Australia Day 2011.

Advance Austalia Fair-go!
(A tribute to Jimmy Little)










Into the bay the tall ships came.
Brave, desperate, driven.
God given arrogance
hidden behind social graces,
a veneer of civilisation.

Men, custodians of thirty, forty,
fifty thousand years of culture.
Older, wise, inclusive,
watched them come
to a land where none knew
coal and iron slept.

‘A land for a people,
A people for a land!’
It started then,
this short history
written by victors
as it always is.

While Biame’s people,
weakened by European pathogens,
misunderstood and dispossessed,
shot by Christians,
but destroyed ultimately by despair.

This must be the year
when 'The Apology',
wrought in guilt,
delivered in hope
should be judged.
Man to man,
woman to woman,
are we succeeding?
Are we embracing
our common humanity?

Now, using wealth gathered
from less fortunate men,
who make
from coal and iron
the transient artefacts
so desired;
we can pay for others to 'fix it',
if we want.

Or we can look into every eye
for unbidden feelings of love
and return it.

But, as in ‘The greatest love of all’,
It is our children who ‘lead the way’.
Raised in schools where
so many faces of races
have places,
our children already
live the agenda of inclusion;
Citizens of our Accidental Multicultural Society.

Dedicated with love and appreciation to Australian Aboriginal musician and activist Jimmy Little, an 'accidental bridge builder', and his feisty wife Marge, the ‘power behind the throne’.









Tall ships pic courtesy National Library.