Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. Our colleagues that Read This
Speaker 1: routinely hosts the brightest and best writers from Australia and
Speaker 1: around the world, including some of this country's leading social
Speaker 1: and political commentators. Today we're going to hear from David
Speaker 1: mah David is one of Australia's most unflinching forensic reporters
Speaker 1: of political controversy and one of its most eloquent biographers.
Speaker 1: He's also a regular contributor to The Saturday Paper and
Speaker 1: The Monthly, and just this month has taken over from
Speaker 1: Philip Adams to host Radio National's Late Night Live. Last year,
Speaker 1: David released Killing for Country. It's a book that explores
Speaker 1: the violent history of his own family, a handful of
Speaker 1: whom were key figures in the Queensland Native Police, an
Speaker 1: arm of the government believed to have killed more than
Speaker 1: forty thousand Indigenous Australians. Michael Williams is the host of
Speaker 1: Read This and he's with me now. Hi Michael, Great
Speaker 1: to see you again.
Speaker 2: Ruby Jones, welcome back.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. It's great to be here. Lovely
Speaker 1: to see you. So the discussion between you and David
Speaker 1: covers some pretty tough topics. How did you approach the conversation.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of different things at play here.
Speaker 2: For me, one is, any time you interview a journalist,
Speaker 2: you're acutely aware that they're second guessing the construction of
Speaker 2: the story, So you need to kind of find a
Speaker 2: way to find a rhythm when you're talking to them.
Speaker 2: But the other thing is that family and personal history
Speaker 2: when it intersects with national history can create this kind
Speaker 2: of really interesting tension. And part of what I really
Speaker 2: like about what David's done in Killing for Country is
Speaker 2: that He's resisted the tendency that happens, which is people
Speaker 2: wanting to absolve their ancestors, people wanting to use the
Speaker 2: chance of retelling history to say it was a different time,
Speaker 2: or here was some crucial context, or these are the
Speaker 2: human beings. David, on the other hand, doesn't do that
Speaker 2: for a moment. He is unflinching in writing about the
Speaker 2: horrors perpetrated by his family and what it actually meant,
Speaker 2: what the very human cost.
Speaker 3: Of it was.
Speaker 1: So what do you hope that listeners might take away
Speaker 1: from this chat with David?
Speaker 2: Look, listeners are going to, you know, at the other
Speaker 2: end of their day when they're done with seven AM,
Speaker 2: they can go on to Late Night Live and they
Speaker 2: can do the two. So they're going to get a
Speaker 2: lot of David Maher in their ears potentially in the
Speaker 2: months ahead. I do feel like in this interview as
Speaker 2: subject rather than as the person steering the ship, we
Speaker 2: get a glimpse into the kind of more intimate David
Speaker 2: beyond the performance, and I think it's pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: Can't wait to listen coming up in just a moment.
Speaker 1: David Maher versus Australia's Old Lie.
Speaker 3: An old, old old uncle of mine asked me if
Speaker 3: I could find out something about his grandmother because he
Speaker 3: knew nothing about this woman. Maud, you were my mother's family.
Speaker 3: His family is pretty good at secrets, and he was
Speaker 3: serious to know something about this woman, and I was
Speaker 3: a journalist. Would I dig around? And I found pretty
Speaker 3: quickly a photograph of my great grandmother's father, Reginald Ewer,
Speaker 3: in the uniform of the Queensland Native Police. And it
Speaker 3: hit me like a blow at the same time, almost
Speaker 3: I thought to myself, I'm not going to hide this.
Speaker 3: I've been asking people to face the reality of this
Speaker 3: country for a long time. I'm going to tell this story.
Speaker 2: Facing the reality of this country is a task that
Speaker 2: at a broader public level, at a political level, at
Speaker 2: a constitutional one, has proved enduringly difficult as a nation.
Speaker 2: We're seeing that play out now through the referendum on
Speaker 2: the Voice to Parliament. For David Mahr, finding the right
Speaker 2: way to tell the stories that allow us to see
Speaker 2: the truth of our history is a personal quest and
Speaker 2: one that has led to his later book, Killing for Country.
