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The world has arrived in Townsville in other ways: American talk shows, Irish theme pubs, Internet cafes. "You say, 'stone the bloody crows' and people have no idea what you're talking about," sighs Ken Amos, who runs a sandwich bar in town. "Hardly anyone wears a wide-brimmed hat anymore." But this is still very much an Australian place: there are cattle dogs and dusty utes, old pubs with long verandahs and names like the Commonwealth and the Republic, a local daily newspaper that still runs high-school graduation photos. To the visitor, Townsville has a laid-back flavor that Australians like to think of as uniquely theirs; both men and women greet one another as 'mate' and conversation comes easily.
That is the veneer. But the true strength of the social fabric is more complex. At Federation, the notion of civic inclusiveness—perhaps what federation campaigner Henry Parkes exalted as the "crimson thread of kinship that runs through us all"—was deliberately narrow, affording little room to women, Aboriginal people or recent migrants. Yet migrants and migrant labor have helped propel the region's growth since the late 1880s. The Leong family made their way from Guangzhou province in southern China to Australia early last century; first to Sydney and eventually to Townsville, where they ran a general store. Byron Leong, a great-great-nephew of his family's first migrant, is a 25-year-old Townsville lawyer. His parents still speak Chinese at home but, he says, "younger people have tended to assimilate, to play football. They don't feel they need an ethnic group."
Like many people, Leong was upset by the support shown for maverick politician Pauline Hanson's anti-immigration policies, "but I didn't feel threatened because I've grown up here, my friends are here and they, and the people I work with, give me respect." Iranian-born Farvardin Daliri, who came to Australia as a refugee in 1984 and now manages the local Migrant Resource Centre, says Townsville shouldn't be seen as redneck. "I wouldn't say we don't have racism—because we do have problems—but that shouldn't be generalized," he says, pointing to the success of the town's annual Multicultural Festival, which last year drew 30,000 people.
Indigenous Australians barely featured in Federation debates—and did not legally become citizens until 1967. Today, few issues have more national prominence. And though the capital cities drive the debate on reconciliation, it is in regional communities like Townsville, with relatively large Aboriginal populations, that race relations are played out every day. Some 4.3% of the city's people are indigenous—more than twice the national figure. Prejudice against them "is not in your face," says Tony McDermott, director of Centacare Catholic Family Services, "but it's there." Says Florence Onus, an Aboriginal academic at Townsville's James Cook University: "There are two separate communities that only meet on the fringes."
A low point has been the town's difficulties with Aboriginal people drinking in local parks. A council attempt several years ago to use tough by-laws and security guards with dogs to move out the drinkers outraged indigenous people. A diversionary center now tries—with limited success—to reduce the problem. "We're back on the road," says Aboriginal elder Alec Illin. "It's taken a hell of a long time, though, and [the controversy] should never have happened."
But there are hopeful signs. "Wonderful things have come out of Townsville," says Margaret Reynolds, a former Labor Senator from Queensland. Last August it held Australia's first reconciliation march outside a capital city, attended by about 2,000 people. The Catholic Church handed over a church in the suburb of Garbutt to its indigenous congregation in 1998, and the pioneering black community school where land-rights activist Eddie Mabo was director still exists. Townsville City Council employed one of the nation's first cultural liaison officers in 1981. And an indigenous advisory group, set up with council help three years ago, has won wide praise. At first only a dozen local elders were involved; now around 106 are consulted by council, local government and business. Elders like Josephine Sailor say the shift—from tokenistic involvement to meaningful negotiations—has been profound: "Thirty years ago we couldn't even have got an audience with the local council." The need now, says elder Chrissie Prior, is to harness that goodwill: "There's a generosity out in the community that supports the rights of Aboriginal people in principle, but people don't know how to sustain it. How do they make it happen in everyday life?"
Few look to politicians to lead the way. Australia has always been wary of its elected leaders—all the more so in modern Townsville, where investigations into electoral fraud saw former local Labor candidate Karen Ehrman jailed last year. "You can't rely on governments," says Lucia Gosling, a businesswoman with two children. "We want to set ourselves up so the kids don't have to rely on anyone." Even those who most need the government's help doubt its sincerity. At 59, Col Berzinski has been searching for a job for three years. A former truck driver with poor hearing and reading skills, he lives on $A300 a fortnight in welfare and worries he will never work again. But he's not counting on politicians to help him out: "None of them are in it for you. I don't even know why we have to vote."