Turned away at caravan parks, treated as shirkers or swindlers, even as a fairytale. Stereotypes have followed Australia's Romani “Gypsies” since the First Fleet. But step inside their culture, music and travel stories. You might even be inspired to hit the road.
We spin like dust devils, hands high in the air. As the guitars throb and trumpets soar, I'm dancing near the stage with two women from Serbia. Chorus after chorus, the crowd cheers the music on.
Lead singer Sarah Bedak wails into the microphone, backed by seven musicians, including husband Nenad. Dressed in bright pink shorts and stockings, her limbs coil and undulate to the music. A violin begins to howl. Sweat rolls down our faces, our arms, but we three women cannot stop dancing, cannot stop swivelling our hips to the accelerating beat. It's the first time I've heard a Gypsy band live and I'm so enthralled I feel as if I could fly.
When the song ends on a long, high note, the crowd applauds loudly and cries out in what sounds like Hungarian. Before beginning the next tune, Sarah and Nenad deliver patter about the history and culture of the Romani people – a history so secret, so hidden, that few readers would know that the first of them arrived in Australia as convicts on the First Fleet, and that they have been living in our country ever since.
Today, roughly 25,000 call Australia home. Political correctness has not yet defeated the term Gypsy, but most identify as Romani or Roma. An individual is a Rom.
