MelbourneLife: Multicultural Australia- Moomba

Brrm...brrrmm...brrrm... a magical sound of aboriginal music instrument made from a-meter-long wood shake (what is the English word for menggetarkan?) the Melbourne ground. It was a sign of the parade opening. A sound of clap...clap...clap from a-hand-shape musical instrument which were given freely for thousands audiences waiting for the parade in the 40 degrees Melbourne spring weather, was suddenly stopped. The musician, use aboriginal types clothing and some dancers (some looks like aborigin people, but some are white people) brought a magic atmosphere in the lively melbourne Swanston street -from the Little Broke st to Arts Centre across the Yarra River. This is Moomba. Welcome to Moomba festival. Welcome all Melbourne visitors, to the land of Aboriginal people....The ceremony, however artificial it was, was a warm welcome for everyone, coming from many different part of the world to the land of opportunity, Australia. A warm feeling in my heart too, a temporary visitor to Melbourne (at least for 2 years and may be 3 more years if I continue my doctoral study here), that I am welcomed here, in a very different place to my origin in Central Java Indonesia.

Multicultural society, it was what I've seen in the street, during the three-long-weekend holidays last week. people with different colour of skin, people with different cultures, people with different types of clothings are in the street, some perform their cultural performance (including from Indonesia), some important groups such as SES (State Emergency Services), Police of Victoria, etc parade and were greeted with respects by the audiences. It was nice to feel that people are the same no matter they have different skins, cultural backgrounds, or religious backgrounds. I know that this is may be just simplify judgement of something that I've only seen in the surface, in a festival, where everyone usually enjoy the holiday atmosphere. I am not deny, that racism or racialism (I still don't know which word is more appropriate) often occurs too, in this society, either directly or indirectly.

Direct racisms examples can be seen for example in the recent case of Adealide's Indonesian student were hitted by a gang of 9 young mens who drunk and said ' here are asian people, wanna hit them? which was answered with echoed answer 'why not?' Indirect racism may occurs
very unsubtle, so noone would not be able to prove it, but just feel hurt of those words or behaviour. The example happened to my uni friend from Gadjah mada, Asih who got such traumatic experience in the bus, in the first week of her stay in melbourne. I myself, fortunately didn't experience such experiences, I was only witness someone being racist to others, neither also my husband or apparently my children at their school (childcare). I feel very fortunate of having great experiences during my stay here.

Despite those bad example, until this point Australia, at least the government either federal or labour have been successful in maintaining multiculturalism in Australia withoput necessarily create chaothic problems. of course, there are some weaknesses which I should acknowledge, may be I will write about it later when I have time. May be it is also the result of local government efforts about giving a fair-go system work in the implementation.

Wuf...have to go, need to teach Bahasa Indonesia to my friend at 1 pm. then go to career day. Will write again next time. Hope not too long. Always need more time to write a contemplation like this.

TO BE CONTINUED