I got on a plane in Sydney to play a round of golf. By the time I stood on the green at Moree Golf Club, surrounded by more than 50 blokes gathered for a NAIDOC Week golf day, I knew it was worth the airfare and then some. But I will fly home with a question I have not been able to shake.
Why, in a town like Moree, was I the only non-Indigenous player there?
Think about that for a moment. I flew up from Sydney to be part of this day. Moree has thousands of non-Indigenous residents living within ten minutes of that golf course. Not one of them was standing on that green with us. This is not a criticism of any individual, and it is certainly not a criticism of the organisers, whose welcome could not have been warmer. It is an observation about where we still are as a country, and it deserves an honest look.
Here is what those absent locals missed. A full day of golf, laughter, competition and connection, organised by the Indigenous community of Moree with no funding, no grants, and no cash injection of any kind. Just people who decided their community mattered enough to show up for. Fifty-plus players. Old fellas and young blokes. Handshakes, ribbing, stories, and a group photo on the green that says more about community than any government report ever will.
And here is the part that matters most. I grew up hearing about the divide in towns like this. The old generational view that a community can be split neatly into blacks and whites, each keeping to their own side of an invisible line drawn long before any of us were born. That view has done real damage in regional Australia, and Moree knows that history better than most.
On this day, that line did not exist. It was broken by something as simple as a game of golf. Nobody held a summit. Nobody drafted a reconciliation framework. Someone organised a tee time, and everyone who turned up was family for the day. I was welcomed not as a visitor or a token, but as a mate. If a divide that has lasted generations can dissolve over eighteen holes, then the divide was never as permanent as we were told. It survives only as long as we keep choosing not to show up.
That is why days like this matter far beyond the scorecard. Regional towns are doing it tough. Young people leave, services shrink, and the things that hold a town together get harder to sustain every year. If towns like Moree are going to exist long term, and thrive rather than merely survive, community cannot be a nice-to-have. It is the whole game. Events that bring people together across every line, cultural, generational, whatever, are not soft feel-good exercises. They are infrastructure. They are as vital to a town’s future as roads and hospitals.
This year’s NAIDOC theme is 50 Years of Deadly, honouring five decades of communities who kept showing up with little more than their own determination. What I saw in Moree was exactly that spirit, alive and well on a golf course in north-west NSW.
So here is my challenge, to myself as much as anyone. Next time there is a community event in your town, whoever is hosting it, go. Do not wait for an invitation engraved with your name on it. The invitation is the event itself. I should not have been the only non-Indigenous player on that green, and next year I am determined not to be.
Because the truth I brought home from Moree is simple. Nobody is coming to fix the divide for us. Not a program, not a policy, not a funding round. It gets fixed by ordinary people deciding to share a fairway, a meal, a laugh.
I need to be the change. We need to be the change. No, we must be the change.
And it can start with something as simple as a game of golf.
Tim O’Reilly is the Managing Director of Built Smart Solutions.
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