White Australia Policy Archives

Transport Policy & Logistics – Joe Paiva (Adelaide: Australia) “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is a common saying that originated from a Chinese proverb. This saying teaches that even the longest and most difficult ventures have a starting point; something which begins with one first step. I very reluctantly share this narrative. At the very beginning ( 1973..74..75.) life was far from a bed of roses in Adelaide. Adelaide was the backwaters of Australia, as a city then. I remember the Adelade airport being a ‘tin shed’. No international flights operated in and put of Adelaide. It was the days of TAA and Ansett interstate domestic carriers. I had to claw my way up. Number of times I did fall, and had to pull myself up again ( ripped, bleeding finger nails, metaphorically) . It would have been futile to retune home to Ceylon, as I had burnt my bridges ...

“THE CATS & I” – by Des Kelly “I came to Australia in 1962, from Ceylon, my ‘Lovely Island Home’, together with my wife and two very young sons, for one plain & simple reason. This migration on our part was to ‘escape’ the ‘Sinhala-only’ policy brought in by the S.W.R.D. B.Government of the day. However, we walked in, because of one ‘Policy’, straight into another, called ‘The White-Australia Policy’. Speak about these Policies anyway you like, but it ends in a single term called ‘Racism’, which was openly, & unfortunately, rife, in our World of that era. Racism,to me, is a far worse bloody epithet, than any four-letter word that one could even imagine. To me, the sum total of nine plus billion people on this Planet, are ALL the same,(Men, Women and Children)born, to struggle through life, to then pass on into what is hopefully a better place ...