An Emigrants’ Best Friend Dies
On the Day March 25 1877
Khen Lim
Caroline Chisholm, 1852, by Angelo Collen Hayter, from Dixson Galleries (Image source: Caroline Chisholm Society)
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
A Emigrant's Best Friend Dies
Khen Lim
There are many
catchwords that are often used to describe Australia. ‘Ocker’ is certainly one
of them and so is ‘larrikin.’ Both play to the unique character of the
Australian individual but it is ‘multiculturalism’ that perhaps define the
national culture of what was once White Australia and of the names in history
that are linked to the multicultural movement, it was Al Grassby, the late
Gough Whitlam’s Minister of Immigration till 1974 who was even known in some
circles as the father of Australian multiculturalism.
Yet with all the
hoopla about Grassby’s role, what we may not realise is the link to Australia’s
immigrant history goes farther back to at least the nineteenth century when a
certain woman from Northampton, England who, with her husband, made Australia
her home chose to fight for alien rights in the most unprecedented spirit of
them all. It was on this day, one-hundred and forty years ago, in 1877, that
she passed away.
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