When people think of Liverpool they usaully think of: England, Liverpool FC, the Premier League and The Beatles. No one ever thinks of the congested roads of South Western Sydney, home to so many diasporas searching for a better life in Australia. No one ever thinks of kebab shops and eshays and car meets. No one thinks of trash left on the side of the road, parks left abandoned, cars busted with no money to repair them.
I think of it fondly. Sometimes.
Maryam Azam, an accomplished academic and poet from the South West, also recalls the world we’ve grown up in fondly. Her poems, “Blacktown: Boyd Street I” and “Blacktown: Boyd Street II“, paint a romantic view of our environment. Of smashed cars and cluttered rubbish, but also of people from all sorts of backgrounds and their means of living in this home away from home.
a dirty mattress, mouldy pieces
of wood, a broken pram
they remained there
for the duration of our tenancy
– excerpt from “Blacktown: Boyd Street I” by Maryam Azam
As a wog growing up in a South West Sydney suburb, you naturally drift towards those who share a similar, rich cultural background. The Turks make friends with the Greeks and the Serbians make friends with the Albanians. Everyone recognises the similarities their cultures have and the arbitrary divisions and prejudices that were held in their home countries wash away. That’s not to say that everyone gets along, it’s a wide wide world with many different people of varying degrees of tolerance, but you rarely get such a hot pot of cultures mixing together like they do here in the South West.
I remember a time in high school when I was talking to my Croatian friend about stereotypes that we hold of each other. Obviously, as everyone knows, Croatians have the thickest skulls and Macedonians are actually monkeys pretending to be Greeks. We asked such philosophical questions of each other such as which came first, the Greek Delight or the Turkish Delight? Which regional variant of Rakija is the strongest? How similar are our Balkan tongues that we can pass as pretending to speak five different languages on our CV? Incredibly important questions that high schoolers needed to discuss during their lunch break.
Perhaps something can be said about perpetuating these stereotypes even in an ironic manner. That it helps normalise it and leads to actual intolerance. I’ve made an effort to try and not joke about these things, but it was a genuine way to make connections with people I know are from a similar background to myself. People who barely know me will still poke fun at me indirectly by mentioning Alexander the Great, and I take it just as good fun.
But how have all these cultures come together? What was there to find in Australia?
I think of the pale-skinned Indian
guy who works at the local BP.
We hear the whine of his black
and white Ford parking
next to us most midnights
– excerpt from “Blacktown: Boyd Street II” by Maryam Azam
I can only speak on the experience of the Macedonian diaspora. There’s a word for this practice, of people who leave their home country for work. That word is Pečalba, and the workers who find work abroad are Pečalbari. There is a fantastic account by a Macedonian, translated by Joel and Barbara K. Halpern, on the tradition, and how families at home rely on these migrant workers. It’s The Pečalba Tradition in Macedonia: A Case Study.
When reading this account, though, I was filled with a profound sense of nostalgia. I fondly remembered the good luck ritual my mum and dad would make me do at the beginning of each school year. Filling a cup of water, kicking and spilling it right outside the front door right before heading off. It was a tradition for migrant workers, before they set off for long periods of time. They would always return with a bounty of gifts for their families and friends, the fruits of their labour for everyone to share. I think my parents hope for the same, that their efforts to give me a good education will return the same bounty that my grandfather brought home after spending a few years working in the Port Kembla steel factories.
Eventually, these seasonal workers want to bring their families with them and settle abroad. Slowly and surely, entire communities carry themselves across land and sea to lead better lives. They bring their churches with them, and those churches serve more as beacons for the diaspora to find their people than actual religious institutions.
There’s a church in Liverpool. A small white brick house of God that cannot shelter the entire herd, yet they flock there anyways. Built in 1962 by Seventh Day Adventists, passed on to Latin American Adventists in 1985 and now held by the Orthodox Macedonians since 2002, it has not been renovated, expanded or changed in any manner since it was built.
That small church in Liverpool is a reminder of home, a direct connection to a world left behind.
It’s practically impossible to segregate yourself in your own corner of the world. You can’t hold onto the same traditions and mindsets forever, as much comfort as it may bring. Those traditions will transform though, and barriers that used to be there – drawn on the lines of a map – will eventually give way. We mingle and mix together, sharing our differing heritages as we strive toward a future that welcomes everyone from all corners of the globe.
Which is a somewhat privileged thing to say, as someone living in a country that is not my place of origin.
How can I speak of belonging and carving out a place in this nation when a church serves as a symbol of colonisation? How can I speak on the transformation of my traditions when Rio Tinto destroy cultural sites that have been maintained for more than 40,000 years?
I saw ‘The Visitors’, a play by Jane Harrison, devised for the Sydney Theatre Company, telling the story of seven clan leaders meeting and discussing the impending visit of a fleet of large boats. It was an incredible production, a tense clash of ideals as these leaders come to represent the interests of their clan and try to find common ground as they attempt to move forward in a course of action that will benefit all. They would point out towards the fleet – to us, the audience – and share stories about their encounters with foreigners. Some want to learn from the foreigners and incorporate their tools while others want to preserve their way of life that they have maintained for generations. Time is of the essence though, as the fleet of visitors approach and the clan leaders must come to a common understanding. Their walls could not be held up.
Provided by the Sydney Theatre Company
It was strange to find myself agreeing (for a moment) with xenophobic rhetoric, as these clan leaders brought up their encounters with foreigners that had formed their prejudices against them. It’s the dramatic irony of the play, that we know who these visitors are, what their intentions are and how history plays out. These clan leaders don’t know that, yet slowly but surely they overcome their prejudices to all agree on a single course of action. A welcome to country.
Were they wrong to think of a future where they could share their knowledge and learn from others as well?
When people think of Liverpool, they should think of Gandangara. They should think of the natural custodians of the land on which we visit and the respect owed to its elders past, present and future.