Nigel Quotes in Black Diggers
Full-blood, too. Unusual. Perfect specimen. And if I’d been only five minutes later … it’s all chance, and fate. [To the baby] Look at you. Back from the dead, if only you knew it.
NIGEL: Father, what happened to my aborigine parents?
TAXIDERMIST: You know that, little man. They died.
NIGEL: How did they die?
TAXIDERMIST: I’ll tell you one day. Look, a chimpanzee. They are our closest relatives.
NIGEL: Why not now?
TAXIDERMIST: Because you’re not ready yet.
NIGEL: Ready for what?
TAXIDERMIST: The world—the bigger, grown-up world—is a complicated, difficult place. You should enjoy every moment of your childhood. Plenty of time for truth later.
You must all see now, having been captured, that you have been used and abused. You are victims of your oppressive masters, who brutally seized your lands and took from you your birthrights. You are little more than slaves until you rise up and throw off the shackles of your British masters. The time for being lickspittles has ended, this war and the inevitable defeat of Great Britain has washed it all away. The question is, who will acknowledge they have been made fools, have been kept children, have accepted their own slavery? It is Time to fight, to fight against your oppressors, for a free India, for free Africa…
REPORTER: Surely the letter’s point is about the massacre up in the Territory?
EDITOR: No-one’s interested in payback in the back of Bourke. An Aborigine who can write like this is a much better story. He must be doing all right for himself, mustn’t he?
Tarzan. At the Empire. Tarzan, man of the apes. The ape man. Tarzan. Ape. Man. Lowland Gorilla. From Zanzibar. Ape. Man.
He stops, has a surreptitious swig from a bottle. Stands still, watching people rush past him.
Sorry Dad.
Nigel Quotes in Black Diggers
Full-blood, too. Unusual. Perfect specimen. And if I’d been only five minutes later … it’s all chance, and fate. [To the baby] Look at you. Back from the dead, if only you knew it.
NIGEL: Father, what happened to my aborigine parents?
TAXIDERMIST: You know that, little man. They died.
NIGEL: How did they die?
TAXIDERMIST: I’ll tell you one day. Look, a chimpanzee. They are our closest relatives.
NIGEL: Why not now?
TAXIDERMIST: Because you’re not ready yet.
NIGEL: Ready for what?
TAXIDERMIST: The world—the bigger, grown-up world—is a complicated, difficult place. You should enjoy every moment of your childhood. Plenty of time for truth later.
You must all see now, having been captured, that you have been used and abused. You are victims of your oppressive masters, who brutally seized your lands and took from you your birthrights. You are little more than slaves until you rise up and throw off the shackles of your British masters. The time for being lickspittles has ended, this war and the inevitable defeat of Great Britain has washed it all away. The question is, who will acknowledge they have been made fools, have been kept children, have accepted their own slavery? It is Time to fight, to fight against your oppressors, for a free India, for free Africa…
REPORTER: Surely the letter’s point is about the massacre up in the Territory?
EDITOR: No-one’s interested in payback in the back of Bourke. An Aborigine who can write like this is a much better story. He must be doing all right for himself, mustn’t he?
Tarzan. At the Empire. Tarzan, man of the apes. The ape man. Tarzan. Ape. Man. Lowland Gorilla. From Zanzibar. Ape. Man.
He stops, has a surreptitious swig from a bottle. Stands still, watching people rush past him.
Sorry Dad.
