This Whispering In Our Hearts

'How is it our minds are not satisfied? . . . What means this whispering in the bottom of our hearts?'

So ended a public lecture given in 1842 by prominent Sydney barrister, Richard Windeyer. The lecture was meant to be reasoned demolition of the rights of Australia's original inhabitants. But it ended with a question, acknowledgment of a troubled conscience . . .

From the lives of remarkable and largely forgotten people who followed their consciences, at great personal cost, Henry Reynolds constructs a different history of Australia - seen through the eyes of those who said no, those whose legacy is so important in the current debate about this country's future.

The story begins with Australia's first punitive expedition in December 1790 and the first clash of conscience about the use of violence which took place between Governor Arthur Phillip and Lieutenant William Dawes. It ends on the eve of World War II with humanitarian reformers like Mary Bennett still expressing deep anger about the condition of the Aborigines and the attitudes of white Australia.