Respect and denial

Some years ago I was invited to a white man's corroboree on a borra ring in Gundagai which I promptly refused. On the day this was to happen I left town and headed for Holbrook some hundred miles to the south all the time the hairs were standing on my back. Shivers invaded my body even though it was warm. I stayed there til dusk and slowly made my way back.
That would be like me going into the catholic church and having a corroboree stamping the floor til the dust rose.
When the sun fell from the horizon the skies above Gundagai lit up like the devils Calderon, Feeling some sort of nervousness which I can not explain even to this day, I was stopped in my tracks so to speak and had to stop the car. Watching from a distance of fifty miles to the south of town I waited til late into the night.  Before the lights dissipated. This was long after the sun had gone and the stars were shining on a cool crisp night. The following day I found my dog dead having been hit with a car I forgot to take him with me. Another dog replaced him and was killed on the exact same spot.
Now this was before I found about my aboriginal heritage, even things from early in my life now start to make sense.
As a child of about four I was playing with deadly brown snake babies with my gentle touch I had no fear. Then there was the time when a wild stallion came to the house yard trying to take the mares. He bolted into the home paddock and stopped inches from me and rared up swinging his hooves about me.
My uncle who was a fantastic horseman could not move the stallion from over me and was so afraid I would have been trampled by this giant of a horse.
Then I am told about what happens to white child who was borne to a black family , they were promptly adopted out.  I was darker than my siblings and was called the black sheep of the family to my face., Also I was told that I had to live up to my surname shit my name was my name. I had to live up to myself, The impossible and ridiculous goals I had set for me.
Since the parting of my parents I have got one phone call in ten years from my siblings, and this was to tell me to ring my adopted cousin as my aunt had died.
Respect and denial has been a part of my life for many years.
This from the "positive one" another name I was called.
I guess that I have now been enlightened and will never look back.