most of the first wave of refugees who came to
Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s arrived by plane on the last leg of
their journey. Many of the patterns and assumptions for later waves of refugees
were established then, but there were many other refugees with different needs.
Vietnamese ‘boat people’ reaching Darwin in November 1977.
The United Nations High Commission on Refugees distinguishes
between economic migrants, who leave their country to find a better life elsewhere, and refugees, who leave their homes because
their lives are in danger or they are being persecuted because of their
religious, cultural or political beliefs.
Many refugees started coming to Australia from Lebanon
in the Middle East after a civil war broke out there in 1975, but the first
Lebanese migrants had actually reached Australia in the late 1800s. The early
arrivals were mainly Christian and well-off, but many of the later arrivals
were poor Muslims. Australia had no qualms about taking them in, even though
their culture, language, religion and ethnicity were different. Still, some
people did question their ability to fit in.
Today, Australia
is being asked to accept refugees from many parts of the world—Tamils from Sri
Lanka, minority groups from Burma, Syrians, Farsi-speaking Hazara people from
Afghanistan, as well as people from Somalia, Ethiopia and other African
countries. Under the law, anybody can ask for asylum as a refugee in
Australia, but that is not the same as being granted asylum. In 2009–12, only
around 44 per cent of requests for onshore protection visas were approved.
Australia has shown compassion for the victims of many
conflicts—too many people, according to the critics, but far too few, according
to others.
Afghan refugees with a treasured carpet that they brought
from Kabul, 2005; an African food stall, Newcastle, 2010.
When people arrive in a new country, they often seek out
links to their home country: food, clothing, news, their own language and
religion, plus the support of friends and family. Immigration often begins with
a handful of people migrating and then encouraging others to follow them, so
they have familiar company in their new country. As a migrant community grows,
others from the same area or culture may follow from the home country. This is
called chain migration, and it happened in Australia.
Until the gold rushes, groups of people from the same
country did not usually congregate in one place in Australia. On the large
goldfields, Germans, Scots, the Irish, even American diggers often worked with
their own people. Before the gold rushes, convicts went where they were sent,
and free workers went where there was work. Many Scots became squatters in
Victoria and New England, but there were few other ‘ethnic clumpings’ in the
1800s.
Other concentrations of national groups were less
obvious. The Cornish tin miners at Moonta in South Australia went there to mine
copper, and many Cornish people, whose descendants live around Daylesford in
Victoria even today, settled there because they were ‘hard rock’ miners.
Late in the nineteenth century, some of them moved to
Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie to mine reef gold. German immigrants were recruited
to work in South Australia and in Queensland, where German place and personal
names can still be found.
Other trades sometimes brought national groups to a single
place. After World War I, parts of the old Austro- Hungarian and Ottoman Turk
Empires were formed into Yugoslavia, but many people from that area, including
Croatians and Serbians, began leaving in the mid-1920s.
Some of them reached Fremantle and settled there as
fishermen, while others moved to the eastern goldfields of Western Australia,
where they mainly worked at cutting the timber that fuelled the steam engines.
Migrants from the Greek islands understood fishing, and so they often settled
in fishing ports.
Migrants leaving their ship in 1964. Many of them had
family or friends waiting on the dock.
Chinese gold diggers usually came to Australia in close-knit
groups from a single village or group of villages. In some cases, the Chinese
gold diggers were allowed to work only in certain diggings, but even off the
diggings they tended to stay together, living near their temples. The term
‘Chinatown’ was used in California in the 1850s, and it probably came to
Australia from there. Ballarat had the first Australian Chinatown, although
Bendigo’s was established soon after.
A Chinese-staffed furniture factory.
Woodworking tools are much the same, all over the world, so
many Chinese left the gold-fields behind and began to make furniture. The
pieces were well-made, so the workers were seen as a threat, and in the late
19th century, laws required Chinese-made and “part-Chinese-made” furniture to
carry a stamp stating this.
(Some manufacturers went further, adding stamps stating
that no Chinese labour had been used, and the author regrets not having kept
the low-boy, a kind of closet, that he used in the 1940s and into the 1960s,
which featured a decal offering this certification of racial purity, but it
went to the tip, which was probably the most appropriate way to deal with it.)
In the late nineteenth century, Cairns, Rockhampton and
other Queensland towns had Chinatowns, and so did Sydney. The original Sydney
Chinatown was in The Rocks area, until bubonic plague (which came in with
diseased rats on ships) broke out in that area in 1900. Many buildings were
demolished, and Chinatown moved to an area near the Haymarket, where it is
today.
