1. April, 1955: Still in a pram, Pauline is in the frontline of
her first political battle! She accompanies her mother to a protest rally
outside a Brisbane suburban paint store which plans to introduce Australia’s
first free colour cards.
2. September, 1964: As a two year old child, a tearful Pauline pleads
with her family to immigrate to Britain so she can experience a white Christmas.
3. December, 1968: Now an impressionable young teenager, Pauline
attempts to play The Beatles’ “white” album only to be frightened
when a Nat King Cole record starts playing, having been placed in the wrong
cover. To this day, she still vividly recalls the song’s title: Against
the Order of Nature Boy
4. January 1972: Pauline is devastated to discover that a foster
sister she was really quite fond of was in fact Aboriginal. Until then,
she had no inkling there would one day be black blood between them.
5. July, 1972: Now in her late teens, Pauline establishes a short-lived
lobby group to fight the introduction of colour television.
6. August 1973. Now a mature young woman, married with one child
and another one on the way, Pauline vows never to shop ever again at Errol
Stewarts electrical store after witnessing a sales assistant helping a newly-wed
Aboriginal couple purchase a range of white goods.
7. January 1976: During her first - and only - meal at a Vietnamese
restaurant she mistakes the head chef’s Lenin’s 100th Birthday
Commemorative Medallion, that has fallen into her entree dish, for a city
council dog identification disc.
8. March, 1988. Now a shop proprietor and anxious to please all customer
tastes, Pauline’s first -and only - attempt to deep fry dim sims ends
in disaster when the ten litres of BP high-viscosity oil she is using catches
fire.
9. May, 1992: Pauline is devastated when her mail-order copy of
the latest Barry White album - a birthday present for one of her children
- arrives at home. She cancels her membership of the Australian Record Club
immediately on realising she has been duped. On top of the Nat King Cole
and dog tag incidents, the White subterfuge begins to crystalise her strong
views on colour and race.
10: December 1994: During a quiet afternoon’s trading in her
shop, she absent-mindedly twists the station dial and discovers talk-back
radio.