I’m Australian.

The kids and I are jumping the waves at Soldier’s Beach in the heat of the day during the long January break. This is our land, my country.

Memories of my own childhood come flooding back. Long lazy summer days, the crunching of dry leaves beneath my feet and the smell of the eucalyptus after the rain. I grew up surrounded by the sounds of the Brisbane bush – cicadas, territorial magpies, screeching lorikeets and the occasional lizard rushing through the ground cover.

Then it struck me. My sense of entitlement. I was brought up to believe that this is my land, my home – and like others growing up in my time and the years before me, I never doubted that it was true.

I looked up at the same coastline, the waves crashing on the sand, and for a moment I saw history come alive again. There before me were dark, confused faces gathered together in tribal groups, their spears and simple tools at their side, looking out over this same coastline, their very lives dependent on this land.

How did these stories become so confused? Their land or our own?

Seeing, as if for the first time, the clashing of lives – in our own backyard. A 60,000 year old history of age-old wisdom passing from one generation to the next, interrupted by the intrusion of another world, one of convicts from overcrowded London, European pests and diseases, and clothes and customs that don’t belong in the harsh Australian landscape.

Other stories emerge as the years pass by. Stories of terrible abuse, poverty, neglect and simple cruelty – no other words could describe it. Could these stories of poverty and abuse be co-existing with our stories of childhoods in the sun? Does this country hold both stories simultaneously? And how did we not know?  Perhaps, we simply don’t see what we don’t want to see – and we won’t believe what we don’t want to believe.

An inner voices whispers to me … don’t just sit there, do something!  But what?  What can a ‘white’ Australian do?  How can we act in a way that doesn’t repeat the wrongs of the past?

It’s a dilemma for ‘white’ Australians.  Within my daily life, there is no natural crossing of paths between their world and my own.  They share this city with me, their homes within our own backyards, and our paths seldom cross.

But even if we were to meet, what would we say to each other? Could we trust each other? How could we move beyond patronising stereotypes to get to know each other.

I couldn’t even pretend to have an answer to all the questions raised. I know enough to know that I don’t know, and that others have walked this path and have far better answers than my own. Perhaps my answer to myself is to stay open – to keep the needs of others on my own radar – within my home, my workplace and amongst my friends. Perhaps to share a moment at the beach jumping the waves with my children with a deep respect for all those who have gone before us in history and once called this land their own.