This is the Guardian.

Today, a referendum and one woman's fight to change Australia.

Before we start, this episode contains references to racist language and violence.

For indigenous Australian listeners, a heads up.

It also includes the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have now passed away.

I was working about 1980 in a town called Derby in the Kimberley,

which had retained these racial segregation practices.

Professor Marcia Langton is an Aboriginal activist and academic.

In the 1980s, she was working as an anthropologist in Western Australia.

And I'd been working with some old men recording their ceremonies and their songs.

They were such beautiful people and there were two hotels in town,

both of them segregated.

One in a very weird way, it had a white bar, a black bar and a coloured bar.

But the other place was strictly white only.

And I found this out because I asked one of my dear compatriots,

have you ever been in there?

And he said, no, I've never been in there.

I said, why not?

He said, oh, they don't let us in there.

And it was a hotel that had the fanciest restaurant in town.

I went back recently.

I don't know how I could have thought it was fanciest.

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