Sydney Morning Herald

Day of belonging

By Soumya Bhattacharya
January 27, 2004
Ronesh Humar Dayaram Hargovind from Fiji, left, Mamadou Dembele from Mali with his son Dexter-Moses Diamond Dembele, centre, and Jasdip Singh Dhanjal from India, right, take part in an Australia Day citizenship ceremony at Hyde Park, Sydney. Photo: Kate Geraghty

You couldn't have timed it better had you orchestrated it. At precisely 1pm, as the citizenship ceremony was getting off to a rousing start, a clutch of seagulls flew in a graceful, celebratory arc across a patch of blindingly blue sky above Hyde Park.

Babak Amiri from Iran, sitting among those who took part in the Australia Day citizenship ceremony, did not notice the birds. But he might have been thinking of the two qualities they epitomised: flight and freedom.

Mr Amiri, 30, is an information technology professional who has lived in Australia for a few years. And now he can officially call it home.

"What I love most about this country is the freedom," he said. "There's so much freedom to say what you like, to do what you like."

That freedom, and the sense of living in a country that embraces it as much in its landscape as in its attitudes, probably preoccupied all of the 64 new citizens from more than 40 nations. They all had their stories, but the concept of freedom underpinned the future they collectively stepped towards yesterday.

"I had to renounce my Australian citizenship when I first got it in 1985," said Ali Moradkhani, from Iran. He married an Australian within two months of arriving in the country and obtained citizenship in the same year, but then had to give it up because "of problems with dual citizenship in Iran".

There was no such trouble yesterday. "It's an easy, free society. There are fewer boundaries in daily life," he said.

Sukhdev Kaur Dhanjal, a 50-year old mother of three from Kenya, said the ceremony was a great moment for her and her family.

If becoming an Australian citizen is like joining a family, as Sydney's Lord Mayor, Lucy Turnbull, suggested, the ceremony was a good indication of how that family celebrates a holiday. Hyde Park was a carnival of colours and smells and sights.

There were food tents and banners, hectares of green grass and trees, and sunlight refracted through the Archibald Fountain.

The image seamlessly married the Australian love for the outdoors and the good life.

And if the celebrations tapped a vein of flag-waving, anthem-singing triumphalism and nationalistic backslapping, it was not entirely misplaced on such a day.

Graeme Connors sang Being Here, his theme song for the Sydney Paralympics, and the words rang true: "Being here is what it's all about . . . Proud to remember being here."

Those at Hyde Park were lucky to be there.

Even the weather was gorgeous despite predictions to the contrary. It threatened to rain but it didn't.

Now had it been England, it might have promised not to, yet still poured.