“British occupiers, who had packed their castles and manor houses with the wealth from three centuries of slave trading, were simply sickening,” writes ROBERT MACKLIN.

 THE supreme joy of authorship is that magic moment when you’re travelling on some public conveyance and there, right across the aisle, is a stranger reading your latest book.

In the last 35 years of publishing my 29 books it’s only ever happened twice and on one of them it wasn’t really the latest; it was a reprint with a new title. But who’s quibbling; the effect was just the same: you resist the immediate overwhelming temptation to tap the reader on the shoulder and identify yourself, but you spend however long the journey takes watching his reaction (yes, both times a bloke) and raging internally when his female companion or the flight attendant interrupts his reading with some silly question.

Both occurred in recent years when I’ve been exploring Australian history via “Dark Paradise” (Norfolk Island), “Hamilton Hume – Our Greatest Explorer”, “Dragon and Kangaroo (the shared history of Australia and China)” and “Castaway” (the French cabin boy abandoned on a Far North Queensland beach in 1858 and taken in by the Aboriginal people for the next 17 years).

Together they tell the unpalatable truth about our British colonial era; and where once I was a fairly typical Anglo-Australian, relaxed and even prideful concerning our British heritage, I now find myself utterly appalled by their/our treatment of the Aboriginal people whom I have come to know and respect.

They’re not perfect. No one is. The way their system repressed women was just as bad as our own. 

But the British occupiers, who had packed their castles and manor houses with the wealth from three centuries of slave trading, were simply sickening. And the “royal” caste system they propagandised was and remains as vile and phoney as the papal monstrosity that even today is able to debauch children without suffering one whit of its treasure or its official authority.

So when I discovered an Australian whitefella who commanded international respect, scientific distinction, war hero gallantry and a lifetime’s devotion to the Aboriginal cause, I was all in to write the biography of Donald F Thomson 1901-1970.  

In his day, he was known Australia-wide, feted in the great international universities and invited to address the federal cabinet. So for two years (including the pandemic) without a single word or cent of encouragement from my usual publisher, I gave myself to the task of telling his amazing story. And though I say so myself, it incorporated the very best of my research and writing skills. 

By the end of it, we’d spent all our reserves; but no matter – our entire community was engaged in a great movement to change the Constitution and give Voice to the First Nations. Obviously, Donald Thomson’s incredible struggle against officialdom on their behalf would be meat and drink to an Australian readership.

Ah, if only… as the manuscript made its way from the top publishers to the also rans, and then to the occasional enthusiasts, I came to understand the power of the Anglo-Australian resistance to the truth of the matter. I had been one of them. I should have known better. 

So, reluctantly and sadly I’ve put it aside and moved to another fascinating character who has already garnered publishing funding.

However, with Treaty and Truth-telling still to come, the Donald Thomson story must surely find its place in the great published saga of our struggle to escape the colonial chrysalis, perhaps even when its author is gone from the land of the living. 

Oh well, at least I have a mental picture of a son or a granddaughter nudging a companion, then with a big grin, pointing across the aisle: “Magic moment,” they say.

robert@robertmacklin.com