All around the countryside, growers of various nationalities have been working hard. Turkish, Italian, Somalian, Maltese, Vietnamese, Irish, and others, have weeded, fertilised, mulched, and staked. They have met each other queuing at nurseries. They have said to each other: "What are you putting in this year? I think I'll try Romas ..."
While politicians and commentators have been aroused by the contradictions and simplicities of the fire-cracker Aussie values debate, these people have working at a much deeper study of how to be native.
Most discussion about Australian-ness is about fair go, mateship, humour, social values. But nationalism is only deeply healthy if is it grounded in being native in this place. A profound mateship grows from a joint love for this place we have been given. It makes sense that national values must be built upon our connectedness to this ground, to understanding the fertility, and limits of, this mandala of a continent.
LaTrobe University academic Freya Mathews defines being native as having one's identity "shaped by the place to which one belongs". She says one is a creature of its topography, its colours and textures, saps and juices, its moods, its ghosts and stories. As a native, "one has one's taproot deep in a particular soil".
Becoming native is a deep, slow organic process. In the linguistic inflections of the second and third generation Australians, you can hear little clicks and burrs which are remnants of the original rich languages, Italian, Greek, Dutch.
The Vietnamese gardeners I work beside at the foot of the highrise plant an emblem of Vietnam. They tidily plant lots of tiny plants, close together. They do not mulch, and they sometimes build second levels out of sticks so their creepers have space. Their gardening style seems to assume monsoonal quantities of rain.
Gardening is expressive of an inherited culture, it is imitative—a folk art. I wonder if the Vietnamese way of gardening is viable as our water supplies contract.
My garden is so untidy by comparison. I have put on heaps of good soil, then a layer of scavenged, impervious plane tree leaves, and then another layer of mulch. I will poke little holes in these layers for the tomatoes I will put about 70cm apart. It is gardening for arid times, with layers to prevent respiration. It is a garden adapted for water shortages. My family has been here for 140 years, and