Student 1 Interview. Yeah, definitely. It s hard to sort of yeah like I said, it s not one identity.

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Student 1 Interview. Yeah, definitely. It s hard to sort of yeah like I said, it s not one identity."

Antonia Melton
5 years ago
Views:

1 1 Student 1 Interview Thank you for coming in and agreeing to be part of the student transcripts for the indepth interview materials. We re going to talk about what it is to be ustralian. I d like to start with just a little bit about you first. Okay, well I m originally from Brisbane in ueensland. My father is I think he s still actually a British citizen he s moved from England. He was a two pound pom I think. He moved over here when he was 11 and my mother was born in ustralia from a Scottish mother and an Indigenous ustralian father and we ve got a bit of a mix of European heritage I guess. My father s mother is Irish and my father s father is a pom. But I mean my father has always grown up as an ustralian, even though he was born over there. He doesn t have any desire even to return I guess. He s just decided that he s an ussie and I guess he always brought us up that way. There was never really much mention of any, you know, English traditions or anything like that. I mean it s probably not too dissimilar from ustralian traditions in that way anyway I guess. Perhaps that s where the problem lies. If you don t know which nationality you are supposed to be, when it s a hotch-potch of everyone. So with your own identity, how do you see yourself? Well, it s difficult I guess. I mean I see myself as an ustralian whilst acknowledging that I ve got as much heritage from out of ustralia as what I have within ustralia. I guess my children are both born here. That s the first generation of my family I guess that all the siblings are born in ustralia. So from a perspective of theirs, I guess they are ustralian and I mean I m ustralian as well, but it s hard to say that you can t dismiss the other heritages that are involved I guess. It s one of those things I guess that now, whereas I never used to, I celebrate ustralia Day like anyone else a game of cricket or a few beers or a barbeque, go and watch a game of cricket or something, always wearing something with an ustralian flag on it. I had some board shorts and a tank top and that and then it dawned on me at some point in the last couple of years, we were at a function or we were at a family gathering with my granddad and I felt like I needed to take them off <laughs> because I actually had an understanding from a different perspective that made me sort of question my identity I guess. Mixed allegiances? Yeah, definitely. It s hard to sort of yeah like I said, it s not one identity. So yeah, and that s always the issue, isn t it? I mean well it s the issue for people who are of boriginal descent is how do you not mix those but how do you, like take those two parts of your identity and actually make them into a cognisant whole. Yeah. Like on forms or scripts where you have to tick the box, I qualify myself as an boriginal Torres Strait Islander, and I m proud to do that, but why do you have to tick the box? You know, there should be ten boxes, not just two. Yeah, that s right.

2 2 You know, and that s where I sort of Well there isn t even two boxes. There s only yes and no. Well there s one <laughter> Yeah, that s right. There s one question. re you with us or So you re talking about that you had done things on ustralia Day, ustralian flag, yes there is that how do you align these two parts of your identity. Culturally, if you were looking at ustralia culturally and I guess I m saying Euro-ustralian here now, what is it that makes ustralians and ustralianness culturally unique? Well, as a family we haven t had anyone who has really been culturally aware or an artist or into the cultural side of it. It s purely been a sport theme for our family which has meant that really from a personal perspective, my association with what is ustralia or what does it mean to be ustralian or unique about ustralia, sport springs to mind, but that s a personal thing and I guess I am a sport sort of nut I guess and I m interested in the way, in theory, ustralia has always boxed above their weight on a world stage, but yeah that s what I associate with if someone said what is ustralia to you, I think of sport. Playing sport or barracking for sport? Well playing sport I guess for me, but it is getting to the stage where that s starting to be a little bit less and less more often. But yeah I just think of activity really outdoors, ovals, balls flying, people socialising through sport I think both on a physical benefit but also a social. Being involved in a lot of sports clubs as a player, I got as much out of the social side of it, camaraderie, social sort of ties, relationships. They sort of acted in particular times in my life where I had personal issues, I would have been lost without being involved with particular sporting clubs that offered that family type of environment. So even though people would sort of say that s a stereotype to a certain extent, you actually think that the outdoor sporting thing actually rings true? For me, it does. I mean I do see that that s perhaps not so much prevalent now. I mean I m talking about my image of ustralia as all these active people running around and then I just hear on the radio that we re, you know, the world s most obese nation, so there s some sort of a change occurring there and maybe I m off the mark. But from my life, there was never too many weekends and there s still not where my family now and my own family, but even when I was either going to watch my dad play cricket and as soon as I was old enough I was playing cricket and mum was the score with lady, the whole family was revolved around sport and then when my sister was old enough, she was playing sport. We were making banners, you know, it was a shared experience I guess. Family lifestyle? Yes. That was a big part. If someone asked me about my family experience, sport is probably one of the first things that would spring to mind. nd you obviously think that was a good thing for you and your family?

