Rod, at 12:47 on Mar 08 1996, you wrote to Bill Grimsley...

BG> Interesting.  Must ask Poe about Cowra too, as there are a hell of
BG> a lot of people of Asian origins there too, although I suppose that
BG> nowadays, most of those would have been born in Australia anyway.

RS> That brings up another interesting point actually. Many of the medical
RS> practitioners etc are various flavors of asian, often Sinhalese etc.

Yeah, we actually have quite a few around here too.  One I was seeing at
Logan City Hospital is actually a Sikh, complete with turban.  Not quite as
spiffy as Yassar Arafat's headgear though.  Not a bad fellow, and extremely
competent (well, I'm still alive aren't I?).

RS> I dont recall a single comment from anyone about that, tho I guess some
RS> of the old anglo farts who lived thru the 20s etc may have done so at 
RS> times.

Interesting too that Chandler's, where I worked for a number of years, was
known in the industry as the Mt Gravatt Dept of Immigration (and not at all
affectionately in many cases), as the vast majority of techs were from
places other than Australia.  My recollection is that 3 were Kiwis, a
Maltese named John Fenech, who was Jeff Fenech's cousin (and presumably
still is), 3 or 4 Italians, 2 Greeks, a Fijian Indian (who was probably the
only fellow I didn't like very much), a Filipino, 2 Hong Kong Chinese, 1
Scot, 2 pommies, an incredibly dozy Irish bastard who I'm sure was
fund-raising for the IRA, a couple of blacks, one from PNG, the other from
somewhere in Africa, a Croat (and thankfully, no Serbians), and just 3
Australians.

The boss was Italian, and had it all teed up with the CES to employ
immigrants so that their wages were subsidised for (I think) the first 6
months.  Funny thing was that apart from the Fijian Indian (who looked and
smelled as if he didn't know what a bath was), we all got on a treat.

RS> In some ways its even more noticeable in the immigrants,
RS> plenty of poms are rabid about germans, dutch sneer at wogs etc.

BG> The 2 things I hate the most:  Racism, and the Dutch.

RS> How racist of you |-)

How white of you to say so.  :)

Regards, Bill

--- Msgedsq/2 3.20