I REMEMBER quite vividly the first time I saw a black man. It was one of those where-were-you-when-John Kennedy-was-shot moments.
I was a little tacker walking along a crowded Rundle St (before it was a mall) footpath with my mother in the early 1950s. Suddenly a man in a dark-blue business suit appeared ahead of us. His face and hands were coal-black.
I stood and gawked, utterly astonished. I had never before seen a black man. I intend no offence by telling this story. It has the defence of innocent truth. But Adelaide in the 1950s was almost an entirely white European Community. At Henley Beach, where I grew up, there were no black or Asian people, no black or Asian students at the Henley Primary School. 
The indigenous population was confined to regional areas or out-of-sight pockets of suburban Adelaide.
The 1950s was the high-water mark of the White Australia policy, surely one of the most ill-conceived, offensive and unworkable political policies ever evolved.
The White Australia policy was established at Federation in 1901 and was embraced by both major political parties. The Immigration Restriction Act intentionally favoured immigrants from other English-speaking countries and, to a lesser extent, from certain northwestern European countries and excluded those from southern and eastern Europe as well as Asia, the Pacific and Africa.
Unions were concerned about low-wage workers from the Pacific Islands working in the sugar plantations and there were tensions between British and Chinese miners in the goldfields.
Early in World War II the Labor Prime Minister, John Curtin said: "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace and order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race." In 1947 the Labor Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell - who led the Party between 1960 and 1967 - said in Parliament: "Two Wongs don't make a white." In defence of Calwell, he later said the quote was intended as a joke and had been taken out of context. But when, after World War II, Australia adopted a vigorous immigration program built on the slogan "populate or perish", Calwell said: "We have 25 years at most to populate this country before the yellow races are down on us." At the time Australia's population was 7.3 million. Three weeks ago it passed 24 million.
Whatever the context or intent, these quotes captured the national community and bipartisan political mood of the time. How times change. Imagine a member of Parliament expressing similar sentiments today. He or she would be vilified.
The White Australia policy remained largely unchanged and unchallenged until 1966. In   March of that year - almost precisely 50 years ago - the Liberal Government headed by prime minister, Harold Holt introduced the Migration Act 1966.
This was a turning point in Australia's attitude to immigration and effectively dismantled the White Australia policy. It allowed increased access to Australia of non-European migrants and allowed refugees from the Vietnam War to settle in Australia.
In 1973 all vestiges of the policy were erased when Gough Whitlam's Labor government outlawed race as a factor in selecting migrants and allowed people of any race to obtain citizenship after three years of permanent residence.But it was in   March, 1966 - half a century ago - that Australia matured sufficiently to realise it could no longer remain some unconscionable bastion of white European superiority, and began tearing down the walls of this putrid, offensive and internationally unacceptable policy based on greed and self-interest. It's a milestone worth acknowledging. Most Australians today have little memory of the White Australia policy. Yet half a century later it remains a low-point in Australia's development and a stain on our reputation as a caring and humanitarian nation.