Speaker 2: It's an I owning book, an often horrifying look at
Speaker 2: the reality of the colony that is modern Australia. I'm
Speaker 2: Michael Williams and this is read this the show about
Speaker 2: the books we love and the stories behind the Killing
Speaker 2: for Country is a story of brutality, greed and death.
Speaker 2: It follows David's own family only a few generations back.
Speaker 2: Key figures in the Queensland Native Police. If you're not
Speaker 2: familiar with the Queensland Native Police, they were this murderous
Speaker 2: wing of the government, said to have killed more than
Speaker 2: forty thousand Indigenous Australians over their sixty year reign. And
Speaker 2: there's every chance you haven't heard of them. The atrocities
Speaker 2: committed under their watch are not often taught in schools,
Speaker 2: and the fact that this major work of history comes
Speaker 2: from David Marr, a writer better known for his incisive
Speaker 2: journalism his Towering Biographies, explains some of its impact. He
Speaker 2: manages to capture both the complications and contradictions of his
Speaker 2: Forbeare stories while at the same time being fearless and
Speaker 2: uncompromising in reaching his conclusions about their actions. And to
Speaker 2: hear him describe it, this is a labor that sprung
Speaker 2: from a deep sense of responsibility.
Speaker 3: I found a way of telling a much bigger story
Speaker 3: than I had imagined when I started. But I made
Speaker 3: savage choices throughout because my view is that if the
Speaker 3: book was to have narrative power, it had to follow
Speaker 3: the cut of the Er family. That means this enormous subject.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is an enormous subject, like a great forest.
Speaker 3: You can cut through the forest and tell the story
Speaker 3: in a way that has resonance and power that I
Speaker 3: don't I think the very beautiful and horrifying studies of
Speaker 3: the Native police quite have. It's a different way of
Speaker 3: telling this story along the path cut by my family.
Speaker 2: You know when your heart sank when you saw the
Speaker 2: picture of Reggia in the Queensland Native Police uniform. What
Speaker 2: did you already know about that uniform, about the police,
Speaker 2: about what that signified when looking at that photo, because
Speaker 2: I will wager far too many Australians wouldn't immediately put
Speaker 2: that into a context.
Speaker 3: I knew what the Native police was, but Michael, for
Speaker 3: a moment, I thought, maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: So I went to Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: I looked there.
Speaker 3: It was not only did it confirm everything I knew, well,
Speaker 3: it confirmed what the Native police were, you know, a
Speaker 3: state force of killers with white officers and black troopers.
Speaker 3: But there was my great grandfather there in the Wikipedia
Speaker 3: entry and his brother, and it was all in the
Speaker 3: space of about ten rather turbulent minutes, and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: this is it, This is what I must write.
Speaker 2: Generally, when people launch into a history inspired by discovering
Speaker 2: a family and connection, it seems to me one of
Speaker 2: the guiding impulses is the phrase it was a different time.
Speaker 2: The process of writing the book, the history is to
Speaker 2: frame the sometimes objectionable, sometimes monstrous acts of one's forebears
Speaker 2: in a historical context that absolves them of responsibility. And
Speaker 2: it seems to me that part of the power of
Speaker 2: killing for country is you're refusing to do that. You
Speaker 2: are refusing to buy into the idea that something that
Speaker 2: is monstrous and an atrocity to us today was somehow acceptable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, no excuses. There's quite a bit written about
Speaker 3: the Ure family, and the excuse come thick and fast,
Speaker 3: and there's also that very colonial thing of claiming distinguished
Speaker 3: connection back home. My god, Michael, you're sitting with the
Speaker 3: ninety ninth cousin of the Dukes of Roxburgh here. You know,
Speaker 3: these things matter in family histories. This is a history.
Speaker 3: It has to stand on its own two feet. The
Speaker 3: scholarship is there to be gritted by scholars, by anybody.
