EARLY MEMORIES: Culture shocks in Oz (1)

Growing up in a nation-in-the-making had inured me to a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multicultural population. Mutually tolerant co-existence, with necessary co-operation and courtesy, was the widening norm.

When I boarded my small ship in Singapore, there were labourers available to load my heavy tin trunk. Disembarkation in Sydney, train travel to Melbourne, and a taxi to the YMCA there were effectively self-service. White Australia had been premised with the objective of creating a nation of white people who would not reject any kind of work, under the umbrella of a ‘fair-go’ ethos; but I had to pull my weight and drag my trunk everywhere myself. Self-sufficiency is indeed a virtue.

At the YMCA, no one spoke to me who did not have to. I realised much later, that I may have been the very first coloured person (in the Australian language of that period, a ‘black’) to use its facilities. My shower was in a communal bathroom, but no one mentioned that I should not drop the soap.

My university campus was set in a desert; the accommodation was in retired army huts. Our food was basic, challenged by huge bush flies which sought to decorate our meal with their offspring. The winter was so cold that I eventually ended up with 9 army blankets. Yet, one night, sleeping in the open, a number of us sighted the glorious Aurora Australis. Then, for a change, we experienced a sand storm for a few days. A high wall of light sand bashed its way into all occupied quarters. Apparently the red sand ends up on the slopes of volcanoes in North Island of New Zealand

At my dining table were 2 young Australian men of European descent with educated voices – an Italian and a Yugoslav. The son of English stock, also well-educated, would occasionally speak in the Australian vernacular, but with an exaggerated back-of-throat delivery. The fourth was a ‘dinky-di’ Aussie in his speech, proud of his working-class origins. All 4 were courteous, correcting my pronunciation as appropriate (eg. steak as not in teak), and introducing me to Australian colloquialisms.

The fifth member spoke from the front of his mouth, but as if had had a large pebble in each cheek. He had a weird accent, reflecting the social ambitions of his Irish antecedents. His demeanour suggested that he had been a boarder at school, and whose teachers had included catarrh-ridden Englishmen. I have met many Australians, in senior positions of course, who had copied the accents of such teachers.

During a casual conversation on colonialism, when I made my position clear – but quietly – this chap suddenly burst out with “That nigger Gandhi should be shot.” I suspected that he had been influenced by Churchill, who had previously described Gandhi as ‘that nigger,’ That outburst explained his earlier questions to me, such as, ”Do you sit at tables on chairs?” He was my first racist. That was a new experience for me. But one does not respond to ignorant yobbos.

In the normality of existence, a weirdo can enliven the scene, can it not?

 

Some facets of British colonialism

The son (a man of about my vintage) of a former colonial administrator in an African territory refuses to talk to me. Why? Because I had told him that my ancestors and I had objected most strenuously to British control; that we had not needed to be shown how to govern ourselves (as taught in British schools); and that we, with a proud heritage going back thousands of years, did not appreciate the pejorative view directed at us by white administrators and missionaries.

His surprising response to my comments – which had been honestly made because he had not been a colonial administrator – was “You are biased.” To that, I said, “Bloody oath! How would like a Chinese gun-boat arriving at the port of London, and treating your people the way we had been treated?” He actually looked offended. We parted.

I had not got around to telling him how a young engineer from Britain had insisted that his Asian technicians, many much older and experienced, address him as ‘Sir’ at all times.

Then there was the nurse from a fishing village in England, the head of the Eye Clinic in the hospital in Singapore, who refused to talk with my Anglo-Australian wife and me. Her husband, a sergeant in the RAAF, chatted with us each night; he had grown up in Jamaica, as the son of an English employee in a sugar plantation. Each couple rented a room, sharing the house with our Chinese landlady.

This nurse had to be the head of the Clinic, controlling a few better-qualified Asian staff trained in Britain (so said the husband). She was paid as much as an Asian GP (medico); the husband was paid twice as much. We will retire rich, said the husband to me.

