Seeing on the news that there are race riots in Sydney for a second night running is very depressing, and it tarnishes some of my happy memories of spending time over there with my old job.

I always felt there was a sort of casual racism amongst a lot of the white Australians, even if a lot of it was not meant in a hostile way. Its the way you could hear them refer in passing to the ‘slopes’ and the ‘abos’. But its not that simple of course. The liberal middle classes seemed to be trying to get aboriginal culture and art accepted and the country is a prime example of one which absolutely depends on immigration to remain competitive, and has done for years.

The first time I was in Sydney, in 1988, I went to a museum. I think it was the museum of technology near the Sydney Exhibition Centre and there was a whole section of the museum devoted to the history of immigration. It told the story of the various waves of immigration, from the original English/Irish settlers, through the huge post-war influx of Greeks, the Lebanese and latterly the Asians from the Indian sub-continent, the Phillipines, Vietnam, Japan and elsewhere.

In a way it reminded me of the stories about Britain encouraging massive immigration just after the war from the colonies, especially the West Indies and India/Pakistan to man the buses and fill the many other vacancies.

When I was down there I mostly hung around with Greeks and a lot of our entertainment after work was going to Vietnamese and Thai restaurants and South American bars in the Western suburbs. It all seemed to be perfectly harmonious, and this combined with the weather made it seem like a real utopia. OK, we have seen more recently the reports of the right-wing nationalist party but always assumed that was just outback rednecks. It was a real shock to see reports of these riots. A real case of paradise lost.

The irony is that back in the 1980’s there was one nationality you were seeing a lot more of in Australia – South Africans. This was at the height of apartheid and those of us on the left were practically trained to have a pavlovian reaction to South Africans. However, all the ones I met were pleasant, charming and good company. It took a while for the penny to drop – these were the ones who lost patience waiting for the end to apartheid and left South Africa to go somewhere more enlightened and liberal, but didn’t fancy the weather in Britain.

I wonder if some of them are now wondering whether its time to go home?