Speaker 3: It's all laid out where everything comes from, and it
Speaker 3: has to survive on its own merits as truth or
Speaker 3: as near to the truth as it's possible to get
Speaker 3: at the moment, and as it happens. I don't think
Speaker 3: human beings fundamentally change from one time to another. Greed
Speaker 3: and cruelty a I'm afraid, are bricked into us. So
Speaker 3: it's goodness and the offense of murder is little changed
Speaker 3: today to the words in the legislation at the time
Speaker 3: these murders were being committed on the frontier, absolutely unpunished
Speaker 3: along the front here. This was a time when the
Speaker 3: worst of European colonists was simply let loose. And it
Speaker 3: is grim. It is grim.
Speaker 2: Talk to me about the experience of unfurling the horrors
Speaker 2: at a human level, because one of the great achievements
Speaker 2: of this book is and I don't want to make
Speaker 2: it sound unapproachable in how unflinching it is, but you
Speaker 2: recreate that human level of venality and monstrosity. And well, the.
Speaker 3: Plan was to attach that history to people. And I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm a biographer, really, I suppose. And there's one way
Speaker 3: of looking at the structure of killing for country is
Speaker 3: to see it as three biographies. Richard Jones to begin with,
Speaker 3: and then his protege Edmundure, and then Edwin Dure's two sons,
Speaker 3: reg and Darcy, who served in the force. And these
Speaker 3: three biographies are a way of showing how individual ambition, hopes,
Speaker 3: and fears their characters helped form the history of this
Speaker 3: time and were part of the forces that dispossessed violently
Speaker 3: on the Australian frontier. It doesn't grow out of abstract
Speaker 3: historical principles. It doesn't grow out of the law. It
Speaker 3: grows out of an arena of really fundamental struggles over life, greed, survival, money, debt,
Speaker 3: and the politics of all of this. And I had
Speaker 3: not imagined that it would be so rich, which is
Speaker 3: why the book is two years late. I became intrigued
Speaker 3: by it. I'm absolutely intrigued. And though I thought I
Speaker 3: knew what the Native Police were, I really discovered it
Speaker 3: in the course of this. You know, they were an armed,
Speaker 3: murderous wing of government used by the Queensland government without
Speaker 3: any legal basis for what they did, which was something
Speaker 3: that the Attorney generals of Queensland used to say, oh,
Speaker 3: there's no laws backing what you do, and it was
Speaker 3: used to terrify and kill and it was used for
Speaker 3: sixty years. I had not understood how terrible in human
Speaker 3: terms it was, and I became fascinated by the politics
Speaker 3: of it because there was always voices condemning what was happening,
Speaker 3: calling murder murder. There were squatters, there were magistrates, but
Speaker 3: above all there was the press. In a way, the
Speaker 3: book is a homage to the press through all those
Speaker 3: years that kept saying this is appalling, this is murder,
Speaker 3: this can't go on, of course did go on, but
Speaker 3: the voices were always there. The book is dedicated to
Speaker 3: those who told the truth back then.
Speaker 2: I can't remember reading this kind of history as narrative
Speaker 2: before telling the story the way you do, sequentially largely dispassionately,
Speaker 2: even though your horror at it comes through, you're very
Speaker 2: meticulous in laying it out and not putting a foot
Speaker 2: on the scales. How hard was it to do that?
Speaker 2: How much did you find yourself suddenly wanting to rage
Speaker 2: or suddenly wanting to kind of tear it down?
Speaker 3: I know that those sudden rages are a terrible indulgence.
Speaker 3: Don't help the reader, don't help the telling of the story.
Speaker 3: I'm not aware of any narrative history of the Native Police.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is essentially the Native Police in the
Speaker 3: eighteen sixties. There are marvelous books about the Native Police.
Speaker 3: But this has always been my way of leading people
Speaker 3: into difficult territory by story. Story allows people to judge
Speaker 3: whether they believe the facts, does the story hang together,
Speaker 3: does it make sense? And I believe it's a great
Speaker 3: tool for helping people understand very very complex things. If
Speaker 3: they trust you, they will follow you into difficult territory,
Speaker 3: confident that you'll get them out on the other side
Speaker 3: safe again. That's my strategy. I hope the book has
Speaker 3: a steady beat that will take readers through to the end.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny. Back in twenty nineteen, you know, you
Speaker 2: say the book is two years late. You couldn't have
Speaker 2: known that it would land at a time that so
Speaker 2: neatly corresponds with questions about this nation's appetite and ability
Speaker 2: to look honestly at its history and tell the truth.
