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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2011

Tim Rowse
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Summary

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.’

‘I am often asked how I am enjoying my retirement,’ Dr H.C. (‘Nugget’) Coombs told ABC Radio listeners on 5 January 1969. Always an active man, he was pleased to report a life abounding in physical and mental challenges.

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. […]

Type
Chapter
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Obliged to be Difficult
Nugget Coombs' Legacy in Indigenous Affairs
, pp. 1 - 16
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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  • Introduction
  • Tim Rowse, University of Sydney
  • Book: Obliged to be Difficult
  • Online publication: 01 June 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511552199.001
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  • Introduction
  • Tim Rowse, University of Sydney
  • Book: Obliged to be Difficult
  • Online publication: 01 June 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511552199.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Tim Rowse, University of Sydney
  • Book: Obliged to be Difficult
  • Online publication: 01 June 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511552199.001
Available formats
×