Place-Making in National Parks
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Denis Byrne, Heather Goodall & Allison Cadzow Place-making in national parks Ways that Australians of Arabic and Vietnamese background perceive and use the parklands along the Georges River, NSW Front cover photographs: © Land and Property Information, Digital Aerial Photography series 2010. © Copyright State of NSW and Office of Environment and Heritage NSW. The Office of Environment and Heritage and the State of NSW are pleased to allow this material to be reproduced for educational or non-commercial purposes in whole or in part, provided the meaning is unchanged and its source, publisher and authorship are acknowledged. Disclaimer: Although every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that this document is correct at the time of publication, the State of NSW, its agencies and employees, disclaim any and all liability to any person in respect of anything or the consequences of anything done or omitted to be done in reliance upon the whole or any part of this document. No representation is made about the accuracy, completeness or suitability of the source material included in this document for any particular purpose. Readers should consult the source material referred to and, where necessary, seek appropriate advice about the suitability of this document for their needs. Published by: Office of Environment and Heritage 59–61 Goulburn Street PO Box A290 Sydney South 1232 Report pollution and environmental incidents Environment Line: 131 555 (NSW only) or [email protected] See also www.environment.nsw.gov.au Phone: (02) 9995 5000 (switchboard) Phone: 131 555 (environment information and publications requests) Phone: 1300 361 967 (national parks , climate change and energy efficiency information and publications requests) Fax: (02) 9995 5999 TTY: (02) 9211 4723 Email: [email protected] Website: www.environment.nsw.gov.au ISBN 978-1-74293-051-0 OEH 2012/0073 January 2013 Printed on recycled paper Place-making in national parks Ways that Australians of Arabic and Vietnamese background perceive and use the parklands along the Georges River, NSW Denis Byrne, Heather Goodall & Allison Cadzow The Office of Environment and Heritage NSW & The University of Technology Sydney Foreword Two of the striking things about Sydney are its cultural diversity and its national parks. Initially home for millennia to a wide range of culturally and linguistically distinct Aboriginal peoples – the Darug, Dharawal, Gundungurra, Guringai and others – the city is now also home to millions who have migrated from all corners of the globe, many arriving as refugees. It is also home to national parks which, like Lane Cove National Park and Georges River National Park, penetrate deep into the city’s suburban heartland. This report shows how these two elements – migrant communities and national parks – relate to each other. At one level, the parks are areas of public space where people from diverse cultural backgrounds experience each other’s distinctiveness. On river banks people notice the different ways others go about the act of fishing. In the picnic grounds the aroma of unfamiliar food cooking on the barbeques wafts on the breeze along with words from unfamiliar languages. In this sense, parks are habitats for cultural diversity. At another level, urban national parks provide the setting in which many migrants have their first experience of Australian nature. The English and Irish who arrived here in the late 18th century, the Italians and Greeks who came in the 1950s, the Vietnamese who arrived in the 1970s – these and all the many others who have migrated here share something in common: they were all, voluntarily or otherwise, ‘displaced’. They have faced not merely the need to learn their way around an unfamiliar environment but by the need to make a place for themselves in it. This report looks at park visitation by recent migrants through the perspective of place-making. It challenges us to see, for instance, that the Sunday picnics that Arabic-speakers regularly conduct in Georges River National Park are not just recreational – they are also to do with the business of place-attachment, of building up personal associations with particular places. We anticipate that this report will become a key resource for park staff as they work to better understand and reach out to national parks visitors from a range of cultural backgrounds. The report provides valuable insight into the different traditions of park use and nature visitation that exist in the home countries of migrants from Asia and the Middle East and how these traditions inform the ways people from these places perceive Australian nature and national parks. We also value this research in the way that it provides us with an opportunity to hear people of Arabic and Vietnamese background relating their experiences of visiting the Georges River parklands and sharing their thoughts about how the parks could be improved. Norman Laing Director Country, Culture and Heritage Division Sally Barnes Chief Executive Office of Environment and Heritage ii Place-making in national parks Contents Foreword ........................................................................................................................ii Executive summary ......................................................................................................v Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. vii Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 The Project ......................................................................................................................................................................1 National parks and cultural diversity ....................................................................................................................1 Methodology .................................................................................................................................................................2 Learning multiculturalism.........................................................................................................................................4 The report’s structure .................................................................................................................................................5 Part 1: Background ...................................................................................................... 7 1.1 Everyday multiculturalism ..........................................................................................................................10 1.2 Migration and identity .................................................................................................................................11 1.3 The multiplicity of landscape ....................................................................................................................17 1.4 The here and there of migrancy ...............................................................................................................20 1.5 Parks are not culture-neutral .....................................................................................................................24 1.6 Place-making by migrants ..........................................................................................................................26 1.7 Park use and nature visitation in Asia ....................................................................................................30 1.8 Park use and nature visitation in the Middle East .............................................................................38 1.9 Western views of nature ..............................................................................................................................46 1.10 How newcomers see the landscape .......................................................................................................50 Part 2: The Georges River Case Study .................................................................... 53 2.1 Introduction .....................................................................................................................................................53 Arabic Sydneysiders and the Georges River ....................................................................................58 2.2 Demographics .................................................................................................................................................58 2.3 Picnics in the park ..........................................................................................................................................58 2.4 Attitudes to the bush ....................................................................................................................................62 2.5 Islam and parks ...............................................................................................................................................65 2.6 Backyard park – the world of Hesham Abdo ......................................................................................68 2.7 Night time use .................................................................................................................................................71 2.8 The river .............................................................................................................................................................71