Melissa Lucashenko

No, well, there you go.

There's all sorts of reasons, economic, political, psychological, for these stories not to be told.

If modern Australia can walk around pretending that it's innocent and nothing happened here, nothing to see here, then that's got all sorts of implications.

But since Mabo, Mabo has changed things because now mainstream Australia has a framework to understand its colonial history better.

through.

It's not a satisfactory framework because it doesn't achieve treaty or reparations, which I think is necessary for Australia to become more than the nation of thieves that Xavier Herbert called the place.

But Mabo has kind of put a platform on which to stand to say, well, yes, there were always First Nations mob here and

We've always been interacting with Europeans and others, and there's a history here that can be told to everyone's benefit.

Yeah, I just about fell off my chair yesterday.

I was reading someone talking about being at school, I think in the 90s, and their teacher telling them, this is in New South Wales somewhere, telling them that they're so lucky that Australia was, you know, born as a peaceful nation, you know, a bloodless history.

And I thought, bloody hell, are people still, were people still being told that in the 90s?

And I guess they still are today in some places because, you know, ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

But, you know, all of this history, all of the historical research, all of the thinking about what was done here, that was a starting point for me.

And then after that, in Eden Glacier, I had to say, well, who are the characters who are going to bring this to light?

But more than bring it to light, because it's not a history book.

You know, I'm not a historian.

I'm someone with a fascination with story and with the past as well as the present and the future.

I put just as much if not more effort into constructing a yarn that was gripping and funny and I hope heartbreaking.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think all First Nations people do and I imagine historians do as well.