Being Balanda

I am Balanda. 

Me leading a private guided tour at the Chateau de Chenonceau.

I'm a white Australian and my father's family arrived in Australia from England in 1851. My mother's parents arrived from England in 1928.

I am the baby in this photo. The other people are my great-grandmother, my uncle, my great aunt, my mother and my aunt.

The term Balanda had only just a few years earlier entered the English lexicon. The explorer Ludwig Leichhardt was the first European to use it, in his journal in 1845, and he got it exactly right, explaining that it was an indigenous Australian term which had come from the Malay word for 'Hollanders'. The Malay word in turn comes from the Portuguese 'Holanda'.