Cabramatta Senior Geography Excursion

We are all used to running geography fieldwork for the physical geography topics like Coastal Management, Land and Water Management, Biophysical Interactions and Ecosystems At Risk. There are various companies that run great excursions for these topics, but when you get to the human geography topics it isn't so easy to find pre-organised excursions. 

For my Year 11 Geography class I've taught the compulsory Population topic, and then Cultural Integration as one of the optional topics. We've examined the topic of refugees as part of an exploration of population movements, so I decided on a trip to Cabramatta to explore the impact of the Vietnamese community on this south-west Sydney suburb. I suggested this as an option on the online group Geography Teachers Online. As a result, I met up with a couple of teachers to thrash out some ideas about options for fieldwork.

Some of the ideas we came up with were:
- questionnaire of local residents
- land use survey
- urban transect of the Main Street
- environmental survey
- a photo essay based on cultural influences in the suburb
- an interview with a local government representative/Councillor

Cabramatta Library is located a short walk from the railway station. They offer a presentation on how the suburb has changed over time and are very obliging to school groups. They provide a half hour video on the development of Fairfield Local Government Area covering indigenous history, early colonial development, the market farms, education, rail development and migration. The presentation focuses on the Fairfield Local Government Area as a whole rather than Cabramatta itself, but this provides an excellent idea of the context in which Cabramatta developed. Following this there was a presentation on Cabramatta itself focusing on statistical information from the Census. It is also possible to organise a walking tour through the local council with a guide included, but they require about a months notice. 

My students were pretty unenthusiastic about going to Cabramatta initially. They have visited other suburbs with particular cultural influences and I think they thought that they had seen it all before. However, the commercial area in Cabramatta is really unique and you do get the feeling that you could be in some little town in Vietnam, particularly if you visit the area between the carpark and John st. It has a real community, marketplace feel (and smell) to it.
It is a great location for fieldwork on cultural change. The Vietnamese influence is just so visual, as well as the influence of other Asian groups. You can clearly see changes to architecture, public monuments, colour and shop-front style. The market-style main street spills out onto the footpath and the malls joining the streets together feel like walking through a market with Chinese herbalists, exotic fruits, colourful fabrics and trinkets all one display. Towards the end of the day the students were sharing their surprise with me about what they had seen and experienced. 

There are lots of opportunities for students to try different foods and drinks. For lunch, we went to Guan An Bau Troung, located on the main street, John St.The students all ordered a dish of their own and then I ordered a few different dishes for them to try and share. The food was really cheap and the servings were huge, even for boys who eat their weight in food in a single sitting. Obviously I had to check all the allergies, anaphylaxis risks involved, but I really think sharing a meal is a great bonding experience for a class.

In terms of exploring the Cultural Integration topic, despite its unique architecture, monuments and shops, you can still see  plenty of chain stores in the suburb, particularly the main street. There are at least three Vodafone stores, a Subway and several other similar stores. The clothing stores have many rip-off designer copies. There is a McDonalds not far away, but not in walking distance.The influence of mass consumer culture isn't so obvious as in other suburbs, but it is clearly there, and I think that makes it even more interesting than looking at it in a location like Parramatta. The interesting thing to me was looking at the Asian-influence on these chain stores - different sauces, flavours, etc. As they say in Vietnam - same, same, but different.

If you want to have a look at the fieldwork activities we used the Cabramatta Excursion page of the www.preliminarygeography.hsieteachers.com site.

Back in the classroom we are going to analyse the field data a few different ways.
- Students' field sketches will be scanned and shared. An analysis of the various cultural influences will be written.
- We will create radar graphs from the environmental surveys
- The questionnaire results will be shared amongst the class. Results will be tallied, and the implications of results considered. Is this community self-contained? Do residents spend most of their lives in and around the suburb? Is the ethnic background of residents still predominantly Vietnamese?

The great thing about using Cabramatta as a fieldwork site in Year 11 is that is also a great case study for the following HSC year. You can refer back to it and draw on the students' experience when you are short on time and trying to maximise time in class. Cabramatta makes a great study for looking at ethnicity in Sydney as part of the Urban Places topic. You can find a summary of this part of the course that I wrote last year for HSC Online.