PAUSE FOR REFLECTION.(one man's effort to apologize to Australian Aborigines for actions taken against them more than 30 years ago)(Brief Article)

WHAT A LOT OF FUSS and bother there is about the simple little word "sorry"! So much huffing and puffing by politicians over whether they should say it or not! And yet it is a word we ordinary mortals use every day, if we bump against someone in the street or collide with their car. Why then should it be so hard for us as a nation to say sorry to those Aboriginal folk whom we have so shamefully ill-treated or massacred, well not to the latter exactly but to their heirs and successors? Believe me, it's quite easy when you try, as I recently found out.

Very early in my career, over thirty years ago, I was posted to the staff of one of our church's missions in the Northern Territory. About a hundred little Aboriginal boys and girls were cared for there, bonny little piccaninnies every one of them. To me they came across as a happy and healthy lot, and apart from the occasional clip on the ear or couple of days in solitary confinement--some of them could be quite "cheeky"!--we all seemed to get on very well. Did I say happy? How wrong I was! Thanks to my good friend and fellow churchman Sir Roland Wilson's indefatigable investigations, I now know these children were bitterly unhappy and, indeed, illegally detained in the mission. Our little charges, I am afraid, had been stolen from the bosoms of their rightful families.

It is never too late to make amends, as Mr Howard might care to remember, and I decided to do so. I was fortunate in being able to dived some of the proceeds of our organ fund to hire what I believe is termed a combi-van, and in this, which I christened our "sorrymobile", I set off with my spouse Enid, a thermos and some other necessaries, on a journey of reconciliation to the ancient physical and spiritual heart of our land. To cut a long story short, to every former inmate of the mission I could locate, no matter how humble his or her circumstances, I held out my hand and said, "I wish to apologise." To seal the koinonia I then suggested we break ...