What irked the RAAF sergeant was the class distinction within the armed forces, and between the forces and the administrators (the latter doing rather well, with lots of low-paid Asian help), while both groups kept away socially from the locals, the Asians. Yet, senior military officers and high-ranking colonial administrators were often seen travelling with wealthy Asians in the latter’s cars; there seemed to be no colour bar at that level.

Wealth and power do go together; a bond (weak it may be) stronger than that which bind human beings. Alas! The Buddha’s guidance remains veiled (like Christian charity?)

Dealing with prejudice

“When someone spits at you, ignore him and move on. But do not turn the other cheek!” That was my father’s advice. I probably needed that counsel. Why? Because I am a descendant of an extended family of strong men known to be fiery when necessary – a father and 3 maternal uncles. Anglo-Australians would describe us as men who ‘take no shit’ from anyone.

One does not have to say anything to anyone who feels free to be orally offensive. Those who utter an antipathetic thought may need to be discouraged by that calm look which says ’Enough!’. However, on the first occasion when I was shouted at in an arcade of expensive goods, I was initially surprised that a total stranger could be so noisily and stridently common (a word I learnt from my Italian mother-in-law). When a woman in the arcade kept shouting ‘Why don’t you go back where you came from, you black bastard,’ I just walked away.

Contrarily, when a comment was made to me about my integrity relatively late in life, my challenger heard from me, in the most crude language (learnt from working in a factory), all about himself and his ancestors. I had never done that before.

The best response to those who are clearly intent upon making an insulting comment is to ignore them – if possible. In any situation, an appropriate response cannot be predicated.

This adage, often quoted by my father, is apt: ‘The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on’! Let the ignorant yobbo be. I have also not found any Asian student of my day touched or affected by nasty remarks during the White Australia era. Having had extended contacts with European immigrants, I can also say that I have not heard of anyone complaining about feeling humiliated, hurt or offended. We are not wimps. How so?

We have pride in who we are, our ancestry, and our culture. These immigrants were mostly able-bodied men from all over Europe; and they were culturally and mentally strong, and impervious to words reflecting prejudice, and thereby ignorance. And there were lots and lots of labels (wogs, reffos, i-ties, etc.) to ignore.

In any event, words cannot hurt. They are merely sounds in the air. However, claiming to be hurt, offended and humiliated is fast becoming a national pastime. Where is the gain in that?

Then, when did the term ‘racial’ cover religion, politics, or culture?

Is the peer group more influential than the family?

I have read media reports of a claim by a researcher in the USA that children are influenced more by the peer group than by their family. I am sceptical. The media often choose to provide a shock-and-horror vista. Second, the research was in the USA, where there seems to be lesser parental control of children than in other Western nations; certainly more than in Asian nations.

Third, these reports did not clearly identify the age range of those studied. Four, we need to know more about the relational mechanisms which could lead pre-schoolers and primary school children to challenge their parents; children’s love and dependency are normally high before about age 13, when the conceptual capacity of a child’s brain becomes enhanced.

Is it surprising that it is normally in high school that children enquire of their parents and teachers about the rules and edicts which apply to them? Anticipating this development, my children, from age 12, were invited to ask me and their mother (we stood together on every platform) about the rationale underpinning any rule of interest to them. An interesting discussion, generally at meal times (we always ate together), would follow. What was at issue, often, was the responsibility of parents against any desire by children to be more independent.

Near the end of high school, when control was somewhat loosened, we became aware of a determined effort by some students to have others accept their strictures (self-made, self-defined) about this or that aspect of conduct, with rights being asserted freely, while conformity within the group was insisted upon! In an allegedly classless society, what came through was an attempted imposition of certain socio-cultural values. The group’s pressure was obvious. What was the motivation? One size fits all; or pulling down tall poppies?

