Yet again, the World Cup has brought humanity together. Huddled in living rooms or gathered by big screens, the scenes have been similar from Casablanca to Toronto, Antwerp and Sydney. Suddenly everyone on the planet is an expert.
National pride is on display, but within a shared celebration. Rivals compete fiercely on the field, before accepting the result and swapping shirts at the final whistle.
Watching the tournament unfold has made me think about Australia, and in particular, Parramatta. About us.
That might seem an unlikely connection, especially when multiculturalism is once again being questioned. Pauline Hanson recently argued Australia should be a monoculture. Whether or not that view finds an audience elsewhere, it feels completely disconnected from how daily life is lived in our part of Sydney.
Parramatta doesn’t talk much about multiculturalism. We simply get on with it.
Here, diversity isn’t a bureaucratic policy or slogan. It’s almost mundane reality. You can take your work team out for sushi, where one colleague’s family came from India, another’s from China, another’s from Italy and someone else is from country NSW.
You look around the restaurant. Every table tells the same story. Nobody thinks twice about it because that’s simply who we are.
I’ve often felt the suburbs around Parramatta and Cumberland are Australia’s true capital of multiculturalism. Not because we’re trying to prove a point, but because we’ve stopped thinking about it altogether.
The recent debate has made me reflect on my own family’s history. We migrated from London to Carlingford in 1987, nearly 40 years ago now, and yes it’s true, Australia was very different back then. Only a few years after the America’s Cup victory, around the time of Bicentenary and Expo ‘88, the headlines were filled with names like Alan Bond and Christopher Skase.
On Woodstock Road, and later in the newly built West Pennant Hills Valley, there was nobody who quite looked like us. The day Dad packed me in the car for a Year 3 school camping trip, equipped with a full suitcase and bedroom doona, showed how much we still had to learn about Australian life.
But only a few months later, he died, and our mother faced an impossible decision. Almost all our extended family remained in England. Returning would have been the easier path, but instead she stayed.
Passionate about education, she didn’t want to disrupt our schooling just as we had begun making friends. But more than that, I see now that she believed in the future my father had imagined for us when he brought us to Sydney for his job.
A life surrounded by sunshine, fruit trees and a big backyard. The suburbs represented opportunity and she was determined to see that vision through.
Today, fewer than half the people living in Parramatta and Cumberland were born in Australia.
Our suburbs are a World Cup of aspiration and struggle.
Nothing is handed to you here, just like it wasn’t for us. People work hard. They educate their children. They start businesses. They volunteer at sporting clubs. They save for a home. They hope their children enjoy opportunities they didn’t.
Those dreams are not foreign to Australia. They are deeply Australian.
Walk along the main roads and back streets today and you can read that story in the shopfronts. The old Sizzlers and Black Stumps have disappeared, replaced by restaurants like Surena and El Jannah, Korean dessert cafés, South Asian sweet shops, matcha bars, family-run dental practices, gym franchises and countless operations built through determination and long hours.
These aren’t so much ostentatious symbols of multiculturalism. They’re simply local businesses serving their communities.
Yet the magic of this region is that none of this succeeds without the generations who came before.
One of the quiet strengths of Parramatta is that renewal hasn’t erased memory. The family whose grandparents built a brick veneer here decades ago, flying the flag in the front yard and tending roses they’ve nurtured for years, contributes just as much to our community as the more recent migrant who opened a café, pharmacy or auto repair.
One brings new energy, the other provides continuity. Together, they create the texture, wisdom and character of a place that is constantly evolving without losing its identity.
Of course, these are unsettling times. The cost of living is extraordinary. Technology is changing how we work and communicate. Too many people feel disconnected from institutions and each other.
But perhaps more people in our country would benefit from looking up from those addictive social media feeds and spending more time out in the world.
Here, diversity isn’t something to fear. It fills labour shortages in our hospitals, aged care homes, childcare centres and construction sites. It strengthens our economy and enriches our culture. Most importantly, it reminds us that people from different backgrounds often want very similar things.
As Australians lick their wounds after another valiant Socceroos campaign, it’s worth remembering the names on the back of the green and gold: Volpato. Irankunda. Behich. Degenek. Metcalfe. Herrington. Beach.
Different journeys. One young team.
If Australia wants to see what its future could look like, it doesn’t need to imagine it.
Come simply spend an afternoon in Parramatta.
Alan is a journalist and communications specialist. He writes a weekly column for Parra News.