CHANGING MATILDA

would the naturalized citizens please come forward and receive their certificates of naturalization from his worship Amer as I call their names as I advancement [Music] MacOS Lima Paisley eggless para [Applause] layna fire man that is devspeak [Music] this report is about modern Australia a waltzing matilda who now tangos twists and dances with talent fellow to exotic temples we should concern ourselves with a post-war surge of European immigrants the barren interior land and Australia's honest effort to draw closer to its Asian neighbors Australia is an all-white prospering land in a brown and yellow sea she is one of the biggest countries in the world and is desolate as she is big underpopulated and unexploited she lives beneath the umbrella of a teeming bursting Asia Australia is an island a continent a nation yet its population is less than that of Greater New York City there is no shortage of space Australia's 11 million people rattle around in an area as big as the United States about 3/4 live in a small wedge in the southeast vast sections of the interior are empty [Music] to fill this void Australia opened its doors to Europe after World War Two Sydney Harbour took on a look of New York in 1900 there was of course nothing startling about the million odd Britons who entered but another million migrants people from Italy Poland Austria Spain Greece Malta Yugoslavia Holland brought a new flavour and a new look they're still coming learning English finding jobs raising families and by and large having few regrets if Australia is not Eldorado it's surely a vast improvement over the lives they leave behind in 1947 Australia has energetically sought these people out the Australian consulate in Genoa for example is one of the busiest offices in that frantic port passage is a system for a token $56 a man and his wife children travel free can make the long voyage East just about everyone is welcome the skilled the unskilled beyond the elderly everyone except Asians and Africans the White Australia Policy is unyielding candidly defended and sometimes diplomatically embarrassing for all its open space Australia is a country of big cities Sydney over 2 million people despite early hopes that the migrants would populate the interior they have understandably flocked to the cities for jobs are available and where the atmosphere is like that of congested Central Europe Melbourne was not quite 2 million is the most British of Australian cities but we need the anglo-saxon veneer Latin temperaments bubble futons and Slavs are taking root Canberra Australia's national capital is a made-to-measure city like Brasilia the sense of isolation is strong here only 67,000 people feel migrants on the other hand prosperous industrial towns like Wollongong a steel centre are filled with new Australians it's mainly heavy industries steel autos mining that have absorbed the migrants Renato Lagasse on the left is a typical success story he's a slow teen who came to Australia on an Italian passport 12 years ago he worked first as a sugar cutter in Queensland then he took the lowest job at Port Kembla a sweeper in the yards today he is an assistant Foreman at one of the giant steel furnaces Renato is one of an army of central Europeans who keep Australian industry operating the duty roster tells the story Anglo Saxon names are at Smith and Jones have gone elsewhere the Renato Lagasse's have replaced the older Aussie in many industries the anglo-saxon has moved up to supervisory posts or white-collar work Renato is satisfied he earned $78 a week one of the highest wage scales in the world moreover he has an identity as an Australian which pleases him he owns his own car his own house for Renato is not merely from middle Europe he is middle Europe observe the Wollongong supermarket where Frankel Lagasse shops food is plentiful variety infinite efficiency rules the cozy neighborhood delicatessen with its foreign cheese's is ignored mass merchandising is an inevitable part of the new prospering Australia good morning everybody this is v JC the Royal Flying Doctor Service Broken Hill it's medical time now stations wanting doctor come in please [Applause] stand by please we're getting dr for now 9su Kimber will you come influence over the pre engine plane and the airborne doctor are the new symbols of the outback hard-working ranchers farmers and miners inhabit the great dead heart and they need medical care dr. robert north and his colleagues at Broken Hill cover an area one and a half times as big as Texas half a million square miles [Music] the difficulty of supplying basic services to the Outback sellers has given Australian second thoughts about expansion this land is as dry as the Sahara there are several gigantic irrigation projects underway but their output will be quickly absorbed applying doctors are a non-profit group in many ways they represent what is most admirable in the Australian character and in particular the Australian of the outback there is a sense of self-reliance a willingness to help an obligation to others it invites memories of and satisfies the nostalgia for our own simple frontier society the home of the time owner is a reassuring sound to the rancher whose home may be 200 miles from any other civilized outpost the thomas ranks at Lonsdale 170,000 acres 8,000 sheep the patient Bob north is calling on Jim Thomas senior is an outback pioneer in his youth illness that one of these isolated stations could often mean death today the flying doctors can be