We wish you a Multi-Cultural Christmas

There's a whole lot to be said about living in the inner-west in Sydney. It's an incredible melting pot of cultures, and with that, opportunities. Every cuisine imaginable, every kind of music, clubs and social groups of many nationalities and neighbourhoods offering the opportunity to meet people from every corner of the globe.

Francis and I have made it our business to immerse ourselves in as many different kinds of opportunity as we can absorb into the time available. We love the Addison St market in Marrickville with it's Casa Latina where the latin american community meet and dance and play and sing on a Sunday. We enjoy the Gladstone Pub, also in Marrickville, where our friend Mary-Jane Field has introduced us to the Bolivian community who spontaneously celebrate their music by jamming together on some Saturday nights. We follow our friends Marlene and Faramarz around, watching their festival productions of the Chilean national dance, the Cueca, and have even learnt it (at a time when I was about five months pregnant!). We frequent the  Camelot Lounge, a club run by a chap called Yarron from Port Elizabeth who is known for his amazing band, Monsieur Camembert. I don't think there are many places in the world with more camels under one roof - big ones, small ones, pictures of camels, even flying camels - or more stairs to reach a club! One of my best evenings there was a Yiddish night which I attended with Marjorie, the woman who was my nanny when I was a child in South Africa. I think she knew more of the culture than some of the Jewish people there.

This Christmas has been, as usual, a multi-cultural one. The annual Heighway Avenue Street party was, as usual, filled with foods from many nations, games for the children, and great music and even some dance in the middle of the closed street. As anyone who has visited us at our home knows, within ten doors of where we live are representatives of New Zealand, China, Australia, Pakistan, India, South Africa (Durban), the Phillipines, Mauritius, Ireland, Lebanon, Poland... the list goes on. The kids are like a troop this time of year - dashing through the street on bicycles, jumping on one another's trampolines, dropping off hand-me-down clothes.

Christmas Eve was our annual meeting-of-cultures in Baulkham Hills - yes, out of the inner-west - with our Chilean, Iranian, Chinese and Australian friends. It's always an outrageous evening of foods from our various cultures and a wild game of giving and stealing Christmas presents. And over the last two years the addition of the new generation, Jethro at 2 and Kian at 6 months, has added new flavour.

To top it, yesterday was Christmas in Ashfield with Francis' parents - something we often do at Christmas. 

While almost everything is closed, the Ashfield shops remain open with up to 20 Asian Eateries doing business as usual. This year we took a friend of mine's niece, Kristin from Germany. She has been backpacking and had been staying with us earlier in the year with her friend, Judy. They house-sat our home while we were traveling. After a fruit-picking stint up north, she and Judy moved in with Nikki-next-door to couch-surf. Over the season two more friends have joined them - one from Germany and one from Sweden. So we invited them to share Christmas. Another adventure in sharing stories of different cultures, and what we all usually do at Christmas. They turned up, all clean and shiny in their party frocks and joined us for dumplings, and later for fruit and other delicacies at home.

It's been another year of enjoying all that Sydney has to offer. A highlight was West African drumming with Saul of Soul Drumming. Brooke dragged me along, and I've taken to it like a duck to water. There's discipline and fun, and the body percussion (see picture) works well when your hands need a break from beating those drums. The pictures are of the performance on our last night, in Newtown. Four of Saul's groups came together to drum - about 50 of us in all - and Jethro was pretty taken with it all. At two, he is now "drumming like mummy" at every opportunity. Long may he have the opportunity to glean from Sydney all that Francis and I have been lucky to have in the inner-west in our seven years here.

Sydney's diversity of music, song and dance

One of the most wonderful things about living in Sydney is the incredible diversity of music, song and dance (and food, but that goes without saying) from a multitude of nationalities. Francis and I feel privileged to be included in Chilean and Bolivian events, to be able to eat out and listen to local music at the Cyprus club, to try to count the complex beats of Greek music at Steki in Newtown, and to be part of folk festivals and choir events, political and other, all over Sydney.

On Sunday afternoon Mary-Jane Field, our special friend, had another of her Penas. A pena is a concert, a community event, and when Mary-Jane arranges them, they are always of the finest musical standard and supported by a great number of people, most of whom volunteer in some way - to sing, to perform, or to help with food and raffles....

Sunday's Pena was no exception. Mary-Jane would like us to believe it was her last, but I doubt that. It might have been the last in a series that celebrated the Cantata por Domitila, a cantata that Mary-Jane wrote in celebration of the life of Domitila Barrio de Chungara. On her website, Mary-Jane describes the Cantata as

a work featuring a fusion of musical styles blended with traditional and modern Bolivian folk music. The Cantata tells the story of Domitila Barrios de Chungara, a courageous Bolivian woman who has dedicated most of her life to the struggle for the rights of the tin miners of her country.

The Pena was filled with choirs including the Bright Stars led by Mary-Jane, a church choir Mary-Jane sings in and her incredible daughter and granddaughters singing as the West Girls in close harmony and a capello. There were folk singers and other performers. But for me the highlight was a tango demonstration. Not because I am completely crazy about tango and dedicated five years to it, but because this particular performance was enormously challenged by the music breaking down over and over again, and the resultant miracle performance was one of the most moving I have seen. Miguel, Heatwole, a well-known choir leader in Sydney, came to their rescue. Accompanied only by the steady clicking of his fingers, he took the mike and in a velvety tango voice, slowly and deliberately sang a tango for the dancers to perform to. The audience was mesmerised, and their quiet clicking fingers were testimony to their will to make the performance work. I take my hat off to the dancers, Margarita and Guy from Tango Embrace, and to Miguel for their quick thinking and their gut-wrenching performance.


Mary-Jane has once again woven her magic in the Spanish and English musical world. Her Bolivian friends' performance of Bolivian folk music with it's contagious beat rounded the evening off. The proceeds went to the Auntie and Uncles charity in Australia and to a Bolivian charity. And once again we had had the privilege of being part of the extraordinary mix of cultures that is so very Sydney.