“Work hard and they will respect us,” Henry “Bunny” Allen used to preach to his kids. And nobody had a harder job than him. He toiled away, lathered in sweat and wool fat, as the sun bore down on the tin roof of a shearing shed. Bunny, a Kamilaroi man, lived his creed. He saved his shearing money and bought his family a house in Moree, in western NSW just below the Queensland border. In the 1960s, the Allens were one of the few Indigenous families living in town. Most lived in shanties, out on the mission.

Bunny’s daughter, Gail, was academically gifted and one of the few Indigenous kids in the A-class at Moree High. But she copped it from the whites, for being black, and from the blacks for being “uptown”. She is forever grateful to Mrs Johnson, a teacher at her primary school, who held her hand in the playground and gave her the honour of cleaning the blackboard. Gail told a friend this simple act of kindness changed her life. A few years ago, she tracked her down to thank her.