The Huybers and Loureiro Families

Abstract

This article is the first part of a two-part article. Part 2 will be published in No. 75. Scholars have recently highlighted the significance of France’s influence on Australia’s culture and society, especially in the decades around Federation. Out of all proportion to the relatively small number of French migrants who came to Australia, this French influence manifested itself in complex and subtle ways. One aspect of the complexity was that the French influence informed a broader cosmopolitanism which stood out from the dominant British-Australian culture of the early twentieth century. In these two papers, members of two families, the Huybers and the Loureiros, are used as a case study to explore how this French influence could be expressed in diverse ways. Aspects of the richly varied lives of the selected individuals are inherently interesting and often help to illustrate larger themes in Australian social history.