An in-flight video features the Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman, said to be Australia's one hope for an athletics gold medal at the Sydney Olympics. There is no hint of the true state of her people. The Australian facade is always deceptive and beguiling, like Cathy Freeman's billboard smile. When the Olympic flame arrived in Australia last month, the front pages of newspapers might have been tom from the bush tales that have charmed generations, with their cuddly koalas and native children with cheeky grins. Bondi, where I grew up, is famous only for its beach-life.
Few whites appreciate the legacy and scale of the genocide in Australia.
While 10 per cent of Jewry died in the Holocaust, the great majority of the first Australians died in the onslaught of white invasion and appropriation. They reported that the Australian population in 1788 was 750,000, or three times the previous estimate. They concluded that more than 600,000 people had died as result of white settlement. For many of his white constituents, it threatens the view of themselves as innocent bystanders in a stolen land. The facts of their suffering inevitably produce a kind of provincial defensiveness, especially if reminders come from overseas.