Winner of the 16 - 18 years age category

My Place

            New place, that's where, new place, new scary, big, echoing place, new loud, new people, new place.

            My brand new shoes scuff the shiny floors as I shuffle down the empty hall way. New place, boarding school scholarship, that's where, new place. I stop outside a large door labelled 21. I look at the piece of paper with the same number on it, sigh and hold my hand up towards the door and place it back by my side. There are shouts and laughter from the other side of the door which makes my heart thump loudly against my chest as my nerves spiral out of control. I don't want to be here. I just want to kick these squeaky, uncomfortable, shiny shoes off and run and run and run like we did back in my country on the dingo hunts. My elders tell me coming here is an honor and that I can show these white fella how smart an Aboriginal can be.

            New place that's where, new place, not my place, that's where, new place.

            I pull myself out of the pointless past and knock on the large door. The sound seems to echo down the hall making me cringe. The hubbub in the class room dies at once. I look around from an escape route, find none and turn back to face a pair of bright sky blue eyes and a mop of shiny blond hair, plaited loosely with a pink ribbon tied at the end. The girl smiles at me. "You must be the new kid."

            I nod. I understand English but it is not my language, not the language of the Nudawye people.

            "I'm Issy." She puts out her hand.

            I look down at it. This English greeting is not my language either.

            She blushes and returns it to her side.

            "I'm Noola"

            She looks back at me pleased. She smiles and I smile back. Maybe this school wouldn't be so bad if everyone is like Issy, but I have learned not to trust the smiles nor the hand of white man.

            The bell rings. Issy tells me to sit next to her on the hard plastic chairs. This is not my learning. This is white people learning. My learning is from my elders who tell stories of our people, of our land and our secrets by our camp fires at night. I love to hear them speak of a time when this ochre land was ours, when we had schooling our way.

            This place that's where, new place, not my place, hard chairs, hard desks, hard white faces, new place, not my place.

            Our teacher tells of Captain Cook, a great man who claimed Australia for his king.

            "Cook stole the land from my people." The class is silent when I speak.

            "Forget the past, Noola. We are one people, the same people."

            "If this is true," I say, "why do so many of my people die young and yours live to be elders?"

            "I'm sorry," says my teacher. "Many people are sorry."

            I look around. Many white faces look at me. I see that what the teacher says is true. A boy with large gaps in his teeth looks at me with a face full of regret and says he's sorry too. All of my class mates mirror his regretful face. These peoples expressions should not and do not belong to them. My class mates are not the white men who condemned my people to this fate. I cannot continue a grudge which has no place in this classroom. These people have been nothing but kind to me.

            I am Noola an Aboriginal who has joined forces with the white man of my country and I have found my place, this place.

            My place, that's where, my place, smiling faces of all colours, my place that's where this place.

By  Colette Molino