The
Ties That Bind
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The world
has arrived in Townsville in other ways: American talk shows,
Irish theme pubs, Internet cafes. "You say, Œstone the bloody
crows' and people have no idea what you're talking about,"
sighs Ken Amos, who runs a sandwich bar in town. "Hardly anyone
wears a wide-brimmed hat anymore." But this is still very
much an Australian place: there are cattle dogs and dusty
utes, old pubs with long verandahs and names like the Commonwealth
and the Republic, a local daily newspaper that still runs
high-school graduation photos. To the visitor, Townsville
has a laid-back flavor that Australians like to think of as
uniquely theirs; both men and women greet one another as Œmate'
and conversation comes easily.
That is
the veneer. But the true strength of the social fabric is
more complex. At Federation, the notion of civic inclusiveness‹perhaps
what federation campaigner Henry Parkes exalted as the "crimson
thread of kinship that runs through us all"‹was deliberately
narrow, affording little room to women, Aboriginal people
or recent migrants. Yet migrants and migrant labor have helped
propel the region's growth since the late 1880s. The Leong
family made their way from Guangzhou province in southern
China to Australia early last century; first to Sydney and
eventually to Townsville, where they ran a general store.
Byron Leong, a great-great-nephew of his family's first migrant,
is a 25-year-old Townsville lawyer. His parents still speak
Chinese at home but, he says, "younger people have tended
to assimilate, to play football. They don't feel they need
an ethnic group."
Like many
people, Leong was upset by the support shown for maverick
politician Pauline Hanson's anti-immigration policies, "but
I didn't feel threatened because I've grown up here, my friends
are here and they, and the people I work with, give me respect."
Iranian-born Farvardin Daliri, who came to Australia as a
refugee in 1984 and now manages the local Migrant Resource
Centre, says Townsville shouldn't be seen as redneck. "I wouldn't
say we don't have racism‹because we do have problems‹but that
shouldn't be generalized," he says, pointing to the success
of the town's annual Multicultural Festival, which last year
drew 30,000 people.
Indigenous
Australians barely featured in Federation debates‹and did
not legally become citizens until 1967. Today, few issues
have more national prominence. And though the capital cities
drive the debate on reconciliation, it is in regional communities
like Townsville, with relatively large Aboriginal populations,
that race relations are played out every day. Some 4.3% of
the city's people are indigenous‹more than twice the national
figure. Prejudice against them "is not in your face," says
Tony McDermott, director of Centacare Catholic Family Services,
"but it's there." Says Florence Onus, an Aboriginal academic
at Townsville's James Cook University: "There are two separate
communities that only meet on the fringes."
A low point
has been the town's difficulties with Aboriginal people drinking
in local parks. A council attempt several years ago to use
tough by-laws and security guards with dogs to move out the
drinkers outraged indigenous people. A diversionary center
now tries‹with limited success‹to reduce the problem. "We're
back on the road," says Aboriginal elder Alec Illin. "It's
taken a hell of a long time, though, and [the controversy]
should never have happened."
But there
are hopeful signs. "Wonderful things have come out of Townsville,"
says Margaret Reynolds, a former Labor Senator from Queensland.
Last August it held Australia's first reconciliation march
outside a capital city, attended by about 2,000 people. The
Catholic Church handed over a church in the suburb of Garbutt
to its indigenous congregation in 1998, and the pioneering
black community school where land-rights activist Eddie Mabo
was director still exists. Townsville City Council employed
one of the nation's first cultural liaison officers in 1981.
And an indigenous advisory group, set up with council help
three years ago, has won wide praise. At first only a dozen
local elders were involved; now around 106 are consulted by
council, local government and business. Elders like Josephine
Sailor say the shift‹from tokenistic involvement to meaningful
negotiations‹has been profound: "Thirty years ago we couldn't
even have got an audience with the local council." The need
now, says elder Chrissie Prior, is to harness that goodwill:
"There's a generosity out in the community that supports the
rights of Aboriginal people in principle, but people don't
know how to sustain it. How do they make it happen in everyday
life?"
Few look
to politicians to lead the way. Australia has always been
wary of its elected leaders‹all the more so in modern Townsville,
where investigations into electoral fraud saw former local
Labor candidate Karen Ehrman jailed last year. "You can't
rely on governments," says Lucia Gosling, a businesswoman
with two children. "We want to set ourselves up so the kids
don't have to rely on anyone." Even those who most need the
government's help doubt its sincerity. At 59, Col Berzinski
has been searching for a job for three years. A former truck
driver with poor hearing and reading skills, he lives on $A300
a fortnight in welfare and worries he will never work again.
But he's not counting on politicians to help him out: "None
of them are in it for you. I don't even know why we have to
vote."
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January 8, 2001
| No. 1
SOUTH PACIFIC
COVER:
A Town for the Times
As Australia celebrates its centenary, Time visits Townsville, in Queensland,
to see how the nation has-and hasn't-changed.
Great Barrier
Reef: Profiting from a natural wonder
Coral Philosophy:
The fight to preserve the environment
Aiming North:
Townsville's strategic importance grows
T
H E A R T S
ART:
Australia reviews its first century with a colorful Big Top of an exhibition
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
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