Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Oct 10

#2My Travels with Oz Multiculturalism
Stepping into the Terra Nullius Colony
Sydney, September spring 1961.
I disembarked from the P&O SS Strathmore at Circular Quay. The teen son of a junior Indian diplomat posted to Canberra. Immigration and Customs processed us at the pier itself, a benign Sovereign Border at that time.
2. Their correct but cold treatment of us was in marked contrast to the solicitous greetings offered to the incoming Pound 10 pommies also disembarking.
3. My father had warned me of the Australian preference for shades of white. The some 700 displaced refugees on the SS Misr, barely fourteen years before, had been greeted as a bunch of "so many Jews, of so many swarthy dark-skinned southern Mediterranean, un-British, un-Australian, unsuitable aliens". They were perceived as a threat to White Australia.
#auspol #Multiculturalism #AustralianWayOfLife #AntiMemoirs