This Whispering in our Hearts
Henry Reynolds, Allen & Unwin, 1998
Review by Digby Hannah
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 62
Spring/Summer 1998/1999

FIFTY YEARS AFTER THE establishment of Sydney town the vastness and desolate beauty of our continent was beginning to come into focus. There had been time for a little reflection. Prominent Sydney barrister Richard Windeyer delivered a most persuasive public lecture emphatically justifying the assumption of land and power by the civilised Europeans. The argument was complete, the conclusion final. And yet, the lecture concluded with the following haunting words: "How is it our minds are not satisfied? What means this whispering in the bottom of our hearts?"

For some people that whispering had already grown to a shout-they could hold their peace no longer. Henry Reynold's latest book is a remarkable series of stories of individuals who have campaigned, often at great personal cost, for a fair deal for Aborigines. Since the first white boat people arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788, there have been notable advocates for the native people. The majority of these political activists were people we would now regard as very conservative Christians. Though some were well educated and some were not, they generally took the Bible very literally. Their interpretation of scripture recognised that very basic notion that all people regardless of racial origin are created in God's image and are equally of immense value before God. This very important idea has, for most of Australia's white history, been contrary to the prevailing ideology. The superiority of white civilisation and the inevitability of the disappearance of the Aboriginal race have, until quite recently, been popularly assumed by governments and the people.

Missionaries have not achieved a good reputation in our country. They are frequently credited with the wholesale destruction of aboriginal culture while supplanting their own paternalistic version of religion. They have been complicit in a national tragedy whereby up to one in three Aboriginal people of certain age-groups have experienced painful removal from their family of origin. But who, during the 210 years of white settlement has befriended the Aborigines; who has treated them with dignity and respect; who has objected to the abuse of their women by the settlers; who has refused to join the duplicity and cover up when brutal reprisals followed native misdemeanours; and who has raged against wanton acts of slaughter by frontier settlers and police?

More often than not it has been the missionaries-people like Lancelot Threlkeld and Mary Bennett in NSW, Louis Guistiniani and John Gribble in WA, Ernest Gribble in Queensland and the controversial George Augustus Robinson in Tasmania and Victoria. The stories of the lives and witness of these faithful and courageous men and women is inspirational reading. For those of us who look with dismay at the powers of the politically and economically strong and think 'what can one insignificant person or one small community do about injustices in our locality?' this book replies 'a great deal indeed.'

Digby Hannah is pastor of St Kilda Baptist Church, Melbourne, and was editor of Zadok Perspectives from 1992-1997.