My response was to offer freedom. If your friends are more important in your life than your parents, please feel free to join them in their homes; but do keep in touch. Remember – our parental responsibility expires when you become an adult at 18. Ha! That ended the crap that we oldies did not ‘understand’. It also brought a better balance between relative responsibilities; and an awareness that one must pay adequate regard to the uncertainties of the future.

With the on-going deterioration of society through the breakdown of family, resulting in the proliferation of single-parent families, and some ‘blended’ families (whose durability seems challengeable), one can expect tribo-cultural values to become attenuated, weakened. It may not be the peer group, but the laws of the jungle which will then prevail.

Predicting adult personality from childhood behaviour

I read recently that the observed behaviour of a 4-year old can predicate the personality of the adult that the child will grow into. Even if this conclusion was drawn from a properly conducted survey covering a particular population at a point of time, could it apply to another population at the same point of time? Or, at a different point of time?

Are there not cultural differences, including parental behaviour, school policies, community values, and eroding societal standards for behaviour to be taken into account?

As well, what if (repeat, what if) the child’s behaviour seemed to reflect some past-life trauma, perhaps in the manner and circumstances of death? Having brought up children successfully, through firm rules and loving guidance, supplemented by on-going dialogues, and backed up by my studies on child development, with some reading on past-life memories displayed by children; and having contributed substantially to the development of a number of grandchildren, could I not offer some insight onto the behaviour of young children?

I once observed, over a period of a few days, a 6-month old baby who had no reason to be unhappy, and who did not always display the normal discomfort of indigestion, continually shout at the parent holding, and attempting to comfort, him. At 3 years, he remained un-cooperative and truculent and, in one instance, he whinged for about 45 minutes for no reason that I could perceive. I felt that this poor child could not help himself. By age 7, he was a normal child. Had he been driven by a subconscious painful past-life memory, considering that he had the most loving parents one could ask for?

Normally, tribal cultural values, applied through rigid family control, will ensure that not only behaviour, but also attitudes, conform to family and community standards. In the ethos of Asian communalism, this is important. Against this is the ethos of individualism of Western nations, manifest in less-controlled and guided children. However, individual rights can also be conferred by some primary school teachers, sometimes countering family values. I write from personal experience.

Is it significant that, when Australia-born offspring of tightly-knit immigrant Middle Eastern families break away (through peer-group and other influences) from parental values, some of these chose to be jihadists or become anti-social?

I’ll bet that they did not display such tendencies in childhood, especially at about age 4!

Cosmic justice

Justice on Earth for humans is relatively rare. People suffer injustice, without remedy, in all manner of forms, of varying intensities, all over the world.

I became deeply aware of injustice as a boy growing up in colonial times. Even today, some third-generation descendants of poor immigrants behave as if they were born to ‘lord it’ (a term I learned from Nehru) over the ‘lower orders’ (a term borrowed from the class-ridden English) in developing nations. ‘New money’ may not come with ‘manners.’

Having successfully ignored attitudes and utterances reflecting prejudice in my early years in Australia, near the end of my career, I experienced on-going discrimination; but there was little I could do to receive justice. Once, however, I was able to discourage a senior official by pointing to the sky (I do not know why I did that), saying ‘One day you will be judged.’

Recently, a neighbour cut down 3 of my trees, and fenced the land they had occupied. A policeman said that it was not a crime. A lawyer said that I could ‘take him to court.’ Privately, a court official warned about the financial cost of any recompense I might receive. The Mayor said that this is a common problem. My local member of parliament ignored my plaint. So much for my legal rights! Justice?

For a while, I enjoyed this thought: as a (future) resident of the Recycling Station, I would have my 3 (conifer) trees chase my neighbour down the street during repeated dreams by him. But my Buddhist friend dissuaded me from what should have been enjoyable.

I realise that it is not my prerogative to seek to impose justice or to judge someone’s behaviour. Since I do believe in cosmic justice, I will leave it to the Cosmos to offer appropriate lessons.