Speaker 3: Look, I did all I could, all I could to
Speaker 3: bring the book in earlier, because as far as the referendum,
Speaker 3: I mean, in my view it is a book that
Speaker 3: will last forever. But as far as the referendum, it's
Speaker 3: pretty late. But I couldn't do it. I mean, the
Speaker 3: material is too rich, there was too much there, and
Speaker 3: the task of cutting that path through the forest, of
Speaker 3: making things clear it was hard work.
Speaker 2: At the center of the ularus statement from my heart
Speaker 2: is that kind of three part thing voice, treaty, truth
Speaker 2: and the truth bit seems to be something that we've
Speaker 2: so consistently fallen down on in this country in the
Speaker 2: way we're able to talk about and acknowledge and write
Speaker 2: about our history.
Speaker 3: Look, I think this is an enormous thing which we
Speaker 3: are beginning to face. And it's not just a matter
Speaker 3: of the superb Stamner line about the culture of forgetfulness.
Speaker 3: It's not a negative thing. The saga of Australia as
Speaker 3: a freely settled continent enlivened by wool booms and goldfinds
Speaker 3: is an astonishingly durable cultural artifact. It's a lie so
Speaker 3: huge that there are many people in Australia, including the
Speaker 3: current leaders of our conservative political parties, who cannot imagine
Speaker 3: the country without that lie remaining intact. I think of
Speaker 3: it in a way as the wall of a tailings
Speaker 3: dam You know what, if we face the truth, What
Speaker 3: if we knew what happened, the tailings damn would collapse?
Speaker 3: And where would all that shit go? How would the
Speaker 3: country be changed if we simply all acknowledged that it
Speaker 3: was conquered. It has the power to transform the fundamentals
Speaker 3: of politics in this country. And so the old lie
Speaker 3: is being very vigorously defended, and it almost entirely centers
Speaker 3: on how we dealt with the original inhabitants of the continent.
Speaker 3: But there are other aspects of it as well, and
Speaker 3: the opponents of the referendum are simply shit scared about
Speaker 3: what happens to the country if the lie evaporates. When
Speaker 3: you look at the way the referendum is being fought
Speaker 3: by the No campaigners, it is clear that this struggle
Speaker 3: is a long way from over.
Speaker 2: Coming. Up after the break, David walks us through the
Speaker 2: need to distinguish between shame and guilt at both a
Speaker 2: personal and national level. David Mara has been writing for
Speaker 2: more than three decades, often focusing on the careers and
Speaker 2: lives of politicians, artists and writers. Looking at his body
Speaker 2: of work across the years reveals much about the evolution
Speaker 2: and preoccupations of him as an author, many of which
Speaker 2: play out in the way he's approached his family's history.
Speaker 2: In My Country, your Collected Stories, Essays and Speeches, which
Speaker 2: is wonderful, but not for nothing. That is the first
Speaker 2: essay titled Shaman Forgiveness, and you describe yourself as a
Speaker 2: young man who was very attuned to ideas of shame
Speaker 2: and forgiveness.
Speaker 3: Yep, I grew up as a very closeted gay young
Speaker 3: man and did everything I possibly could, including marrying In
Speaker 3: my twenties to make myself straight, and none of it worked.
Speaker 3: And I have very bitter memories, not only of the
Speaker 3: harm to me, but the harm I did to others
Speaker 3: because of that shame. But yes, I know shame, and
Speaker 3: I also know the value of coming out.
Speaker 2: Did you find your voice as a writer before you'd
Speaker 2: moved beyond shame or did you need to move beyond
Speaker 2: shame before you could write the way you do today?
Speaker 3: Well, the business of coming out and the business of
Speaker 3: becoming a journalist overlapped for a few years, And yes,
Speaker 3: that was at the same time that I was finding
Speaker 3: a voice. The odd thing is, of course, that I
Speaker 3: don't know what my voice is. I mean, it's my
Speaker 3: voice and I can't hear it, which is a strange thing.
