“A day or two later, after Annie’s outburst, Lekisha arrived at the school when I was trying to work and demanded I get my camera and come with her.  We drove up the highway where the new signs announcing the new blanket restrictions on Aboriginal Land were going up.  Michael had already told me they were absolutely huge.  They were costed at over ten thousand dollars each.  the waste of money was enough to make a person cry.  If I just did the sums in our area it was about two hundred thousand dollars and it was intended every prescribed community should have one.

When we hit the southern boundary of Red Bore I could understand why she was so mad.   The sign was police blue.  Clearly it had been created by a graphic designer going for the graffiti look.  The symbol was clear enough.  A bottle with a cross through it.  A ban on all pornography.

The sign was so large it took mew a while to frame the photograph.  Lekisha, mistaking my lack of skill for hesitation, was not impressed. ‘Take it,’ she demanded.  I snapped a few of the sign and a couple of her angry face.

‘Why do you want a picture of it?’ I asked, as I showed them to her on the little screen.  It was so offensive.  So rude and unnecessary.

‘Record,’ she said.  ‘Show the kids.  Keep it for Rosia and the little ones so they can see what was done.  Aboriginal history.’

I let my breath out slowly.  There was nothing I could say in comfort.

At Promised Land boundary we passed the holes they’d dug for our signs.  Any day now we’d be labelled drunk pornography loving deviants, along with everyone else living on aboriginal land.”
from ‘From Alice with Love’, Jo Dutton 2013, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW. Australia.