20 little Australians

Just quickly.  The Sydney Morning Herald currently has a nice little multimedia presentation entitled “20 Little Australians”.  A condensed version of a longer story that will appear in the weekend paper, obviously designed to coincide with Australia Day on the 26th.  The presentation features 20 children who have migrated to Australia and provides snippets of their experiences and impressions in and of Australia.  Overall the presentation has a glossy, feel-good feel but the Herald folk avoid presenting Australia as the promised land for all comers.  There are some negative impressions, mentions of racism and so on, but most appealing and interesting to me were the unexpected comments, like the Russian boy who noted that people don’t speak as much to each other as they do in Russia, or the Pakistani boy who was amazed that he was allowed to call his neighbour by his first name.

Besides containing these little gems, the presentation is well worth the watch just to get a two minute overview of the astounding variety of migration to Australia and a couple of hints at what we do well and not so well for those who have chosen to settle here.

[Link.]