Eddie Mabo used to hide a shotgun above the manhole in the ceiling of his family’s home. It was the late 1970s and there had been ASIO surveillance of the house, threatening phone calls, and other safety concerns. Protecting his family was uppermost in the mind of Mabo (1936-92), the Torres Strait Islands man who later became the famed land rights activist central to the High Court’s landmark 1992 decision to overturn the legal doctrine of “terra nullius”.
His daughter Gail, one of seven children, well remembers the gun
