Last moth I attended the Sister Cites Australia 2012 Annual Conference and had the opportunity to make a presentation about CLAIR Sydney’s role in Sister City relationships between Australia and Japan.
In my presentation, I emphasized the year 1963 which was when the first sister city relationship was established between Australia and Japan. This means next year, 2013, is the 50th anniversary of the sister city relationship between Lismore Council in NSW and Yamatotakada City in Nara prefecture.
To mark 50 years, 2013 will be designated as the “Japan-Australia Exchange Promotion Year” by the Japan National Tourism Organisation and Tourism Australia.
Also, CLAIR will be promoting sister city relationships throughout the next year. We will hold the annual CLAIR forum on this 50 year-old history of sister city relationships and further development between Australia and Japan.
The Lismore-Yamatotakada 50th anniversary will be on August 7th next year in Lismore. The CLAIR forum will take place on August 5th in Sydney.
We now have 103 sister city relationships with Australian local governments. Australia and Japan’ s sister cities have engaged in cultural exchange, sports exchange, student exchange, and thus developed a successful grass roots relationship over time.
Through this forum, we would like to look back on the history between Japan and Australia, and further strengthen the relationship between the two nations.
I would like to ask all of the councils which have sister city relationships with Japan to participate in this forum.
