PROCESS IN PICTURES

Philosophically, having grown up in Western Sydney, I am thrilled to think that I might be able to make a literary contribution to my community.   

When I was younger, I lived in a small street in Girraween replete with immigrants who all needed to make a success of their new lives. Our experiences were really a compound of optimism and grief, as our parents had chosen to leave behind our extended families to live in a new country, with infrequent and expensive contact with our loved ones. Our parents considered their countries of origin home. We children were rooted in Australia, knowing nothing else and caring for less. We were vibrant, we were creative, we were hardworking. A surprising number of us became very successful. Everything was real in WS; every dream possible, every life worth living. It was that which you still see today, a pulsing impulse of determination, ambition, and creativity. I would like to bring our culture to the world.   

 I would love also to work with the First Nations owners of the unceded land upon which I received my first artistic nurturing. We grew up in suburbs with indigenous names; my small house had a tree in the back garden, an ancient ironbark with the first surveyor's mark of the post-colonial  era inscribed, a shield-shaped excision and a patch of naked, dead wood. I grew amongst paddock and creeks, and market gardens tucked between old fibros. But in all that time, I never met a First Nations individual. We were hardly taught then about the crimes against our brethren, that our gain was a direct and inverse consequence of their great loss. You cannot make a life with any kind of meaning on unceded territory without acknowledging First Nations owners, storytellers, and keepers of culture. 

 This project, I believe, has a real chance to tell stories of relevance, of pain and of reconciliation and hope. I look forward to working with Aunty Jules and Jayne and other indigenous storytellers, and to blending our tales into something better, something with which we can move forward.

In high school when we'd get on the train to Parramatta to see a play at Riverside, we'd all say 'we're going to the city'   I fully thought Parramatta CBD was the city until Year 10. That was it. Skyscrapers, a huge westfield, soooooo much good food How could there be anything better than Parramatta?   

And then I went on another excursion to the Sydney CBD and I realised what a ‘city’ is actually like… People hate their lives. Everyone is trying to get ahead when they’re already in the place they always said they wanted to be when they were a kid.  

I walk around Parramatta CBD now and I can’t tell the differences at times between Sydney and Parramatta. I can’t feel the culture, the colour, the life.    

Then I look at greater Western Sydney.   

I see house prices rise, white renos on ex- housing commission with even whiter people moving into them.     

I say alllllll of this because I think it’s really important to have a project like this that aims to stop the gentrification that people are trying to do to our home. Parramatta.    

I want to be apart of piecing this together.   I also want to work with other writers who bring back some of that colour and memories I have of Parramatta.     Professionally, I think this will be an incredibly important piece of writing created with a lot of heart.     

Personally, I am desperate to be able to remember and see a future for the Western Sydney I miss and love so much.