3 3 I do, definitely, from a magnitude of reasons. nd I guess that s been passed on to both my kids and my sister s kids. But things are a bit different now. I mean my kids aren t as involved in my sporting time as what I was with my parents I guess. It s still there, but it s not as bigger part. So do you think the times have changed? It s hard to say. I mean I don t know. If I had married a woman who loved cricket, I m pretty sure that I would be playing cricket every weekend and she would be the scorer <laughs>, so in that instance, I think a one-off thing, you couldn t really say that and if you did, it s probably going to be a bit of a stereotype about everyone. Oh look, times are changing. If that s your criteria for marriage too, there could be all sorts of other problems. Exactly <laughs>. So yeah, I had to overlook that bit of a blip on the radar <laughter>, but no, no look, my kids are involved in gymnastics and it s good actually. I mean I m glad to see they get them doing physical activity every day at school. That s actually more than what there was when we had PE day and then every other day there wasn t necessarily any structured physical activity. It was just running around like a lunatic at lunch time, whereas now every day, whether it s PE day or not, they have half an hour s worth of physical activity, whether it s inside, in the, you know, enclosed area when it s wet, but yeah so that s a good thing. What do you think about the ustralian flag? It s never been one that s really bothered me that much. nd I ve never thought why only up until right this second. Perhaps the fact that I ve you know, it does cover for me having some English (my father s born in England) I don t necessarily have a problem with having the Union Jack as a part of it and the significance of the Southern Cross is relative to ustralia. So for me, I don t really have I can understand the idea that it doesn t reflect the nation that we re in. It reflects the term ustralia quite well for me, but that only works for me because I can differentiate that from the actual ground that we re sitting on the original place which I see as different to that term, that phrase ustralia I guess and maybe that s why it works for me. I don t know. nd I definitely wouldn t be against changing the flag at all to reflect some maybe they could have something else other than the Southern Cross that was reflective of the Indigenous side of things. But I mean I don t know much about the Southern Cross and whether that had any significance to the Indigenous people or not. Well it came off the flag from the miner s strikes, didn t it? Eureka. Yeah, Eureka Stockade. Yes, so no. But it s an interesting one, that. Yeah, you wouldn t mind seeing it changed? Definitely. Do you think of yourself as nationalistic? Not really. No. I don t. s a person, I m sort of not an overly opinionated person. I m sort of not a fence sitter but I m able to see two sides of most things and almost all

4 4 things have got two sides to them. So I guess in that instance, there s a lot of questions that you could ask and I would probably say, Oh look I m not fazed here or there. I have a sort of side which I might lean a bit more towards, but it would only be in like a significant instance where I would feel that it would matter enough. I mean ustralia doesn t have the same traditions, say, as the US. Because if you travel in the US, nearly every house has a US flag flying and there s this sort of very overt nationalism. lmost that sort of pride in the nation. My nationalism, once again, is really surrounded by sport. I guess is singing the National nthem, so the Wallabies are on the weekend. I have my girls. How many verses do you know? Both of them. The whole two <laughs>, I don t know how many there is, but I know two. But to be honest, that s only since I ve been going to the girls assembly. We never got taught the second verse at my school. One was enough? One was enough and at that age it wasn t really all that it was just let s just get this over with sort of thing. So if we sort of have an incoming sort of a military coup and all sport was banned, would ustralia cease to exist as a culture for you <laughter>? It would be a real shock to the system, yeah, it would. I m one of the people that, even now, interested in study and politics more than I ever was, still get the paper and read it the wrong way around. I blame dad for that <laughs>. I don t think there s a woman in the world that does that <laughter>. My wife thinks we re wasting all our money sending me to university and I still turn to the back page <laughs>. nd final question, just on that, what do you think about the monarchy? Yeah <pause>. It doesn t really bother me either. Having said that, I would probably, you know, if we had a referendum or something, I would probably vote for independence in some way, but I don t really... once again, I haven t really engaged too much in that which is funny because dad s definitely never been a real pom in that regard and he doesn t particularly have a high opinion of the monarchy in that way, yet it doesn t particularly I don t know that they have as much control over what goes on here as what some people might think really. I mean economics is the driver of most things in this day and age and that region of the world isn t in a particularly strong and looking down the barrel, less strong. I mean the whole idea of the monarchy and the empire and all that came about because they were in a position of ultimate power. That s no longer the fact, so you know, that s more of a concept too now really. What influence do they really have, so therefore you d ask well why have it maybe, you know. Yeah, except that the, you know, well you mightn t have been alive in 1975, but

5 5 No, one year off <laughter>. But, of course, that s when it did come home to most ustralians that, you know, the Governor-General was able to actually sack the government of the day. Right. Yeah, so there is still power there. Yeah, okay. But other people would argue that that power is actually a good thing because it gives a bit of a balance to politics, which is exactly the role that the monarchy serve in England. They re not purely decorative. They actually have a separation of another power there which stops the parliament being all powerful. Okay. There we go. That bring us to the end of the questions I had. Is there anything else you wanted to add on what it is to be ustralian? No, I think that s about it. Then can I say thankyou for agreeing to participate. END OF TRNSCRIPT

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL CENTER FOR LOWELL HISTORY ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL CENTER FOR LOWELL HISTORY ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION LOWELL NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF LOWELL, MA: MAKING, REMAKING,