5 Aspects of Cultural Diversity

Elizabeth Denley looks back on her childhood, which kindled an awareness and interest in cultural diversity. She offers some key learnings from those formative years that have helped her to embrace the possibility of humanity coming together in kinship, mutual love and respect.

- By Elizabeth Denley. Illustrations by Jasmee Mudgal

Growing up in a steel town in Australia after the Second World War was a smorgasbord of multicultural diversity. My neighbors and school friends were from many parts of the world, including China, Lebanon, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Israel, Palestine, Russia, Germany, Poland, and the UK. By my teens that had expanded to Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and by my twenties to all countries of the world. Back then, Australia was known as the Lucky Country as there was work for everyone. That does not mean racism and prejudice were absent, especially for Indigenous Australians. As a melting pot it was still a work in progress, with a lot of teething problems that are still being resolved today.

The Steelworks was a place for migrant workers, so over 50% the town's population was composed of new arrivals, and wave after wave from other shores joined the workforce as I grew up. While the adults didn't always get on, we children adapted to each other's ways very quickly.

We shared each other's food at lunchtime, climbed the same trees, played softball and netball together, and laughed at jokes and common experiences. By the time I finished school, the first thing I did was travel to other continents to learn more about their richness of culture and history.