Speaker 3: But anyway, finding your voice and finding yourself, I suppose,
Speaker 3: are pretty much the same thing.
Speaker 2: Part of whatso defines you as a writer to me,
Speaker 2: a reader who has loved reading you for so many years,
Speaker 2: is the relationship between your intellect, your fury, and your
Speaker 2: irrepressible sense of humor, and the fact that those three
Speaker 2: things the ven diagram a little bit in the middle.
Speaker 2: That is A David mar essay is about kind of
Speaker 2: channeling different parts of who you are, which is why
Speaker 2: it seems to me it has to come from a
Speaker 2: place of if not forgiveness for self at least not
Speaker 2: full blown shame anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, killing for countries, and exercise where there is no humor.
Speaker 3: I mean here and there. I know I have put
Speaker 3: in a few lines, but it's not a world of humor.
Speaker 3: It can't be. It can be dealt with with ridicule
Speaker 3: at times, but it is driven by I hope largely
Speaker 3: masked anger. I mean, you don't spend the years that
Speaker 3: me and my partners best into Cerrero, who has helped
Speaker 3: me all through this. We don't do that without being
Speaker 3: driven by anger.
Speaker 2: I mean, you pay tribute to Sebastian in the book.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll just dig into Sebastian for a moment, because
Speaker 2: I am fascinated by this, and I do think you know,
Speaker 2: a less a relationship might be broken by trying to
Speaker 2: uncover this kind of story together. But you do say
Speaker 2: here he proved a fine at times, savage editor, We
Speaker 2: had many disagreements, not all are resolved. That seems a
Speaker 2: little ominous now.
Speaker 3: Look, he comes from a Sicilian and Calabrian family. I've
Speaker 3: suggested to him that our next task should be to
Speaker 3: investigate his Sicilian four bears and his Calabrian four bears.
Speaker 3: He doesn't seem to be too keen, but where both
Speaker 3: former lawyers, we think very much alike. He is a
Speaker 3: terror for absolute accuracy. There was a showdown when I
Speaker 3: rather theatrically said it one stay. The trouble with you,
Speaker 3: Sebastian is that I write like a poet and you
Speaker 3: think like a lawyer. And he just looked at me
Speaker 3: and said, yeah, but I really do think poetry should
Speaker 3: be accurate. Squell wow. But we worked together very closely,
Speaker 3: and it began in COVID. It began with his Internet searching,
Speaker 3: and then it was a wonderful uninterrupted discussion of four
Speaker 3: years about this book and his attacks on my colonial imagination.
Speaker 3: And he was pretty brutal. And then we had a
Speaker 3: last fight was over the first word of the book,
Speaker 3: and I got, oh, Jesus, I'm just going to give
Speaker 3: in here. I wanted to say a young man drove
Speaker 3: his flock over the Liverpool Range. Sebastian's viewers, get on
Speaker 3: with it, David, you're going to name him in two lines,
Speaker 3: the young man. Anyway, I tried to find friends who
Speaker 3: would back my version, and they wouldn't. And it's the young.
Speaker 2: Man are somewhat elliptical in the book about the impact
Speaker 2: on your own family of your decision to choose to
Speaker 2: tell this story. And it seems interesting to me not
Speaker 2: to want to delve too far into the personal, but
Speaker 2: in terms of what that reflects about that national conversation,
Speaker 2: is that difficulty in facing a thing and in finding
Speaker 2: a way to tell that story differently? Was that something
Speaker 2: that tormented you in the writing of.
Speaker 3: This To begin with, Michael, you must understand that this
Speaker 3: has nothing to do with the Mars. This is my
Speaker 3: mother's family. The Mars are people of the most impeccable
Speaker 3: moral order, generation after generation since they first appeared as
Speaker 3: Blacksmith's in this colony.
