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