Kishna Mootialoo (D14)

Viviane has discovered some interesting information about mon Grandpere. Strangely, spending time with my Mauritian family is making me slip into French almost without realising. I'm not at their stage of just drifting between the English, French and Creole fluently. Grandpere changed his name to Raymond Benett at some stage, presumably when he became a Catholic and/or to further his career as a nurse in a Port Louis, the Capital. On the 19th October 1921, aged 26 years, he married Marie Suzanne Eugenie Davis, Great grandaughter of Dr Clarenc. She was 21 years old. He went on to outlive his wife by many years. Granpere's parents were called Yerramah Yallappa (mere) and Pothamah Mootialoo (pere). Pothamah's father was Lingoo and mother Elloo (nee Assuna). The Indian heritage is unmistakable from the names alone. The question is which part of Indian. That would be interesting. I'm guessing southern India, maybe Tamil Nadu, we'll see. I have Jamaican patients whose origins are from India. I wonder if I'm related to them distantly. Presumably, workers emigrated from India, some stopped off in Mauritius, others went on to the more far flung colonies.

Talking of mixtures of races, I went to Norwood with Viv yesterday. It looks and feels like a place like Rusholme but without the curry houses. Every race and colour was walking up and down the main street. White Caucasians were walking hand in hand with Chinese, African men were busying about their business, Polynesian girls were giggling outside a clothes shop, an Aboriginal man was begging and others, mixed raced, were queuing outside the labour exchange. Suddenly a young white man came rushing out of the building cursing and swearing about the stupidity of computers, shaking his arms about and looking agitated. He disappeared down the street as people first bristled and then relaxed as he passed.

Then it rained. Not a storm rain, a fine rain, the sort of rain that wets you right through. It was cold as well. How can this be, we were in a heat wave yesterday? Viv says it's a bit of a myth about the constant hot weather in Sydney. Some people, she smiles, don't bring any blankets with them when they emigrate. Well immigrate I suppose, except it's emigrate if it's from Europe. It seems my first impressions of Sydney, based on Neighbours, Home and Away and further out suburbs was wrong. The older parts of town are much more like England. There are Greek kebab shops, Chinese take aways, Italian pizza and icecream parlours, cheap clothes, jewelers, convenience stores.

Norwood looks to me how Australia is going to be, and England I suppose. Rich in mixtures of races and cultures and beliefs. We're going to need that diversity if we're going to survive. In nature diversity is strength.

I didn't have a camera with me yesterday in Norwood, so today I'm going to walk around Five Dock to try to capture what that's like. Sydney is great, despite the weather.