Speaker 2: What a scurrilous disclaimer to put it there, just determined
Speaker 2: to protect one good name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's my mother's family that we're talking about here,
Speaker 3: But mah, my poor siblings. Can you imagine what it
Speaker 3: is like to endure having a brother like me who
Speaker 3: has been showing off and yelling at the country and
Speaker 3: cracking jokes for fifty years now, and then finally you
Speaker 3: write a book which goes to their bloodlines. At first
Speaker 3: they were oh, David, must you for Christ's sake? And
Speaker 3: as I learned more and more about the story and
Speaker 3: kept them roughly up to date with what was happening,
Speaker 3: they ended by saying, no, you must, you must. But
Speaker 3: one of my sisters added, but I still don't like
Speaker 3: it involving our family, and I say in the afterward,
Speaker 3: she speaks for Australia. You know, we are coming to
Speaker 3: grips with the fact that this happened, and there were
Speaker 3: twelve or thirteen hundred officers and men of the Native police.
Speaker 3: They've left a lot of descendants behind. I'm not claiming
Speaker 3: any heroism here. I'm a writer. It's my trade. I
Speaker 3: was handed a rather shocking discovery. I knew you at
Speaker 3: once that the only response to it was to write it.
Speaker 3: My family have gone along with that.
Speaker 2: You're not claiming heroism as a product of that family.
Speaker 2: As someone who lives in contemporary Australia, what are the
Speaker 2: implications of acknowledging and owning this in our past.
Speaker 3: I think you have to make a very clear distinction
Speaker 3: between guilt, which I don't feel at all, and shame,
Speaker 3: which I do feel. We can be proud of our
Speaker 3: families for things that happened generations ago that we had
Speaker 3: no part in. We can feel shame on exactly the
Speaker 3: same grounds. And I am ashamed of what the yours
Speaker 3: did in Queensland at the time that they were officers
Speaker 3: of the Native police and their forebears. I am ashamed
Speaker 3: of that. But my task as a writer is to
Speaker 3: put that shame. I mean, let it drive me, but
Speaker 3: not distort what I'm doing, not self indulgent. And by
Speaker 3: the time you realize how widespread that source of shame is,
Speaker 3: it kind of in a way melts into the national
Speaker 3: shame that we are beginning to feel and should feel
Speaker 3: for the way this country was put together. I hope
Speaker 3: the book is a new way of bringing home to
Speaker 3: us stuff that some of us didn't know at all,
Speaker 3: some of us, including me, who thought they knew it
Speaker 3: and discovered that it was different or worse, or more
Speaker 3: subtle or always. I'm fascinated by contradiction, and it's full
Speaker 3: of contradictions.
Speaker 2: Forgiveness is not quite the right construction, but progressing as
Speaker 2: a nation, being able to be a genuinely mature nation
Speaker 2: that is able to meaningfully grapple with its own past,
Speaker 2: requires some kind of process, some kind of reconciliation.
Speaker 3: But where do we go when the modest and generous
Speaker 3: suggestion of a voice for Indigenous Australians is met with fury, lies, misrepresentation.
Speaker 3: Where do we go? What happens if this referendum is
Speaker 3: as it seems utterly lost? Where do we go? Above all,
Speaker 3: I don't think you can survive in this trade unless
Speaker 3: at some zany level you're an optimist, and I am
Speaker 3: an optimist. We will find a way to a decent
Speaker 3: resolution of the issues of our past that are still unsettled.
Speaker 3: We will find a way to it, but we make
Speaker 3: it so hard for ourselves.
Speaker 2: Before I let you go, I'm just curious about what
Speaker 2: you do next. You and Sebastian have been caught up
Speaker 2: in this project for four years. This has consumed you.
Speaker 2: How do you come out from living in the historical
Speaker 2: record trying to make sense of this stuff? What do
Speaker 2: you do next?
Speaker 3: What do you think of Sicilian pirates?
Speaker 2: Love them? Love them? I would read you on Sicilian
Speaker 2: pirates without question. David mar thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Killing for Country is widely available man.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to David Maher on read This. For
Speaker 1: the next couple of months, we're going to bring you
Speaker 1: some of the best interviews from the show every Sunday.
Speaker 1: Listen out for conversations with Geraldine Brooks, Mary Beard, Bruce
Speaker 1: Pasco and more. And if you don't want to wait
Speaker 1: until next Sunday to dive in to read this, you
Speaker 1: can search for it wherever you listen to podcasts. There's
Speaker 1: a whole year's worth of fascinating conversation nations ready for you.