Yes, I can post his picture, and yes, I can give his name, but mustn't mention who he worked for in 1979. He is happy for us to know he was in special forces (though not which), and that he was based in Hereford, but I mustn't say which wall he abseiled down, in what operation.
Lance is the security guard who began my education in Alice's attitude to Aboriginies. Have you noticed a smell and the flies around here? Those fellas never wash. The government gives them houses and they trash them, and they have a nicer car than me, but all they do is get drunk and bother people.
For all that, Lance is likeable. He is sincere. And I didn't detect any hate in him, nor even prejudice, surprisingly. Lance is a man in the front line. They are from a different culture, he says, you can't give them houses and just expect them to want to be like us. You don't go into someone else's house and tell them how to behave.
This morning on the terrace at breakfast I had the deeply unpleasant experience of being accused of being a racist by a very earnest young man, who got up and refused to sit with me any longer, because I had attempted to get inside the head of someone like Lance. It is probably wise not to attempt to come to Australia with European views and attempt to suggest that there might be a grey area in what is a very highly charged subject, here.
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