Day film crew came

Jack was talking about the place where he lived with pride, even a certain glow. Saying all the standard things like, this is our country, we go out and get bush tucker, it's good. He was tall, large framed, a bit of a gut and a strong memorable face. People wouldn't necessarily assume he was of Aboriginal heritage, his skin was the brown tan of the Mediterranean people.

His look was perfect for TV, typical Australian middle class, a guy that might run his own small business in the building industry. He could speak in neat sound bites and capture the feel of connection to country. An awe and love of land is common to most Australians, they go out camping or caravanning or fishing and they feel something.

He was being interviewed on flat land in the interior somewhere, where there are few trees and the sun glares down relentlessly. Jack had flown in that morning to give the interview. He was alarmed about the threat of closures of some of the remote Aboriginal communities, particularly his. His people were always being moved on and pushed around.

If only more Australians were like the overseas tourists, who couldn't get enough of Aboriginal culture and would pay crazy amounts of money for the dreaming paintings. They were interested in the stories, the dancing, the spirituality. To French and Scandinavian people they were special, rare artefacts from ancient times. But Australians seemed to think that Aboriginal people should be no different to anyone else who lived here. Fitting in was a big part of Australian contemporary culture.

If you were a successful Aboriginal person, you got a bit of leeway, you were seen as more than a success story. You were the successful face of modern Aboriginal Australia. You could run around with the indigenous flag like Cathy Freeman.

Nobody wanted to see the sad Aboriginal settlements where the kids sniffed petrol, the adults were drunk and almost everyone had diabetes.

Jack knew it was all about marketing, that's why he was here, to suggest to the viewers that good people came from remote communities, people like him. He was a bridge between the two cultures, he could translate the situation for white people to understand.