‘From the day you were born all you ever heard about was how you came from the “Blacks” Camp! You weren’t a person; you were just a thing that had to live out there to keep you away from decent people. It’s not too different today, either.’

Ella Simon is described on her Aborigines Protection Act Certificate of ‘Exemption from provisions of the Act and Regulations’, under the heading ‘Caste’, as ‘light’. She could have passed, but as her colored grandmother had done, she chose always not to pass. White, and sometimes black, were against her; tragedy walked with her and her people all their days; for most of her life poverty and deprivation were her constant companions; her work was menial and unrewarding, and almost always she was denigrated and belittled. Always, in every circumstance, she kept her head high, holding fast to what her Grandmother had taught her of Christ’s loving-kindness, and the splendid ancient tribal heritage of the Aborigines. She knows that the two can combine, to make a beacon to guide white, black, and all shades between to a lifestyle worthy of human beings.

Now, at seventy-seven, she is wise, and vastly experienced in the ways of the callously indifferent community that has ‘roughed the people around’ for so long. Through her eyes, and her heart, she has seen and known it all, and her answer to all the problems is still the love of all living things.

Ella Simon is a Justice of the Peace. If I ‘go up for something’ in her district, I hope she is on the Bench. J.P.s need her kind of compassion and understanding, as do we all.

I must close these too-brief lines with her last few lines. ‘Even at my age, I’ve had to change my ways and not live in the past. But, you know, I don’t think I’ll ever stop wondering what I might have been…’ What she is, is a great Australian. (The dust wrapper photo of her is superb.)