The Bridge had come to stand for Australia, the icon that identified us around the world. Traditionally much of what mattered in Australia had come from Britain. We were proud of the fact that the engineer in charge of building the Bridge— a great technical feat—was an Australian. We knew the history of its opening day in 1932. The premier was lifting the scissors to cut the ribbon when a man called de Groot, who disapproved of the premier’s politics, galloped up and slashed the ribbon with his sword. It was a swashbuckling story that gave the Bridge a personality.

So the idea of having the Reconciliation Walk across the Bridge—with all its affectionate associations—was a potent one. The walk itself promised to be another big symbolic thing. Its aims were large and vague enough to make us feel cosy in spite of the bitter westerly wind. Everyone was smiling. We were all pretty pleased with ourselves.

We—myself and a friend and our children—strolled along the roadway with the crowd. I was thinking more about Mum than about reconciliation. She’d often told me her own story about the Bridge. She was a young pharmacist when it was to be opened, and had been given the afternoon off—a rare treat—to join the crowd walking across it. She claimed to have seen de Groot ride up on his horse with his sword held aloft.

She’d always said, though, that she might just have seen the picture in the paper the next day.

Almost at the end of the walk, on the southern end of the Bridge, I noticed a group of Aboriginal people leaning against the railings watching us. A couple of men with hats and spreading beards, two or three women with their skirts pressed against their legs in the wind. At the end of the row, a tall handsome woman frankly staring, as if to memorise each face. Our eyes met and we shared one of those moments of intensity—a pulse of connectedness. We smiled, held each other’s gaze, I think perhaps we gestured with our hands, the beginning of a wave.

It should have made me feel even better about what I was doing, but it sent a sudden blade of cold into my warm inner glow.

This woman’s ancestors had been in Australia for a long time. Sixty thousand years was the current figure. Her ancestors might have been living on the shores of Sydney Harbour when the First Fleet sailed in.

The blade I was feeling was the knowledge that my ancestor had been here too. Solomon Wiseman hadn’t arrived on that first convoy, but he’d arrived within twenty years of it. His ship would have anchored in this bay. He’d have come ashore right underneath where an Aboriginal woman and I were exchanging smiles.

And what if my great-great-great grandfather had glanced up, and seen her great-great-great grandfather standing on a rock watching the new arrivals? I didn’t know much about what had gone on between the Aboriginal people and the settlers in those early days. And yet I was sure that Solomon Wiseman wouldn’t have smiled and waved at any Aboriginal man watching him come ashore.