raised in a minute or two by radio by day and night and generally a lot faster than you can get a physician in New York City on a Friday more than 1500 stations are serviced by the flying doctors over a third of Australia has no other medical service except the airborne physician often a patient will be examined taken aboard the plane and fans for into a hospital bed in less time than it takes in a big city it's easy to admire the flying doctors at the same time their existence makes one poignant ly aware of the terrible emptiness of most of Australia the loneliness and desolation of much of the country all the boost reach visions of big cities and flowing water in the Australian interior must be viewed with caution the dryness the flatness wind and the flies may long prevail over any grandiose schemes well come on children it starts to lag in the outback doctors fly and school lessons are broadcast a unique institution the school of the air looks after the education of the ranchers children Philip and Cheryl Thomas get their schooling by a shortwave radio [Music] [Music] good morning girls and boys how are you this lovely fine spring morning fit and well I hope this is mrs. Phyllis Gibb member of the British Empire principal of the Broken Hill School of the air so we might change now to a word game and see how well you can do with that you think of them quickly and then if there's a word that you don't know you can write them down the soldier walked down the road a better word than walked in that sentence could you turn the argument over tonight afternoon strutted yes that is quite a good word to use what did you think of Ron at 18 DB ever I'm in there very much oh yes much to the good work I think of a better one for me have you thought of one from a debate p2e ever tried Java voice practice is a good word hey Cece I think Cheryl had one bigger ompletely cross admission skill this proverb that's another one I don't even get run over 18 though they've plotted over and plotted is another one will overall good words for that sentence so let's look at this one this is a harder one you'll have to think about this one a bathing walked slowly towards me if you thought of one I wonder if Ivan had won over to manage you fumble over yes the rule would be quite a good word have either of the two at 8pt thought of one alone no mrs. Gibbs my childhood was a hard one have you run of eight mzv Evan I can barely toddled over yes that's a very good one do if anyone thought of a different one Earnie singleton is one of a quiet Brotherhood of Australians who find the brooding silences of the never-never-land attractive he is by choice a boundary writer charged with the maintenance of the longest fence in the world this is the wild dog fence 3000 miles of high wire barrier designed to keep the vicious Singhal out of sheep country Ernie's job is to repair 60 miles of it to shoot and trap wild dogs he and his family often go for days without seeing anyone else Ernie likes his job like many Australians he's fascinated with the prospect of going it alone the fence the red dust the Moga tree in the salt bush these are his world once a year Ernie gets a two-week vacation he takes his wife and son to Sydney to see the big town and usually gets bored a few days he finds Sydney confining his stretch offense the hot clear sky and the red dirt are more to his liking there was a time when it was fashionable to speculate about Australia eventually absorbing 100 million people these optimistic estimates are being steadily revised downward 25 30 million is the current maximum of which people speak the hospitable desert with its sparse vegetation its arid stretches its merciless Sun may put a cruel brake on even that modest figure for years to come the dead heart may prove harp and home only to the rugged likes of any single day building up its population and making the land livable are two-thirds of Australia's problem there remains the hard fact that Australia is much closer to Japan and to either England or America the distance from Indonesia to Darwin is far less than the distance from Darwin to Sydney in played diplomacy cultural relations and that broad vague area called international goodwill Australians are not taking a second look at their neighbours a look long overdue in the opinion of many Aussies for one thing Asia is now in Australia's backyard this is New Guinea half of the island belongs to Indonesia and sukarno whose reputation as a nice neighbor is questionable the other half is run by Australia partly as a UN trust partly as a territory no one quite knows where to find the border between Sukarno's real estate and Australia's surveying parties have made half-hearted attempts to locate it but no matter where it is the uneasy fact remains Australia now shares a common boundary with an Asian nation thus far there have been no incidents Australians pray it stays that way quite Australia this means coloured people are not welcome except for businessmen diplomats and a few others despite this rigid colour bar more than 10,000 Asian students have been welcomed on special visas to Australian universities many come under the auspices of a Colombo Plan at the Australian National University in Canberra three Asian students gave some frank and tolerant comments to reporter David Burke it's about time Australia discovered its neighbours and I think that Australia is the eventually to be a part of Southeast Asia and as the Pacific region but this is a fact which had been obscured in the