Newspapers tend to feel, with some justification, that they need anniversaries or contemporary resonances to run history-based articles, but it can be so rewarding when they do send a writer back into the archives or to interview elderly participants in past events. Research has shown that many people wander away from complex contemporary stories specifically BECAUSE the don't understand the history behing them - Israel, Zimbabwe, the former Soviet Union, etc.

Here, John Huxley of the Sydney Morning Herald interviews someof the first non-white immigrants to Australia, pioneers in the painful process of a country becoming multicultural. Fascinating stuff - and the British, inevitably don't come up smelling of roses. British passengers on the first multi-national immigrant ship demdaned their own dining room, as it was 'an insult' to ask them to eat with foreigners! Lovely stuff...