Mum
Did I tell you about me mum?
She's a widow woman, isn't she?
That's the one. Me dear old mum's 84 come next month.
That's a fine age.
Sure is, but age hasn't slowed her down any.
Still gets about does she?
Gets about! It was only the other week she was in Canberra ... demonstrating!
You don't say.
It turns out she's taken a very poor view of the Coalition. Grave robbers she calls them. Not that me mum fancies the other crowd either. I find out from my sister that she's taken to filing newspaper clippings under her bed. "Keeping abreast of the times", she calls it. And you know what bought this on?
I couldn't guess.
Those dammed nursing home charges. She got so angry that overnight she's turned into an aged radical. Imagine! Me mum the red rager!
How embarrassing for you.
Oh it is. She can't put two words together without bringing politics into it. Down at the bowls club she's known for it. They call her the "voice of the oppressed" because she's always on the radio talk-back. And believe you me, once me mum gets on the phone you don't get her off until she's said all she wants to say.
I see.
This week she can't leave this Wik business alone. She goes on and on about it. It turns out that her maternal grandfather selected land out west and ran cattle until the family went bust. While they became city folk after that, me mum now reckons the land wasn't theirs in the first place. Blackfella country she calls it. She reckons it was trespass to farm it like that. But I ask you, what's it to her? She never met an Aboriginal in her life.
True.
But no! Me mum can't see it like that. "It's the principle of the thing", she tells me, "It's their land and we stole it." Oh, she's quick with the arguments, is me mum. Come back at you like anything.
Is that a fact?
Turn on you as soon as look at you. She's gone Wik mad. Me mum reckons that if it was wrong for Howard to force old folk to sell the family home then it is as bad, if not worse, to force Aborigines off land that was theirs in the first place simply for the sake of a few cattle and sheep. Talk about righteous!
I see.
You know what she then goes and tells me? This is me mum, right? I'm her only son. She tells me — get this — she tells me that she's thinking of changing her will and leaving the lot to the National Farmers Federation. Just like that with a stroke of the pen: Denying me my birthright. "Same thing", she says, "as this Wik business".
She was joking, wasn't she?
I hope so.
By Dave Riley