Empire Day by Diane Armstrong, HarperCollins, $32.99.
“It’s strange,” muses one of Armstrong’s struggling-to-settle Eastern European immigrees to Sydney in Australia’s post-war melting pot.
“A huge country with hardly any people, an empty centre and no history.”
“That’s exactly why I love it,” responds her husband. “A country without a past, but with a big future…” Of course, therein lies the travesty of the wiping out of indigenous history from the mouths of those who should have known better, as this fictional swag of “reffos” — string holding their paltry suitcases of belongings together — escape religious persecution in their homelands in the late 1940s, only to suffer the indignities of humiliation as “New Australians”, condemned for their smelly foods and accused of “buying up of all the flats” from true Australians.
Polish-born journalist Armstrong writes about what she knows, and cleverly weaves an evocative, multi-layered serial of migrants and white Australians battling wartime loss side by side, goulash versus grilled lamb.
Together these spirited, recognisable families will discover common differences, shared secrets and the spirit of community.
Nothing escapes Armstrong’s strong social eye, from the six o’clock pub swill to the smoking GP, to the PM [Ben] Chifley, “an engine driver who becomes a prime minister… this is the real socialist Utopia!” and the sterling efforts of a certain Australian Women’s Weekly magazine medico to address the rising divorce rate in encouraging women to be conciliatory and more feminine!
Just as much will change for the characters from one Empire Day to the next. Happily, much more ignorance has bitten the dust since too.
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