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A Weird Mob. Some immigrants find the bland phrase "New Australian" as offensive as the "dago" and "hunky" it was designed to replace. "I've been here eight years," complains a Greek, "and they still call me a bloody New Australian. When do I become an old one?" But barriers are breaking down: immigrants now hold 20% of all Australian jobs, and are neighbors of the old in suburban streets. Some 80,000 bachelor immigrants have found native-born wives. They're a Weird Mob, a breezy book about an Italian newcomer's discovery of
Australian brotherhood, is a 160,000-copy national bestseller.
Strengthened by the immigration and the sense that they have been strong enough to absorb it, Old Australians are developing a new tolerance and a new national assurance. For whatever the oddity of their new neighbors, the Old Australians count on them to help their nation survive as a Caucasian island on the edge of a vast and alien Asian continent.