A really, really long time ago, in the early seventies, KFC had only recently established itself in Australia. I can’t remember how many fast food outlets of this type there were in Ipswich at the time, but I do remember what is now KFC Booval. Fond memories come into misty focus for me of sharing a KFC — Kentucky Fried Chicken as it was called then — lunch with my dad, sitting in his old HR Holden ute. Both of us were seated side by side on the bench seat of his severely rusted but much beloved old beast, a Snack Box sitting precariously in each of our laps. For the princely sum of 80 cents, we received two pieces of mysteriously spiced fried chicken, a small tub of spectacularly reconstituted and whipped potato, topped with a signature glutenous light brown gravy and, to top it all off, this feast was accompanied by a delicate and most totally ignorable bread roll. My father was a short Italian house painter, who always worked hard, who always worked angry — stop messing about and paint! —and who had a major soft spot for fast food like KFC, hence my seeming obsession.
When this stocky little KFC loving Italian arrived in Australia in 1952, the word 'wog' was not the type of term that Italians, or Greeks for that matter, would have used to identify themselves. It was, along with words like 'wop' and 'daigo', a term of exclusion and derision. My dad had heard it, my mum had heard it, and I had had my fair share of being labelled by words like these while growing up in the seventies.
As humans we have an instinct to be cautious of the unknown, of people we do not know. And to be fair, in terms of ancient societies, there is a rightness in this. However, now in the twenty first century, we can also say —here I need to borrow from Irish poet William Butler Yeats — “There are no strangers, only friends we haven’t met yet”. Over the years strangers with strange ways become friends. Calamari once used as bait is now a staple on the menu of every pub, café and bistro. Espresso in its multitude of forms has become the life blood of almost every workplace. Pizza, ‘gourmet’ or ‘normal’ — I still believe that pineapple on a pizza is a travesty — is ubiquitous and comes in more flavours than you could reasonably count in a week — which isn’t bad for what is in essence a high-end grilled cheese toastie. Gucci, Valentino and Armani, Alfa Romeo, Ducati and Lamborghini, cappuccino, lasagne and gelato, things once foreign and unknown, now part of the normal ebb and flow of life. They are friends that we embrace with familiarity, perhaps even as our own.
In reflecting on how far we have come from the days and experiences of my father’s generation, it is also confronting to see how far we have yet to go. The shadow side of being cautious of the unknown stranger can be racism, intolerance and exclusion. Even today, we are still challenged by those who are different from us.
At Eddies and in all EREA schools, a core Touchstone of our being is “Inclusive Community”. Over the last few days, in celebrating Harmony Week, our Eddies men have been given the opportunity to acknowledge and honour the myriad of cultures that make our community special. We each bring our gifts and present them to each other, from our traditions to our foods, from our languages to our ways of thinking. KFC and all things Italian were once new and strange but now have added fullness and depth to who we are as a community. So too, those who are today unknown or new or who remain hidden, will also add to our community here at the top of Mary Street, and to our world. As a Catholic school in the Edmund Rice Tradition, with the model left for us by Jesus and Edmund we strive for diversity, inclusion, acceptance and understanding - beyond culture, beyond skin colour, beyond gender, regardless of sexuality, ability or disability. In a world increasingly without boundaries, our young men will be all the richer for this acceptance, for the gifts once so different and new that each of us bring to each other, and now embrace as our own. “There are no strangers, only friends we haven’t met yet”.
