Lao Tsu: ‘If the sage would guide the people, he must serve with humility.’

Xavier Herbert: ‘To me you are first and last a bureaucrat. You can't help being so. You just grew up like that. But I'm told there's some human grace in you.’

H.C. Coombs: ‘It is, let us recall, the little leaven which leaveneth the whole lump.’

Roy Marika: ‘How are you getting on there in Canberra? I hope that you are busy in the work, a very busy man.’

Last week, for instance, I was being physically jolted around in a day-long jeep ride in temperatures approaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit over a derelict cattle property in the Pilbara region of North-West Australia, which, it is hoped, will be taken up and rehabilitated by a group of Aboriginals. A couple of weeks before that, in Central Australia, I was clambering along a narrow ditch, to examine a fine vein of chrysoprase, a beautiful Australian gem-stone, discovered and being developed by the men of the desert. Not long before that, I had trudged over the rolling slopes and through the beautiful rain forest of Cape York, to see the bountiful flow of the Jardine River, which will be piped to irrigate the lands of the Bamaga Aboriginal reserve, and, I hope, bring independence to its Aboriginal residents. […]