Writing Slowly

Tragically my home city has been in the international news for all the wrong reasons and we’re all feeling traumatised and shocked and heartbroken.

What about you?

You only know what you see in the media, like the photo below. So beyond the Harbour and the Opera House, perhaps you don’t know what Sydney is actually like.

I thought I’d show you a snapshot of what it’s really like where I live, on Bidjigal land, the unceded territory of the Eora Nation.

The terrible attack at Bondi Beach has affected everyone personally and highlighted how we’re all interconnected. For example, one of the victims of the shooting played soccer for our local team. He was French and had lived in Sydney for three years. The team he played for was founded in the 1960s by Macedonian Australians.

A Jewish French Australian resident who played football for a Sydney team with a Macedonian heritage. This is a microcosm of the plural nature of this city. Everyone is something and something else too.

We belong to Australia and also have deep connections to the wider world.

In fact fewer than 20% of residents here in our local area have two parents who were born in Australia. And we’re stronger because of our tremendous diversity. Despite the actions of a tiny minority, Sydney is a fantastically successful multicultural city where we enjoy and celebrate the fact that our neighbours are truly diverse. In my suburb, just South of the centre, I live happily beside people who come from 179 different countries and speak many, many different languages. More than half of us speak a language other than English:

• Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese)
• Greek
• Arabic
• Spanish
• Nepali
• Macedonian
• Indonesian
• Portuguese
• Bengali
• Italian

And that’s just the top ten.

Let me take you for a short walk around the neighbourhood. Our immediate neighbours come from China, Japan, Argentina, Lebanon and Australia. Across the road from our place, but behind the houses is our local primary school, which on Saturdays holds language classes for the local Macedonian community. A few doors down from our front gate, our nearest place of worship is a Chinese Christian church that holds services in Mandarin, Cantonese and English.

It’s just across from our nearest cafe, popular with the local Muslim community and also so insta-famous for its extravagant desserts that people come from all over the world just to try them. It’s next door but one to an Islamic education centre, for after-school religious instruction. And just down the end of the street is one of Sydney’s best baclava patisseries, run by Lebanese Christians. Turn right and you’ll reach a Shi’ite mosque that’s right next door to a Greek Orthodox church. To get there you pass the Greek Orthodox bookshop and two Nepalese restaurants. On the other side of the road is another Chinese-speaking Church which is across the railway tracks from the local Macedonian Orthodox church. This is just down a short lane from our local Catholic parish church which regularly holds masses in Italian, Urdu and Filipino as well as English. On a nearby corner is an Islamic masjid surrounded by several fine Bangladeshi, Filipino and Thai restaurants.

Meanwhile, on our main pedestrian shopping street I regularly get to choose whether to buy my groceries from an excellent Nepalese store or from a Lebanese or Chinese store, also excellent. I love having this choice. Then there’s a Vietnamese bakery, the kind that’s distinctively Australian. And a couple of places to buy fresh Macedonian burek - a more localised speciality, since you can’t get this everywhere in Sydney. There’s also a small Cantonese diner that I swear smells exactly like my memories of Hong Kong. And in this place with its tall shady plane trees, festivals are celebrated - Muslim, Christian and Hindu - and also completely secular, with jazz and other popular music. The lighting and seating has recently been improved and in the evenings people from many different cultures sit here side by side and in small groups, just to watch the world go by and enjoy the cool night air.

By the way, this is nothing special. Our suburb isn’t even particularly known for being multi-cultural. It’s just a typical part of Sydney. 

Travel a bit South or North and it’s more obviously Chinese, a bit West and it’s more obviously Lebanese. But everywhere in Sydney has a mixture of people from a mixture of places.

That means it’s not all sweetness and light. We’re all different and we all hold different opinions. Our council held a fractious meeting about whether to impose sanctions against Israel due to its actions in Gaza. On both sides the debate was heated and painful emotions were expressed. Yet somehow it remained civil and reasoned throughout. It was an amazing if uncomfortable demonstration of respect for democracy in action.

I’m trying to say that the attack at Bondi Beach doesn’t represent what Sydney is like in any sense. The Sydney I know is safe and welcoming to people of all faiths and origins.

We have six thousand per cent fewer lethal shootings than the United States does.

We live in multicultural communities that are generally happy and relaxed. Our differences make us interesting and they make Sydney interesting, as well as just beautiful. Inevitably there is friction when people from all around the world find themselves living on the same street and even in the same apartment block, and when their countries of origin or heritage are in conflict with one another. But we are forbearing with one another because we’re determined to make it work.

The actions of a couple of extremists won’t stop us from caring about our neighbours and our neighbourhoods. People who try to divide us with hate won’t win.

I have no doubt that the events at Bondi will make us even more determined, because whichever way you look at it, and no matter who tries to deny it with lies and distortions, diversity is now and always will be the only reality.

Meanwhile, please feel free to copy and distribute my manifesto: