Author's Blog 16 January '26:
With Australia Day histrionics already here, the ‘laugh’ symbol is again the weapon or choice for those who choose to denigrate rather than learn. I find this ironic as well as sad, because I know a few of the blokes who might choose to use that laughing emoji and I know they’re generous, hard working folk who love the Australian bush and their families. I’d trust them when the chips are down. But they’re fed so much hate and gone down so many rabbit-holes on social media, well frankly they’re missing out on True Australia.
So here’s my message to the haters this Australia Day: Take time to learn and to connect to the world’s oldest living culture and I reckon you’ll soon become an ally, and realise celebrating an invasion is just plain wrong.
Here’s a snippet from The Diamond of the Desert, as Maggie chooses to learn and connect to the Yamatji. To those laughing-haters, simply open your hearts along with your ears and eyes, and you’ll soon find the true Australian culture is right here waiting for you to celebrate:
“As winter turned to spring, to Maggie’s great pleasure and James’ great alarm, they saw evidence that the Aboriginal people were back in the river area. James was on alert and carried his gun, but Maggie sought them out and soon found a small group of women in an area back from the river. As she cautiously approached, dingoes nearby growled at her and the women stood and there was initially great alarm. But Maggie recognised the same woman she had met before down by the river and made the arm rocking motion. The woman smiled a broad smile and said something, and the women seemed to accept Maggie’s presence, though they ignored her as they continued talking among themselves. They were gathering a plant with a purplish tuber that she picked up was called ‘ajeca’ and as they broke off the tubers, which looked like small potatoes, they replanted a small section. Maggie realised they were farming, and here was their crop.
When they had gathered basket loads of the tubers, they walked a short distance and washed them in a deep depression in the ground –a deliberately dug and circular area with accessible clear, clean fresh water that could only be called a well.
She wished she could speak their language and join in, but all she could do was watch. The woman who she had met earlier gave her a few of the tubers and signalled to her mouth, that they were good to eat. Maggie gave a little bow of thanks and could see that the women understood she was thankful. They headed off then, the dingoes following nearby, and so she knew it was her time to go too and she returned to the camp. That night she boiled up the ajeca just like she would a potato and they each had some, James and Richard both commenting that the ‘potatoes were delicious’, and she had a little chuckle to herself.
Over the next fortnight she sought out the women again and found them twice, each time able to stay with them a little longer. She saw they had large animal skin bags in which they carried water. She watched them as they dug large grubs from the rootstocks of the grasstrees, and she saw them collect bush pears and also zamia nuts which they would bury, though she didn’t know what happened with them after that. The women indicated the bush pears would be good to eat, but not the zamia nuts. From those few observations, she had already learned so much about living in this area – she wished she could learn more.
Maggie had Thomas sitting upon her hip, so took great interest when she saw one of the women carried her child fixed in a bag upon her shoulders, which Maggie thought was an excellent design to keep the baby safe and sound without restricting movement in any way. Each woman carried a bag containing digging and cutting tools and a long thick stick with a fire hardened point which they used for digging and poking things out of trees and branches.
On the second occasion, the teenage boy she had seen by the river was with them. He greeted her like a friend, and he gave her a massive grin, much to the delight of the women who laughed and snickered, perhaps thinking they would make a good pair. Maggie laughed too, shaking her head as she said ‘James, husband’, and the women all laughed. The woman pointed to the boy and rocked her arms – he was her ‘baby’.
But then there was no further sign of them. Once though, as she searched much further from the camp she came upon a large collection of huts in a section of woods. The houses were large enough for two or three people, constructed of wattle and daub and each had a thatched roof not unlike that of their own little cabin. Here the houses were in two separate clusters and collectively she estimated they would have housed 150 people – that is, a village. They looked like they had only recently been vacated.
She told James and Richard what she had discovered, reflecting on what she had learned through these few short contacts:
That the people had houses; that they had dug wells; that they had made pets, of a sort, in dingoes; that they sowed and harvested foods in large quantities; that they carried water, which meant they could travel long distances; that they lived in large numbers; and that they had organised villages.
And then her greatest impression – that they lived, laughed and loved alongside each other, in apparent harmony with nature. A far cry from the common beliefs of that time, that painted them only as savages who needed to be westernised and Christianised.
Richard listened with genuine interest – he’d never met any Aboriginal people, nor been exposed to this type of critical thinking. Maggie’s perspective was so very different to the brash dogma of the guards and other prisoners, who had really just thought Aboriginals were the lowest of the low.
James listened with alarm.“