past because the countries of this region were tied individually to European countries and didn't have very much to do with one another the Australians here have a very high standard of living and I think they are very afraid of a influx of Asians into this country who will compete and work for lower wages I think for this reason they don't want their standard living in suppress obviously the Asian countries are not expecting that they will solve either the overpopulation problem or the unemployment problem by dumping people on to Australia it's mainly a question of the gesture which Australians might make towards neighbours that they don't discriminate against that as such it has been noted particularly things the the common market in Europe came into being Australia felt that was by allowing itself Acacia she would be more economically viable with to the world now longer is Britain Australia's one big customer there is one customer amongst many their proportion of importance to Australia as a market to declined heavily since before the war and in her place has come a great expansion of our trade with Asia and in Asia with Japan Japan is not yet Australia's biggest customer last year she was Australia's second biggest customer but in the future it's confidently expected that Japan will be come to Australia what Britain was to her before the war the Britain of the Far East Australia's big growing and most important customer Australia has no diplomatic relations with Communist China but Australians see no inconsistency between this fact and the fact that we're conducting has very large trade with communist strife China last year exports to that country amounted to some one hundred and fifty million dollars the devlins of Australia's desire to increase her trade with Red China the Australian wool industry has already sent technicians into Red China to train the Chinese in world textile technology were already sending steel to China various nipples are also going there and long term there are great hopes in Australia for the expansion of the Chinese market as a possible second Japan the challenge is implicit in changing mathilde are enormous the absorption of millions of poles and Italians and Greeks into an anglo-saxon society the conquering of the great dead heart the uneasy new friendships with Japan the orbiters the Red China all of these are heavy burdens for a nation of 11 million living in outlandish isolation yet the Australian enters these contests well on not with nuclear warheads or aircraft carriers but with certain remarkable traits of national character there looking at first a love of their land listen to David Campbell former RAF pilot rancher and one of Australia's leading poets the son was in the summer grass the cooler Bosworth twisted steel thus often paused beneath air shade and sat upon his steel and with the reins looped through his arm he rolled the decade in his palm his horse stood still is cattle dog tongued in the shadow of the tree and for a moment on the plane time waited for three and then the Stockman licked his peg and time took up his solace play I saw the toughened mountain ride across the Mirage on the plane and still at timeless moment brought fresh ripples my brain it seemed in that distorting air I saw his grandson sitting there another national trait I respect for the right to be heard the right to sound off in the best English tradition this is Australia's Hyde Park the domain in Sydney okay you may listen right through the world and humanism with languages even from the cradle to the grave very nice bounty 46 years light up there a parrot explaining the world our capitalist very pride show me something my life is in superior eight to the short version and the Kabbalist carries of the loner guys whose brightness a big boy finally a rare courage we're at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra in two world wars in Korea and elsewhere the Australian has demonstrated a bravery and a capacity for self-sacrifice which does honor to all free men Australians have little time for military strike and less for authority yet in terms of their numbers they have suffered one of the highest casualty rates in the world at Gallipoli lawn pipe buna Tobruk [Music] populate or perish is the way the politicians journalists and other casandra's define Australia's dilemma the dark worker in one of a little or the jackaroo on a sheep station is far less pessimistic he has no intention of perishing populated or not and that urge to increase may indeed be limited by the continents dryness it follows that Australia small in numbers white-skinned industrialised must find ways to live with Asia our start has been made and it has surprised many by its Good Omens for one thing the sensitive Indian or Japanese has reacted extremely well to the Australia whom they see is an outgoing bloke free of the stigma colonialism to the White Australia Policy is an anchor dragging on a nation eager to sail in agencies some token immigration of Asians as opposed yest may be in the eye with all the Australian prospect is an exciting one with natural wealth energy a solid basis in British law and a friendliness as assertive as their beer the Australian may yet play a crucial role in Asia as a bridge between white and colleague peoples between former colonial masters and subjects between the industrialized and the evolving they'll certainly give it a good try or as any fair dinkum dinky-di Aussie would say let's give it a burl this is Chet Huntley reporting