A “Melting Pot” of Many Cultures
By “Awake!” correspondent in Australia
HAVE you ever visited Australia? If not, possibly you have heard of the hot, arid deserts of the continent, as well as its extensive brushlands. Does this suggest that Australia is a land populated principally by rugged, frontier-type bushmen?
Granted, this continent does contain huge desert areas. Though Australia is about the same size as the continental United States, Australia’s population is less than 7 percent as great as that of the United States. Nevertheless, Australia can best be described as a nation of city dwellers. More than half of its 13,000,000 inhabitants live in cities.
And they are not primitive ‘frontier-type’ cities. On the contrary, in some you will see the skyscrapers, traffic jams and bustling pedestrians characteristic of New York, London or any other large city of the world. Tourists will find an abundance of hotels and motels to care for their lodging. There are restaurants to satisfy the taste buds of most nationalities.
An unusual fact about Australian society is its rapid growth in recent years. Since 1945, the population has increased by nearly six million. From where did they all come? The administrator of a western iron-mining town said of the town’s inhabitants: “Most are of non-Australian birth—like me, 17 years in this country but born German. We’re a melting pot and that’s good.” Postwar immigration is responsible for about 40 percent of the residents of this continent.
Why is Australia’s population so much a product of immigration? A brief look at some historical highlights will prove interesting.
Australia’s Early Migrants
The original inhabitants of Australia evidently came from Asia by way of the Indonesian Archipelago. Their descendants today are called “aborigines,” from the Latin phrase ab origine, meaning “from the beginning.” Aborigines have remained largely a nomadic people, building only temporary shelters and growing no crops.
But do not be fooled by the primitive way of life that many of these native Australians choose for themselves. This does not indicate lack of intelligence. As an administrator of an aboriginal settlement remarked, “They simply don’t think as we do.” Indicating the keen mentality of the aborigines, the Encyclopædia Britannica (1976 edition) notes that there are approximately 260 Australian aboriginal languages. “Every tribe speaks at least a distinct dialect, but bilingualism and multilingualism are common in many areas. . . . The Australian languages generally show considerable grammatical complexity.”
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries C.E., when few persons lived in Australia, explorers from Portugal, Spain, Holland and Britain discovered parts of the continent and charted its coast. However, they made no attempt at settling here. In 1770 Captain James Cook claimed the eastern parts of Australia for Britain.
Shortly thereafter immigration began, but in a highly unusual way. How so? During the early part of the eighteenth century Britain was in the habit of sending prisoners to her thirteen American colonies. Loss of these colonies in 1776 spurred Britain to seek a new land suitable for penal settlement. The first of such settlements was established in 1788 at Sydney, New South Wales, in southeastern Australia. Convicted criminals, transported from Britain to Australia, were its initial “migrants.” On completion of prison terms, many of these stayed on in Australia.
The Lure of Natural Resources
As for free persons, few settled in Australia in those early days. In fact, at that time free settlement was discouraged. But something happened to change all of that. What?
During the mid-1800’s gold was discovered in Australia. Overnight it became a lure for adventurous persons throughout the world. Germans, Hungarians, Scandinavians, Poles, Americans and Chinese flocked to the goldfields. This brought an abrupt halt to the transport of convicts.
Besides gold, Australia proved to contain stores of other valuable metals, including nickel, copper, aluminum, zinc and iron. An employee of an iron mine in western Australia recently declared: “This particular ore body is one of the richest in the world. It’s four miles long, 4,000 feet wide, and 500 deep. And when it’s used up, there are others.” Indeed, recent investigations have turned up vast new stores of valuable metals in Australia.
But in spite of its natural resources, by the close of World War II Australia’s population had grown to only 7,491,000, which amounts to about two and a half persons per square mile (or, one per square kilometer). There were serious shortages of housing, schools and hospitals. Coal production and steel production were down; so were transport services. Power blackouts spanning entire cities were common. There was a vital need for manpower. How could it be filled?
The Makings of a “Melting Pot”
In 1945 governmental steps were taken toward planned immigration. This was a favorable time for such an undertaking, since many persons in war-ravaged Europe were eager to exchange their lot for prospects of a new life in Australia.
The first post-World War II trickle of migrants soon became a flood. It is estimated that since that world conflict more than 3,000,000 migrants have flowed into Australia. Among these were persons from Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, West Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland, Austria and, more recently, South America. About 65 percent of the new arrivals got financial assistance from the Australian government. Many took up residence in government-provided hostels. As a result of this massive immigration program, Australia’s population has nearly doubled since 1945.
But was it wise to bring together such diverse people? At first, critics declared that the immigration program would end up in disaster. They recalled that great bitterness had developed previously between the white and the Chinese gold diggers. Too, the importing of cheap labor for sugarcane fields in the tropical north had led to smoldering resentment against migrants of all non-Anglo-Saxon nationalities. Would planned immigration cause old feuds to fester and explode into violence?
At first, the waves of migrants with their strange languages and cultures, as well as different habits of working, living and eating, did cause some resentment. Besides these peculiarities, the “new Australians” (as the migrants came to be called) at times worked more rapidly. This caused resentment among some “old” Australian workers, perhaps due to feeling insecure about keeping their jobs. “They call us foreigners, these Aussies,” remarked a Portuguese farmer who settled at Carnarvon on the westernmost tip of Australia. “The Aussies don’t like us because we work too hard growing vegetables—tomatoes, green peppers, all kinds. We know how. We like to work. I sent out 1,100 cases of tomatoes this morning.”
Besides these problems, those of a psychological nature afflicted some of the migrants. For many the change in way of life was considerable. Homesickness was common. Also, children learned English more quickly than did their parents. The youngsters had to act as interpreters and undertake other family responsibilities for their non-English-speaking parents. Children found themselves torn between strict south European parental authority and the free ways of Australian society.
Benefiting from Many Cultures
On the whole, however, no really serious difficulties developed. Workmen of different nationalities found that they could learn from one another. In fact, industry would not have developed as it did without migrants. Now, not only English, but various other languages greet the ear in Australian homes, as well as on the streets.
It is common for shops to display signs indicating the number of languages spoken by their staff. The plant newspaper for a steelworks at Wollongong, New South Wales, has sections in four different languages. This meets the needs of some 20,000 employees, about half of whom are migrants of about forty different nationalities.
Older persons from various ethnic groups try to maintain their separate cultures, adding color and variety to the Australian scene. There are Italian sugarcane towns, Greek fishing villages and German vineyards. Even a Chinese joss house is to be found here in “the land down under.” It has such unique architecture as to merit the government protection granted to historical buildings.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are delighted to share Bible truth with their neighbors in this “melting pot.” In many areas they find it necessary to carry Bible literature in several languages when preaching. There are twenty large congregations that care for the needs of Greek-, Italian-, Spanish-, Slavic- and Arabic-speaking persons. Regular meetings are held also in Hungarian, Portuguese and Syrian. Hearing Bible truth in their native languages has caused thousands of migrants to make great changes as they have harmonized their lives with Scriptural principles.
The people of Australia constitute a multicultural society as complex as any on earth. Yet when an Australian extends his hand to a visitor with a hearty, “How are you, mate?”, the newcomer gets the impression of warm simplicity. Won’t you come and visit us soon?