Monday, 30 August 2010
I am, you are, we are Australian - and Bob Katter is too
I bet the Katter family get sick of it. I know I do. As a long time resident of the seat of Kennedy and someone who stood twice against Bob Katter Senior in that seat, I know how often people ask about the ethnicity of the Katters.
To-day I have visits to the this blog from people seeking just that information. Someone wanted to know if Bob Katter was Aboriginal. No. Another asked his "ethnicity". I have heard all sorts of suggestions in the past.
So let's settle it right here - hopefully (but I guess not) forever. The Katters are of Lebanese extraction. I will give you a couple of firm bases for this. Firstly, this newspaper article. The other is a local history program I heard on Radio National two or three years ago.
It was one of those programs one could hear on a Saturday afternoon - but the ABC does a few history programs so I can't recall the name of this one. It's major informant seemed to be Richard Anthony, a well known figure in Charters Towers. He mentions the Katters in that program.
You see, there was this marvellous extended Lebanese family. Richard described how his grandmother/aunts/mother used to cook for them all. It was a charming piece of little-known history. So - let me say it clearly - the Katters are Lebanese. No, they are not Aboriginal. No, they are not Syrian. No they are not descended from Afghan cameleers.
But all this was a few generations ago. The immersion of the Katters and their relatives in northern and western Queensland has been steep and deep. They are real identities, real locals there. They are - as we all are who voted on 21 August 2010 - Australian.
Let's not count the difference - albeit we may have political ones. Let's just rejoice in the fact that Australian soil absorbs us all and turns each of us into something unique - if we let it.
6 comments:
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It is the same with the last Victorian premier, being Lebanese in some way. Even Australians get called Aboriginal, my brother does. Some English/Scottish have darker skin, and we have a broaden nose, so that is what he gets.
ReplyDeleteI reckon that if we were ever to eliminate racism - we would probably demark ourselves by the shape of the eyebrow. Seems that the human species, across the globe, likes to put people into boxes and then into ascending and descending orders with someone always at the bottom and someone always at the top. Do bees and ants do this too?
ReplyDeleteBlessings and bliss
Brigid
I would have thought that your followers were not likely to be concerned about supposed "aboriginality" - but who can tell. Some of your followers obviously follow only to keep track of your "causes" - as an early warning system for the "dark side" - and that is NOT a reference to skin colour!
ReplyDelete.
Bob Katter's family is proud of their Lebanese ancestry.
Many of the early settlers from Lebanon have eztablished themselves over many generations in outback Qld and NSW. Some moved to the cities, and built strong businesses, famously as tailors, in particular.
Wikipedia says (of Bob Katter Senior)"Katter was born in Brisbane, Queensland, of Roman Catholic Lebanese descent and has been described as a cousin of the poet Khalil Gibran. His father was one of the two dozen original investors to start Qantas. He was raised and educated "probably by the nuns" in Cloncurry and later at Mount Carmel College in Charters Towers."
Source: Bob Katter Snr in Wikipedia
So Grand-daddy Katter was an original investor in Qantas. It hardly gets more Aussie and more "Queenslander" than that!
.
There are many famous Lebanese names to conjure with: Malouf (a certain Aussie author); Shehadie (Sydney Lord Mayor Nick, and his wife the NSW Governor Marie Bashir); Scarf (Reuben F Scarf's company were tailors to all Catholic schools in NSW, back when I was a kid); Mansour, Malick (or Mellick). Those are just a few of the better known early Lebanese settler families.
Cheers
Denis
People ask the question because he looks aboriginal. Nothing to do with racism
ReplyDeleteWouldn't have thought so myself. Don't know about you - but have known, do know quite a few Aboriginal people from various parts of the continent. In fact, I am off among the Yorta Yorta nation just this coming week. But that's the problem isn't? A lot of people who ask (and this may not apply to you, Bat) don't know many Aboriginal people. I have never once considered the Katters to look like Aboriginals at all. It's a bit difficult if we go by anyone's looks. That old family tree has all sorts of co-incidences in its genetics. And we have to remember the 2011 Andrew Bolt example. That caused him a bit of trouble. Some people think Chinese are Japanese and vice versa - yet I remember my father saying that if only people knew they would know that Chinese and Japanese people are like chalk and cheese. So let's take people at face and skin value. Let's go by what they, as individuals, say and do.
DeleteActually, Syrian/Lebanese, its really the same. My great great great grandparents were called Asyrian when they came here from what is today Lebanon. Lebanon and Syria as seperate countries -and seperate identities - is a fairly new phenomenon - less than 100 years old.
ReplyDelete