Marco Breakenridge – Notable West Indian by Jamaican Products

Marco Breakenridge is featured as the notable West Indian for July 2016.

Marco is the Honorary Consul for Jamaica in Australia, an accomplished mechanical engineer and advisor with a can do attitude. So let’s hear Marco’s story.

January is an important month in my Australian life. It is the month of my birth in Jamaica and the month I first arrived in Australia to undertake a Master’s Degree in Engineering at the University of Sydney.

On completion of my two years post graduate studies I left Australia in January to live again in Jamaica. In January two years later I returned to Australia, this time to live permanently. I became an Australian citizen in January and continue to celebrate Australia Day each year.

I have been privileged to share in an official capacity as the Honorary Consul for Jamaica in Australia. My appointment to this post was aided by my involvement with the West Indian Community here in Australia. The Honorary Consul position presented me with opportunities to meet many distinguished people including Jamaica’s two recent Ambassadors to Japan/Australia as well as represent Jamaica.

When I first came to Australia on a scholarship in 1980 I had no idea I would still be here some 36 years later. There are many twists to the paths in life and mine has been no exception. Fortunately I have been blessed beyond belief in my life’s journey due to family and friends support and I give thanks and praise for it.

The only cross cultural incidents I can conjure up at this time is people say to me from time to time, “I can detect an accent but cannot detect where it is from”. My response is I must be here too long as it appears I am losing my prominent Jamaican accent.

Hope asked me to write a piece for her blog (and kept asking how it was going). I still recall the first time I met her. See how life’s funny – in Jamaica my mother lived in the next street to her mother. Many year’s later I was privileged to learn from Hope’s mother Rose in Jamaica and Australian many life values.

One of the things we West Indian’s can learn from our Australian life comes from the connections we have made with other West Indian’s here. Many of these West Indian mates we would never know had we not been here. On the other hand Australia can also learn from those same connections and the breadth of life we bring. They could well learn that trees should bear fruit, but that is another story altogether.

I enjoy sports and held roles of Treasurer and Secretary with the Sydney Windies Cricket Club. I felt honoured when during one of the West Indies Cricket team tours to Australia in the 1980s I was mistaken on the street for Viv Richards.

I am lucky to travel between Jamaica and Australia and as I write this piece I am preparing for one of those travels home. I am forced to reflect on how different my life might have been. As you all know I could reflect on that for quite some time as I sit squashed and buckled for the many hours travel to Jamaica and back.