9 November

In NAIDOC week, read Gammage’s book to completely change how you think about this whole topic. Aboriginal Australia was nothing like what you might have been taught or imagined. It was a manufactured Garden of Eden, a paradise, not a ‘natural’ environment. And it was the most sophisticated culture in human history. 100,000 years maybe. Second place is maybe 5000, the Chinese. We stupidly think, oh they didn’t have cars and planes and computers - we see our technology as indication of our superiority. But notice today that we can’t manage landscapes, ours are disasters. Landscapes are infinitely more complex than technologies. They did it for 100,000 years, nobody else has even come close. We may never know how they did it, we’re living inside humankind’s greatest mystery. If that isn’t a way to spark desire for reconciliation, I dunno what is.