Blog Archives

Changing Tracks: Reg and Melbourne grow up together – On Drive with Rafael Epstein   Source:ABC These are particularly personal tales charting a turning point in someone’s life with a song to match. There’s no hard or fast topic for the stories featured on Changing Tracks, just “a song that was playing when your life changed tracks.” Send in yours. This week’s Changing Track is for Reg: During the time of the White Australia Policy, some Not-Quite-White people came to Australia. I was one of them. No one here knows much about us Burgher people of Ceylon (a country now known as Sri Lanka). We are half-castes, descended from Dutch, German, English and Portugese who mixed with the local Sinhalese women. After doing one of those genealogy tests, I can tell you that I am about 35% Singhalese, 45% Dutch and the remaining 20% is English, Irish, German, Portuguese and Jewish. ...