Groundbreakingly Ethnic Sydney

Last week's Sun Herald paper in Sydney greeted us with yet another article on the groundbreaking ethnicness of Western Sydney. Clearly, the author has only recently crossed the Harbour Bridge and ventured west of Ashfield, and like my friend Air Mauritius just a fortnight ago, the author was sincerely stunned at what she saw. It's not the author's fault though - most Sydneysiders never leave their neighbourhoods, let alone venture outside a 10km radius until they get jobs in the city centre, or God forbid, Parramatta (EDIT: Actually, it's probably by attending university in the city that most Sydney suburbanites first venture regularly into the city) . I have only recently learned that not everyone memorises the Sydney Cityrail network and timetable by age 10, unless of course they have some form of Asperger's:

Children with Asperger's have average or above average intelligence and are sometimes (but not always) skilled or gifted in a specific area, i.e., math, reading maps, memorizing train schedules, playing an instrument, etc.

Truth be told, my visit just a fortnight ago with Air Mauritius to Cabramatta, Australia's most famous Vietnamese enclave, was actually my first in my 22 years in Sydney. Quite poignantly, the NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell announced on the same day Cabramatta's inclusion on the official tourist map for Sydney. Yet even on the morning of our trek, my mother packed me a rape whistle in case '3'/Vodafone didn't have any reception there. As it turned out, the food was nothing to write to Hanoi about. I'd had better food this side of Bankstown. Air Mauritius, though, could not get over the near Vietnamese-homogeneity of the place. But as a native of Sydney's upper north shore where the spiciest thing in town is woodfired hawaiian pizza, for Air Mauritius, that bowl of Pho may as well have been Air Mauritius' first. It was a revelation.

We managed to not only leave unscathed, but to also enjoy ourselves (although the close to 2 hour trek left a fresh stamp in our minds that living this far out west was some sort of life sentence, especially for anyone that worked east of Strathfield). Cabramatta, however, was a stark contrast to Canberra some 4 hours down the road, one week later. Canberra somehow had more black people in its city centre during business hours, and yet it managed to still be whiter than Sydney. What was sad though was this visit was our first ever to Cabramatta, let alone anywhere down the South Line of the Cityrail network. What was even sadder that we were two SHEs, and yet we were probably just as clueless about this part of Sydney as Pauline Hanson was about the continued whiteness of London (although I was less impressed by the local Asian grocery selection than Air Mauritius, who travels halfway across the city to Parramatta for ethnic groceries, while I walk 15 minutes down the road). If Air Mauritius and the Sun Herald writers' experiences are anything to go by, Sydney remains a spice rack where the saffron, chilli powder and coriander have hardly been touched or remain unopened, and only the salt and pepper gets used.