The Preambles Project

6 Preambles by 6 Australian Authors for the Queen's Birthday

JAMES BRADLEY
First and forever there is the land, the sea, the sky. It is from them that we are born, to them we shall return. It is to them we pledge our allegiance first, and foremost, and in this allegiance assume the trust to care for them as they care for us. It is this same land, this same sea, this same sky that for countless generations were sacred to the Aboriginal peoples, who learned their rhythms, shaped them with fire and story, and drew from them their laws and customs. This heritage can neither be denied nor undone, yet in it we find the beginnings of a new future, for by this Act forgiveness for the wrongs they have suffered at the hands of those who came later is honestly sought and freely given. And so, though born of many lands and races we the people of Australia, cognisant of our past, hopeful for the future, acknowledging no dominion save that of our shared trust, affirming that the rights of every individual to life and liberty are equal and inviolable and worthy of protection, and entrusting those we elect to govern with the power to make such laws as are necessary to ensure those rights, do hereby give our assent to the creation of a Commonwealth of Australia in our name, one nation, united and indivisible beneath the southern sky.

PETER CAREY
We are a nation made in a land which was, for tens of thousands of years, sacred to the most ancient culture on this earth, itself the complex creation of a people who once travelled here from far away. We are also a nation forged by prisoners in chains, dispossessed of their motherland, rejected, spat out, unloved. Our sympathy for the sufferings of our fellow citizens will be forever determined by these circumstances which have also proved to us that that our human possibilities can never be curtailed. We are a nation engendered by a foreign king, by foreign wars, by happenstance, by a once great empire which also bequeathed us our first rich cultural inheritance. We are a nation, most of all, made by people whose ancestors gambled everything to travel through storm, through war, through the dreary deadly ocean, who abandoned everything familiar to reach this continent. We are a nation of immigrants, united by our fierce love of this land. Given the experience of unfairness and persecution that mark the lifelines of our individual histories, we are forever determined to nurture and uphold the liberties of our fellow citizens. Set against the implacable truth of our vast and fragile continent, the differences in our beliefs are very small indeed and we, having been melded in the fires of history, are now determined to guarantee each other the mutual protection afforded by a republic of free citizens who proudly stand side by side, inseparable beneath the Southern Cross.

DELIA FALCONER
We, the citizens of Australia, recognising that this land was given to us by no God and existed first as country, then as colony, and last as a Federal Commonwealth created in 1901 by the federation of six states; honouring equally the system of law inherited from England and the continuing laws and cultures of the Aboriginal peoples who never ceded ownership; affirming our duty of care toward this ancient landscape and its creatures; upholding the liberty of each individual regardless of ancestry under the laws of our democratic system; cognisant of our history; accepting our special status as an island continent, generous in expanse and heart, linked and looking outward to the ocean; charge each government to uphold the rules and ideals of this constitution decreed by us, the Australian people.

RICHARD FLANAGAN
We were born of a dreamtime that foretells our future, we arose out of a war that pitted a newworld fettered in chains against an old world fallen from the southern heavens. Yet leavened by the glory of this world cast as earth and sea, we came to see our own image as wind and light and dust, as tree and spinifex and coral, as animal and bird and fish. As in the play of light and dark we saw our world slowly shape, we came to recognise in our fellow humans suffering our own unredeemed past, to prophesy in the hand we hold out to others our own future. From the ancient painted gorges of the Fitzroy River to the ever-new rainbow of the Great Barrier Reef, from a Manly ferry at dusk to Uluru at dawn, from the many dreamings and the many nightmares, from the rainbow serpent to the Burma Railway to Kuta Beach, we strove to make a nation of free and generous people united by a belief in liberty and in truth. And we, the issue of every land and every past, did so knowing that nations become great not by force of arms nor by dint of wealth, but by never ceasing to battle for human dignity, for freedom, and for justice; by seeing the most powerless as entitled to as fair a go as the most powerful; by recognising that the measure of the strongest must always be their care for the weakest; by asserting through our lives that Australia is never a fact, but a dream each of us must make anew every day.

DOROTHY PORTER
We are fortunate to live and prosper in the expansive light of a unique and ancient continent. It is our duty and privilege as a people to nurture and protect this natural landscape as has been done for millennia by the indigenous Australians. We are a country of many and diverse peoples. We welcome strangers, innovators and those escaping persecution. We do not live by division, timidity or bigotry. We are a secular democratic republic united by imagination, courage, equal opportunity and a sense of fair play, with a vigilant respect for our individual freedoms. We have learned from tradition and our history, but are not hostage to them. We will rise to the challenges of the future by providing opportunities forwork and a free and vigorous education to all Australians. We pledge to be peacemakers and good neighbours in the international community of nations.

LEAH PURCELL
Malo karbilli guyungungun Pamanyungun
yumba, diarai.
Narlie winunguldul gailun.
Yumunjinda winungul
Ariellai.

One day we will all stand strong on this land, Australia, our home, come. I understand what has to be done. Do you know? Together. Together we shall: Acknowledge and embrace the diversity of Australia, of its land and of the peoples that inhabit it. Understand the joys and sorrows of our fellow citizens, for only by so understanding shall we find the compassion for each other that will make us strong. Allow ourselves and all others to live life in peace and harmony, for all will prosper as a consequence. Learn from our pasts so we may have hope that our futures will bring change, for in the truth we will find the strength to make this possible. Acknowledge that there is not one god but many. No one belief is superior to the other and all are free to worship as they choose. Strive always to empower all of us, both as individuals and as the nation created by this Act. Respect our pioneers, both men and women, of every creed and colour for their efforts in building this country they have given us. Give homage to the struggles and deeds of the immigrant. Respect and acknowledge the land and its first peoples. Respect and acknowledge the suffering and the injustices of the past for it is only by doing this that we shall move forward together as a nation, united and indivisible.