My belief is strengthened by the current plight of some of those small nations which caused hideous damage to so many people all over the world in the colonial era. Sadly, while the nations now suffer, it is the current populations which pay the price; that is not quite fair.

We do need cosmic justice – for individuals. Perhaps it operates through the reincarnation process.

Five surgeon jokes

Five surgeons are discussing who the best patients are to operate on. The first surgeon said, “I like to see accountants on my operating table, because when you open them up, everything inside them are numbered.”

The second responded, “You should try electricians! Everything inside them are color coded.”

The third surgeon said, “I really think librarians are the best; everything inside them are in alphabetical order.”

The fourth surgeon chimed in, “You know, I like construction workers…they always understand when you have a few parts left over in the end, and when the job takes longer than you said it would.”

But the fifth surgeon shut them all up with this observation, “You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no spine and the head and butt are interchangeable.”

 

No black ‘tall poppies’ allowed

Traditionally, (at least, in the 1950s and thereabouts) Australians (about 85% were deemed to be of the working class) tended to cut down ‘tall poppies.’ So I was told. Why should this have been so? Here are possible explanations.

Australia was initially populated by the ‘lower orders’ of Britain. When North America was no longer available for taking the output of Britain’s program of cultural cleansing, Australia was the next best alternative depository. Then there evolved a policy that Australia would be ‘a white man’s paradise,’ in which no man would ‘reject any kind of work’ (so I read). The White Australia policy necessarily followed. The associated ethos of a ‘fair-go’ approach – equal opportunity, at least for white men – was in evidence when I entered the country in the late 1940s. Employees claimed equal status with their bosses.

I noted, with approbation, the stand-tall stance of the Australian worker. This was confirmed when I was a tram conductor, and worked in factories, for short periods. He would make an excellent role model in those rich Asian nations exploiting the lower orders. Strangely, as I was told by a veteran of the trenches of World War 1, it was the immigrant British communist union leaders who had achieved the rights of the Australian workers.

In the resulting relatively classless society which offers social mobility, any tall poppies may tend to keep a low profile. If anyone is attacked publicly, it would most likely be by the fog-horn using media which would be responsible. Its notables are paid richly to (apparently) stir up the lower ranks of the hoi polloi. I am not sure whether anyone else cares.

But, let a coloured (sorry, ‘black’) person become a notable, he will be torn down by many. A socially-integrated and exceptionally-gifted Aboriginal football player, and a multi-skilled Australian Muslim (broadcaster, academic, writer and musician) have drawn the ire of obviously supremacist whites.

What I hear is this. ‘Why should a ‘black,’ especially a Muslim, dare to be prominent in our society?’ ‘Be like us, but not above us!’ There may be other learned explanations (eg. the lack of ethnic diversity in the media; or an increasing tendency for some ‘commoners’ to be ‘outraged’ all the time); but these are not convincing.

Colour or religious prejudice, laid upon ignorance, provide a persuasive explanation for cutting down black ‘tall poppies.’  An additional explanation may be this: a shallow morality!

Becoming colour blind

“No dogs and Chinamen” said the sign outside the prestigious Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of British Malaya. Today, a multicultural and integrated Malaysian people (including the powerful Malay Muslims ruling the nation) utilise the Club.

For me, a visiting ex-Malayan Australian, it was the sight of a few dark-brown men wearing sandals and Malaysian shirts which impressed. They were (as I was told) local lawyers, indicating the extent to which the caste and class distinctions of the past had become irrelevant. In this context, I recall, with disgust, a Christian Ceylonese doctor who had his teenage Hindu servant sit on the floor in the back of his car.

Rubber-tapper Indian families used to send a teenager to work as a servant for families like us. I assumed that this practice was to enable these youngsters to look forward to a better life. I remember Francis (with fondness) who slept in the servant room. Whenever he minded my sister and I in our early childhood, he would spin a long tale, which entranced us, while often frightening us. He was a born story-teller. He should have progressed to a better life than that of his parents, who were indentured labourers (like the labourers sent by the British to Fiji to work on the sugarcane plantations).

