A celebration of diverse Lebanese history in Redfern

On the 19th of September, the ALHS took its first group of visitors on a journey across 100 years of Lebanese migration to Sydney, walking around the area of Redfern which used to be called Little Lebanon, namely Elizabeth, Great Buckingham, Cleveland, Walker and Cooper Streets.

While Redfern is largely known culturally as an Aboriginal area, it is lesser known for also being the first home of many Lebanese migrants to Australia from the 1880s onwards.

Nowadays, very few traces of the famous warehouses on Elizabeth Street set up in the early 1900s by Lebanese entrepreneurs remain, apart from Stanton Melick's, as most were demolished to make space for housing developments in the late 1950s.

Those prosperous wholesalers employed many waves of Lebanese migrants, or Assyrians, before the formation of the modern state of Lebanon in 1943. Most Lebanese migrants came to Australia to make a better life for themselves, some escaping religious persecution under the Ottoman empire, great famines or to reunite with their families.

Many settled in Redfern, which, as a result was renamed Little Lebanon. The NSW Governor Marie 'Bashi" lived at her grandmother's home in Redfern while attending Sydney Girls High School.

"When they first arrived in Sydney, many Lebanese immigrants hotbedded around Redfern while seeking employment. Great Buckingham Street in the 1920s saw many a its houses filled with boarders," says Paul Convy. Today, an iron gate shaped as a cedar, the symbol for Lebanon, still stands half way down the street, reminding this leafy gentrified street of those earlier occupants.

Just across the road is Redfern Park. "Redfern Park was the recreational area for the Lebanese community; they all came to the park to meet each other, exchange news and where newcomers would find work," Convy says.

If Lebanese newcomers could not find jobs with the wholesalers, because of discriminatory practices barring Syrians from many forms of employment, in the early 1900s, the wholesalers would nevertheless supply them with haberdasheries, linen and goods that could be hawked. Many of those hawkers headed for rural Australia and set up successful businesses in most NSW country towns.

"I remember when we used go for drives with the kids through the country, we would keep them busy by asking them to spot the Lebanese family names on the awnings of shops in the villages we passed," Convy recalls.

"The Lebanese rural business owners would still come back to Redfern to purchase stock from the warehouses and attend religious observance obligations and social events," says Freda Backes, President of the Australian Lebanese Historic Society.

"Churches were the attraction for Lebanese migrants who later moved to different suburbs such as Harris Park, Thornleigh or Punchbowl."

Even when the businesses in Redfern changed, the members of the Lebanese community kept coming back to Little Lebanon to get married or buried until the 1970s when they built their churches in other suburbs.

St George's Orthodox Cathedral, situated at the corner of Walker and Cooper Streets, holds memories of many Lebanese weddings, funerals and family reunions.

One such family reunion occurred during the walk, when visitor Gregory Sachs, whose maternal grandmother was born into a Lebanese family bumped into Richard Yared, who was also visiting the Cathedral that day. They stood amongst rows of church benches engraved with Lebanese family names such as Mellick, Dounami, Malouf and Mansour, recounting stories about common relatives.

Lebanese immigrants in Australia played an important role in the growth and development of NSW, in both the economic and political spheres.

Notable Lebanese members of the community include Governor Marie Bashir; her husband Sir Nicholas Shehadie who was the captain of the Australian Wallabies Rugby Union team in 1953-54 and Lord Mayor of Sydney in 1972; and Alexander Alam, one of the longest-serving members of the NSW Legislative Council.

An ALHS study in partnership with the NSW Migration Heritage Centre and the NSW Department of Planning is due for release in 2008, which will shed more light on the migration story of Lebanese Immigrants in Australia and their contribution to NSW heritage, which began in suburbs such as Redfern.

Photo: Taste of culture: Lebanese restaurants on Elizabeth Street

Source: University of Technology Precinct South Sydney Edition Issue 4/2007 page 14-15.

Publications from the UTS School of Journalism can be found online at www.journalism.uts.edu.au/future_students/student_publications.html and at www.reportage.uts.edu.au/