Taxiing with the Eid brothers IM display

• 27 July 2012–July 2020
• Immigrant Stories exhibition (First Floor)
• Immigration Museum
• Old Customs House
• 400 Flinders Street
• Melbourne, Victoria
• Australia
  
  
• Curators: Christine Eid & Moya McFadzean

Commissioned as a guest curator, Christine Eid and Moya McFadzean, Senior Curator of Migration at Museum Victoria, co-curated the Behind the Wheel display case in the Immigrant Stories exhibition at the Immigration Museum.

Focusing on the lives of Lebanese migrant brothers Youssef, Romanos and Tansa Eid, who drove taxis in Melbourne from the 1970s through to the 1990s and 2000s, the display highlights both the entrepreneurial opportunities and the precarious unpredictability of life ‘on the taxi’.

The Eid brothers decided to establish taxi businesses in the early 1970s. After working in textile factories the prospect of greater earnings and ‘being your own boss’ outweighed the long hours and personal and financial risks. 'Popping home for lunch or a coffee' became daily rituals that reinforced their sense of freedom.

From chaffeuring brides to their weddings through to driving the drunk and disorderly the Behind the Wheel display reveals stories about their working lives, challenges of the job and the diversity of their approaches within an ever-shifting taxi industry.

Immigration Museum