Multiculturalism

Abstract

A walk along Beardy Street with eyes scanning above the shop fronts and noticing building parapets, public edifices, embossed dates and company names invites a pause to consider the changing face - and the changing occupants - of the centre of the city. Longer pauses with more penetrating glances informed by the stories and profiles documented by family, local and other historians offer richer perspectives. In this instance, the longer pauses invite concentration on the cultural diversity that has marked the backgrounds of those whose businesses have come, gone or stayed over time. Sites in Beardy Street link to other sites and people. They offer a taste of the different cultural backgrounds from which Armidale residents have come; the challenges facing them when settling into an alien environment and the ways in which their presence has shaped the history of the locality and marked, if only momentarily, the streetscapes. Compare the photographs reproduced here with the sites today: reflect, remember, imagine. Think about what it was and is like to be an immigrant from a non-English-speaking background in this town, and the various ways in which immigrants from these backgrounds have contributed to the cultural, economic, political and social history and tenor of the locality.