“We were rounded up like livestock in a fenced-off yard,” Winmar writes in his book, My Story: From Bush Kid to AFL Legend. Nicky Winmar runs on to the field before an AFL match against Brisbane in 1997. “Physical pain is what makes these natives sit up and take notice.” “Whipping is the only punishment the Aboriginals fear,” the magistrate had said. When he was two, a local magistrate sentenced an Aboriginal youth to six months’ detention for stealing lollies and cigarettes. Home was a corrugated shack with dirt floors and no windows, running water or functional sewerage system. He was raised on an Aboriginal reservation in Western Australia’s wheatbelt, under what was essentially a form of apartheid, and never met his older sister Robyn, who died from a spider bite. Most of all, Winmar wants you to know where he comes from. He doesn’t want to launch into some impassioned plea for tolerance, a doleful lament on the plight of Indigenous people.

He doesn’t want to be on speed dial every time there’s a racist incident. He doesn’t want to be a spokesperson for his people. He surveys the space, the slope and the ancient trees surrounding it. As we speak, his gaze never leaves the empty oval. We talk about his new book, which begins with a gun, a locked house and a conviction to end it all, and ends with healing and hope. And why mess up a good thing? And that's that.We’re at an amateur ground in Melbourne, a world away from the MCG, his favourite ground. I could still pick winners, and I could still make money for all kinds of people back home. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids? Junk bonds.But in the end, I wound up right back where I started.

After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. You get a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some twenty-five-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his Social Security Number. And if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's like checkin' into an airport. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over.

Nicky from casino quotes