In other areas, Chinese workers “fitted in”, becoming
market gardeners who provided vegetables to miners, and so managed to avoid
being seen as competitors. In 1874, much to the annoyance of carters at
Cooktown, Chinese storekeepers brought in 400 ‘coolies’ to carry stock across
to the Palmer River gold-fields.
Being competitors always put them at risk. The Chinese
carriers walked with baskets on bamboo poles, and because they feared the
attacks of Aboriginal warriors, they always travelled in numbers and in single
file.
Many a time they would draw down anathema of carriers by
parading on the off-side of the bullocks, which were being yoked up, dangling
their tins in an offensive manner to the animals, which often resulted in the
drivers hunting them away with their bullock whips.
—W. H. Corfield, Reminiscences of
Queensland 1862-1869 (1921), ch. 6.
John Alloo’s Chinese Restaurant, Main Road, Ballarat, 1853.
His real name was Chin Thum Lock.
The first Chinese
Australian.
This was Mak Sai-Ying, who arrived on Laurel
in February 1818, presumably having boarded the ship at Canton. He is sometimes
listed under the name Matchiping, and he worked as a carpenter. By 1829, was
the licensee of the Lion Hotel (or Golden Lion Inn) in Parramatta, under the
name John Shying, and he sold off a number of houses in the Parramatta area in
1830.
In ‘pure’ chain migration, one or two men reach a new land,
find work, learn enough of the local language to survive, and then send for
more people from their family or their village. The new arrivals settle close
to the founders but, within a generation, the well-off often move out. Sydney’s
Leichhardt was a centre of Italian culture but, just 20 years after the first
Italians settled there, some of them were moving to suburbs like Five Dock, or
further afield.
A church, temple, synagogue or mosque can be a powerful
anchor to hold people in an area. For example, before the number of Vietnamese
in Cabramatta in Sydney grew, the area was dotted with Serbian Orthodox
churches. Melbourne was once called the city with the second-highest number of
Greeks anywhere in the world. This would not be so now, partly because fewer
Greeks have migrated to Australia recently, but mainly because later
generations moved around and married outside their culture. This often leads to
the loss of old traditions, and it is important that we cling to as much of the
old ways as we can.
Early white settlers in Australia usually married
partners from their own country and, until the 1950s, Australians usually
married people of the same religion. Many people now marry partners from
different races and with different religious affiliations. The challenge for
future Australians is to appreciate and conserve as much of our rich
multicultural heritage as we can.
In many ways, Australia has always been multicultural. In
colonial times, the Scots and the Irish sometimes seemed like alien cultures to
the English, but there were also Africans like the outlaw ‘Black Caesar’, as
well as Chinese, Indian and people from other races who had come to Australia
in small numbers. Even earlier, Maori sailors from New Zealand could also be
seen on Sydney streets.
Once the gold rushes started, the number of different
nationalities increased greatly, but these people, if they stayed in Australia,
were expected to assimilate—to give up their ‘foreign ways’, to learn to speak
English, and to conform to British standards.
Just about the only culture, apart from the English,
that thrived was that of the Scottish community, although the Irish also
managed to hang onto many of their old ways. Today, the pipe bands that lead
the Anzac Day march and the celebration of St Patrick’s Day are part of
Australian tradition for many people.
Introducing ‘exotic’
food
Some of the twentieth-century waves of refugees introduced
unfamiliar religions to Australia, and they also brought new food traditions
with them from places like Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Indian and Lebanese
food was also introduced, and it represents a wide range of Mediterranean and
Islamic or Arabic traditions.
In a way, food was often a vehicle for the acceptance of
new cultures into Australian life. In rural Australia, some Greek migrants
opened cafes in which standard ‘Aussie fare’—such as meat pies, steak and eggs,
and ‘mixed grills’—were served. They also served souvlaki, dolmades and other
Greek delicacies. Before long, a few Anglo-Australians, some of whom had
widened their horizons through overseas travel, were trying this food, and these
foods slowly became an accepted part of Australian culinary tradition.
Chinese restaurants also opened up, offering
‘Australian’ meals and Australianised Chinese food. Such food introduced more
‘exotic’ foreign dishes such as sweet-and-sour pork, along the same lines as
Italian ham and pineapple pizza, and mild Indian curries.
The food was often far from authentic, but it allowed
Australians to taste and to start to appreciate what other cultures had to
offer. These dishes were a way in. Multicultural food helped many Australians
to appreciate that there is more than one way of looking at the world, and that
every culture is worthy of respect.
So advice, good friends: have I been sufficiently Bolshie?
* You really are an a-hole
