Australia Day BBQ Stopper

"One afternoon in 1964 I was drinking coffee in the University of New England cafeteria with a bunch of young men from well-to-do grazing properties. They were rowdy and effortlessly good-natured. In those days Australia still rode on the sheep's back; they took for granted that they were the natural aristocrats of the campus and of the nation. We were laughing a lot that day. The conversation had turned to old family eccentrics; we'd been vying to cap each other's wacky stories.

"Then, a wealthy landowner's son took a turn. Sunday afternoons had been the fun time for his family, he announced. Presumably after church, and a good heavy Sunday dinner, his grandfather would go hunting on horseback with dogs and a posse of mates. Whooping. All armed with whips and guns. The quarry was Aborigines. They would be chased through the bush, cornered, then shot. Or driven over a mighty precipice to their death.

"Stunned silence fell around the table. The brutal declaration, so breezy and lighthearted, so shockingly new to my ears, threw us completely. I stared down into my coffee. Someone guffawed uneasily. I've often wondered why the young man blurted out those words. I remember he laughed as he spoke. Was it bravado to cover shame?

"The chilling thing was that, despite our shock, in the end the social niceties prevailed. We would ignore the faux pas. Besides, how many others among those young grandsons of squatters sitting around the table had similar secrets walled up behind their homestead facades?" (Who are we, really? Time to face the truth of the massacres of Aborigines, Frances Letters, Sydney Morning Herald, 7/7/17)

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"Concerning Frances Letters' commentary, in the 1960s a family member born in the 1890s told me a similar story. I was about 14 at the time and I think the discussion touched on the Aboriginal referendum. He mentioned matter of factly that when he was a boy it was not uncommon for landowners to go on Aborigine shoots. I thought I had distorted my recollection, but after reading Frances's comments I now know it was true." (Letter to the SMH, 8/7/17)