Clive Hamilton's "The Freedom Paradox. Towards a Post Secular Ethics" (Sunday Forum)

by Tom Lee, UK, Wednesday, February 04, 2009, 06:16 (1568 days ago) @ PeterR

Hi folks, but especially Debb and Bill, my great great grandfather Griffith was reputed the first white child born in Tasmania. I knew his son, my Great Grandfather William in his 90s when I was just a whipper-snapper. He was a lovely old man, had been a labourer/builder of the Parliament House in Canberra, and was the umpire for the Belmore ladies cricket team, strolling stately with his walking stick to oversee "His gels." He'd also been a miner at some stage and often cleaned himself with methylated spirit. My grandmother was certain he would someday set alight to himself when lighting his pipe. He was not at all religious, but had very high ethical standards, and a labour man to his core. He lived out his days with my grandparents, and unfortunately I was too young and stupid to talk to him and ask him about his life. But, I've always felt uneasy when thinking about that child born in Tasmania. Was his father involved in the massacre of the indigenous people of that fecund island? I toured there with relatives from America in 1965. I'd just been a guest star on "Homicide" in Melbourne so was part-way there. Then in 1967 I travelled with a company from the Playhouse in Perth to the Theatre Royal, Hobart, where we played the American comedy "Mary Mary" for a week, and did a lot of radio plays for the ABC director Brian Paine, who was usually starved for actors. Brian had been my first director in a stage play in Sydney, and I spent time with he and his wife and toddlers on their goat farm - a lovely interlude.
It seems not a lot of time to imbibe a place, but I've always felt close to Tasmania as a part of my heritage. I know that those original settlers must have had a hard time of it, but still regret that their presence, with disease and outright slaughter, spelled the end of the aborigines. It is for me an ethical dilemma that I can do nothing about. I think we all probably have something like that in our past, among our forbears. But it's difficult to have no regrets.

Tom Lee