Those diaries were very authentically Australian; if I wanted to interpret the country's history, they were a clear path to it.

For me, the landscape I knew was full of a deep and urgent meaning. I already had felt the problem of identifying with my family's past here and their effects on the land they took.

These hills and plains, these rivers and plants and animals were what I had to work with as a writer, and they themselves contained the hidden depths of a past beyond anything that cities and the history of British invasion had to offer.

One thing is certain: we stand very little chance of reaching that state of social justice and eco justice, or the free cooperation and public ethics that would support it, unless those whose immemorial territory we are living on without their consent are included in it, and on an equal and respected basis.

To continue to exclude them from our search would condemn the enterprise to valuelessness and lack of meaning.

Whatever the bird is, is perfect in the bird.

Weapon kestrel hard as a blade's curve,

Thrush round as a mother or a full drop of water

Fruit-green parrot wise in his shrieking swerve-

All are what bird is and do not reach beyond bird.

Whatever the bird does is right for the bird to do-

Cruel kestrel dividing in his hunger the sky,

Thrush in the trembling dew beginning to sing,

Parrot clinging and quarrelling and veiling his queer eye-

All these are as birds are and good for birds to do.

But I am torn and beleaguered by my own people.

The blood that feeds my heart is the blood they gave me,

And my heart is the house where they gather and fight for dominion-

All different, all with a wish and a will to save me,

To turn me into the ways of other people.