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The Lion and the Unicorn 27.2 (2003) 235-250



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Messages from the Inside?:
Multiculturalism in Contemporary Australian Children's Literature

Sharyn Pearce


The Beginnings

At the start of the 1950s, a massive intake of one and a half million European migrants was assimilated into the Australian community, effectively and permanently eroding Australia's Anglo-Saxon-Celtic composition. (To gain some sense of the enormousness of the changed demographics, it is salutary to note that at the end of the Second World War the population of Australia was only seven and a half million, and over ninety-five percent of Australians came from British or Irish stock [McGregor 323]. By the late 1980s, after further waves of immigration, only 47% of the population was British and "Old Australian," 23% was composed of non-English-speaking migrants and children, while 30% was a mixture and "growing" [Hirst 228].) In the 1950s many Australians were firmly convinced that their way of life was unique because it was based upon the mores of a homogenous community, and they were determined to prevent these norms from being broken down by the admission of large numbers of unassailable elements. And so these lucky immigrants were tolerated if they embraced the Australian way of life as enthusiastically as the author of They're A Weird Mob, a book of such immense popularity that it was reprinted thirteen times in its second year of publication, and was later made into a highly successful family film (the novel was originally written for adults, but many children and teenagers also read it, and it subsequently became a favorite text in the secondary school English curriculum). The fervently nationalistic bravado of these mid-century times is reflected in the words of the narrator Nino Culotta, one-time Italian journalist and now a successful "New Australian" (in reality an Anglo-Australian writer called John O'Grady): [End Page 235]

There are too many New Australians in this country who are still living in their homelands, who mix with people of their own nationality, and try to retain their own language and customs. Who even try to persuade Australians to adopt their customs and manners. Cut it out. There is no better way of life than that of the Australian. I firmly believe this. The grumbling, growling, cursing, profane, laughing, beer-drinking, abusive, loyal-to-his-mates Australian is one of the few free men left on this earth. He fears no one, crawls to no one, bludges to no one, and acknowledges no master. Learn his way. Learn his language. Get yourself accepted as one of him; and you will enter a world that you never dreamed existed. And once you have entered it, you will never leave it. (204)

The novel concludes with Nino's recognition that Australia is really God's Own Country, and that God himself is the biggest "Ocker" (that is, stereotyped beer-bellied Australian male, usually in blue singlet, shorts and rubber sandals) of them all:

There are hundreds of ways we could spend this sunny Sunday afternoon. Or we could just stay at home and do nothing, and perhaps that would be best of all. To rest on the seventh day. To thank God for letting us be here. To thank Him for letting me be an Australian. Sometimes I think that if I am ever fortunate enough to reach Heaven, I will know I am there when I hear Him say "Howyergoin'mate, orright? " (204)

Now, at the beginning of the third millennium, this evangelizing assimilationist (and masculinist!) zealotry would thankfully seem to be no more: relegated, together with the paternalistic and patronizing attitudes so popular half a century ago, to the realms of the quaint past. Australia is now one of the most cosmopolitan and ethnically diverse countries in the world, and for nearly three decades multiculturalism has been its officially dominant discourse. Multiculturalism is part of the everyday currency of Australian life, where tolerance of cultural differences and respect and understanding in crosscultural contacts are promoted as ideal...

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