First, I located the Common. It was to the east of town, the opposite side to our farm, 183 hectares of gentle grassy hills stretching from the outskirts of Wellington on the south-eastern side to the Macquarie River as it bends back around to Nanima Reserve. Nanima is a separate parcel of about forty hectares, bordered on one side by the river and not subject to claim. The Town Common was first established by the Town Common Committee in 1867, marking the official moment the land was taken from the Wiradjuri. For quite some time I thought that theft was nothing to do with me. I hadn’t known anything about the Common as a child, but even out on the farm, I’d heard about Nanima. I knew that was where most of the Aborigines lived and didn’t question why they had a separate village. I didn’t actually go there until my early twenties when I was doing a university assignment on ‘race relations in a country town’. I drove around interviewing whites and Aborigines with my chunky late-seventies tape recorder, feeling very sophisticated.
What do You think about The Mind Of A Thief (2012)?
