Time to say "thanks" as well.

NOW THAT the federal parliament has formally said "Sorry' to indigenous Australians, I believe we should also be saying "Thanks" as a mark of true respect.

All my forebears came to Australia in the early days of settlement. Those who settled outback received enormous help from the Aboriginal people--for which they were deeply appreciative--about things such as sources of drinking water, weather predictions, the location of good grazing land, fishing areas in rivers, methods of conducting efficient preventive burning ... They were also warned what to be wary about such as poisonous berries, dangerous snakes and insects. The list goes on and on. Some of my friends, who are also descended from early settlers, say their forebears noted in their diaries the many ways in which they received helpful insights about the environment from indigenous people.

My paternal grandfather Sir George Houstoun Reid,. a Founding Father of this country and in the view of his biographer, Professor W.H. McMinn, the true Father of Federation, always expressed his profound admiration for indigenous culture. His younger son, my father Clive, also said that he felt that gratitude, as well as regret, should be expressed to indigenous Australians. He was certain that many actions taken by early settlers in Australia and which have since been regretted, were often actions taken with good intention. He was emphatic about this and I think this is why I worked so hard to write Shadows of Our Dreaming (published by Angus & Robertson in 1983).

My maternal grandmother, Mary Ross Munro (nee Cameron), who lived with the family on their outback property, Boombah, near St George, in western Queensland, took an Aboriginal girl, Nelly, to Paris many years ago, to help with the family's domestic requirements. Nelly learnt to speak French fluently in two months. When they returned to Boombah, Nelly said to my grandmother, "Forgive me, but I don't really like your civilisation, I am going walkabout." She was not seen again.

My mother, the youngest of the family, always said that Nelly had been her best friend when they were both young children, so she missed her very much. Nelly had taught her how to make dampers by moistening certain seeds and then pounding them with stones into flour, which was mixed with water and shaped into flat loaves and baked on hot sand beneath the campfire; also how to carve drawings on bark and rocks and how to dot her limbs with clay when she joined Nelly and her Aboriginal friends dancing around the campfire.

Mary's husband, my maternal grandfather, William Ross Munro, had an Aboriginal friend, Chum, when he was a child living on the family property, Tariaro, near the Namoi River in north-western New South Wales before the family moved to Keera, a property near Bingara. The local indigenous people helped build the Tariaro homestead.

 
TARIARO 
 
   Ant-bed floors, bark walls, 
   Our bush homestead stands alone 
   In soft-shadowed peace.