“No dogs and Indians allowed” said the sign outside the Simla Club in India during the days of British rule. Yet, officials of the East India Company have been described as not as sensitive to skin colour as were the British Government officials who replaced them. The former were presumably responsible for the large Anglo-Indian population, but also for their privileged position above that of the Indians.

I got to know quite a few Anglo-Indians in Australia. They were not any different from my Eurasian friends in Malaya. In Australia we were all equal; because of our skin colour, we were (guess what?) ‘black.’ I did wonder whether Christian Indians and Euro-Asians in Australia had expected to be accepted as socially equal to the Anglo-Australian peoples.

While I remain averse to eating beetroot because of its colour, I do prefer Australians to become colour-blind. This does not mean officialdom claiming that we are more diverse ethnically than any other nation (not credible); that about 150 non-Aboriginal languages are spoken in the nation (only 15% of the people speak a foreign language at home); and selecting black or brown Christian refugees as humanitarian entrants – not while our rulers are ‘white bread’ in colour and texture (and stick together)!

Just as the oldest generation of the Australian people had to die before the virulent prejudice and discrimination faced by Asians in the immediate post-war years began to fade (the ignorant yobbo excepted), perhaps another generation or two of the Anglo-Celts here have to wander off into the Afterlife before their descendants become as colour-blind as are the peer groups of my children and grandchildren.

Mixed skin colours are the norm in most part of the world. Is it not time for nations like Australia to join the Family of Man? Refer my book ‘Hidden Footprints of Unity’ (ebook available at amazon kindle at $US 2.99 and $A3.99).

 

Settlement, by massacre

When British invaders (how else could they be described?) settled onto hitherto Aboriginal land, the ‘squatters’ killed or drove away the indigene. Purely as an aside, I recall reading that many squatters became so powerful socially that their descendants tended to speak ‘as if they had begotten themselves.’ I have also read that there had been a move to establish an Australian House of Lords. Also mooted was a proposal to import cheap labour from China and Japan.

The following extracts are from an article in a recent issue of ‘The Australian Weekend Magazine’ by Cal Flyn.

“The massacre at Warrigal Creek was one of the bloodiest episodes on the very bloody Australian frontier. In all, somewhere between 80 and 200 Gunai people were slaughtered that day in July 1843, wiping out in a single assault a substantial proportion of the southern Bratowooloong clan. The leader of the Highland Brigade, Angus McMillan … was the ‘Butcher of Gippsland.’… …

The author quotes a news report dated 2005 thus:  “McMillan … and his band of Scottish settlers … are accused of carrying out a genocidal campaign against the  Aborigines for a decade. … … “

Flyn goes on to quote Ricky Mullett, a cultural officer from the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation in Bairnsdale … ‘You know the stories. You know that the official death toll is only a fraction of the total? It was inhuman, what they did to my people. Killed them. Massacred them. Tortured them. Raped them. Murdered them. Your relative … he decimated my people. And he got away with it.’

More from Ricky Mullett: ‘McMillan’s men chased them all the way from Bushby Park, trapped them on that bluff, and shot them down into the water. Crowds of them. … ‘  Flyn continues: “Here, the fleeing Gunai were herded together like cattle and forced from the hilltop, he said. Men, women and children. Think of the hysteria, the crush, the desperation, as feet scrabbled for purchase and hands grasped for handholds. Men stood on the opposite bank of the river below, shooting any survivors. The bodies all washed to sea.”

Ricky Mullett of the Gunai people concludes his story to Cal Flyn (a great-great-great niece of Angus McMillan): ‘We won’t forget, but we don’t bear a grudge.’ And ‘You won’t understand. You’ll never understand.’

Refer ‘Thicker than Water’ by Cal Flynn.