On August 15th, Peter Murnane, a 65 year old Dominican friar, set off from Canberra on a pilgrimage to celebrate his 40th anniversary since joining the Order. The destination of his almost 2700 Km long journey was Uluru, also known by the name of "Ayers Rock", a sacred place for the natives, at the centre of Australia. His intention was to bring a message of "peace and reconciliation" to the aboriginal communities he passed by, and to ask forgiveness for the past Governments' policies with regard to them. He was accompanied by six fellow cyclists. "This journey - he had declared on setting off - will help us look more closely at the terrible injustice which the aborigines have had to endure since 1788, and to understand why they were driven away from their own territories".
 

Entering someone's house without knocking. When, at the end of the Eighteenth century, the first British penal colony was founded in Australia, 700 thousand aborigines are thought to have lived there. By 1830, only 80 thousand had survived: interaction between natives and settlers had brought to about the decimation of the former through disease, murder and land repossession. Many cultural traditions and linguistic traditions were lost forever. Consequently, the whole fifth continent was colonized on the basis of the "no man's land" principle: as the aborigines were not considered as the owners of the land they lived on, no one could be held responsible for stealing something from them. Even after the declaration of independence from the British Empire, at the beginning of the 1900s they were segregated at the borders of the new nation, and they weren't recognized as citizens until 1967. Between 1930 and 1970, according to the data collected by an undercommission of State and published in 1997, at least a hundred thousand aborigine children were taken away from their families to be brought up in white households. The Authorities' intention was to wipe out their cultural background in hopes of benefiting the Country. The whole operation was carried out repressively and on a large scale, with this being brought to the attention of the public only in the late 1990s: all those torn away from their families then became known as the "stolen generation". The criminality rate among male uprooted aborigines was almost double that of those who had been brought up by their original families. The rate of dependency on drugs and alcohol was also higher than average. Some of the Federation's States and the Evangelic church have since made public apologies for all this.

It goes on. The current situation is deeply affected by two centuries of harassment, which have left vivid memories in the surviving native communities. The life expectancy of aborigines turns out to be around twenty years shorter than the national average, and malnutrition, syphilis and leprosy still cause many victims. Unemployment among these communities reaches 38%, against a national average of 9%. While at the beginning of the Nineties aborigines were recognized rights over their original settlements, a new law from the Howard Government has since declared these claims secondary to the rights of white animal breeders and of mining companies. In May 2000, after ten years of debate between the Government, Churches and human rights associations within a commission for aborigines, the Government published a final document in which none of the requests of native Australians were fulfilled: they were granted no property rights over the land encircling the settlements, nor were they recognized given the right to participate in the political decisions which involved them. No trace of the long awaited excuses for past crimes: the offended aborigine representatives then decided not to take part in the closing ceremony.

A long battle. It wasn't by chance that Friar Murnane's pilgrimage started in the very grounds of the Australian Parliament's headquarters. This is also where, since 1972,  the "Aboriginal tent Embassy" which was erected to host the many civilian activists protesting against the Government's policy towards the natives, who were waiting to be received by the stands. After over 30 years the tent is still there, even though in the first years the Authorities had repeatedly tried to dismantle it, and it's survived the weather in spite of its flimsy appearance. In 1987, the "Embassy" was recognized as a national monument, the only aboriginal building ever to have been granted this title.