[hahs_63-68] Re: second generation Orstralians

Peter,

I am pleased to have read your email. Thankyou for the contribution. It always 
pleases me to interact with people from other places who have immersed 
themselves and embraced Australia as home.  Noone should forget their roots 
unless they choose to. 

Some of the people I come across in business and pleasure are now second and 
third generation living here and it is so good to call them Australians when 
they accept this as home. Some of the nicest people one could meet. 

What I find hard to tolerate is people who move here and want to make it a 
suburb of another country, and often want to cause problems, and sometimes 
recreate some of the issues they left behind. There is room for everyone who 
wants to live here provided they accept the way of life. 

I am still wondering why anyone would want to go to a Vietnamese restaurtant in 
France?  You can do that here, or in Vietnam.   

Best ,

Max

From: peterbarda@xxxxxxxxxxx
To: hahs_63-68@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [hahs_63-68] Re: second generation Orstralians
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2012 13:18:44 +1100



Richard and others I'm an accidental Australian. My parents spent 3 years in 
various displaced persons camps in Germany after WW 2. In 1948 they could 
choose between a few countries that were taking  refugees, Australia amongst 
them. They couldn't agree on where to settle.Eventually they agreed that 
Australia would be the honeymoon (Dad wanted to get as far away from Europe as 
possible), and then after a few years they'd move to Canada (Mum's choice).One 
of the great lies/unfulfilled promises - Mum never got further than Melbourne 
in the 54  years she lived here. So, English became my second language, and I 
salute the Australian flag.Language could just as well have been German, 
Swedish, Spanish (Argentina was an option in 1948), and I might have marched in 
Vietnam moratorium demos in the USA rather than down Broadway and George Street 
from Sydney Uni. I have more family in Latvia than here. My father had been 
married before the war to another woman,  something he and Mum chose not to 
tell us. We did not know that until I was close to 20, when someone who had 
known Dad before the war asked my sister after Dad's first wife and 3 kids. The 
Russians got between the family in Latvia and Dad in Germany. My first trip to 
Latvia was in 1999, when I met the extended family (half brother, half sisters 
and their progeny) and Dad's first wife. She was an agronomist, as my father 
had been. Long story to make a couple of observations. From my earliest 
memories we spoke Latvian at home, and understood that the language was the 
culture carrier. Once it stopped being used, our Latvianness would disappear 
too.My 2 sons speak no Latvian and have no interest in the place - although 
they have finally made time in their busy schedules (!) to visit Latvia with me 
this year.So, no language, no culture, no interest. My blood is Latvian, and 
even though I have been there only twice, I feel a considerable sense of 
connection. There's a cemetery in the small town my father and his forebears 
lived in, with ancestors buried back to 1753.No less powerful a link than (I 
guess) our aborigines' sense of connection to country. For the first 2 or 3 
days of my first trip to Latvia I found myself translating Latvian to English 
before framing a response.After that, the translation thing stopped and it was 
as if there was only one language - I found myself thinking in Latvian. At the 
risk of courting a rebuke from Stu Cardwell about the perils of xenophobia, you 
can't deny the claim of blood or language. (In my view!) Cheers Peter 
Barda'Bigpond'755 Sandy Creek RoadQuorrobolong   NSW  2325T: +61 (2) 4998 6251  
F: +61 (2) 4998 6154  M: 0418 438 550  E: peterbarda@xxxxxxxxxxx

Other related posts: