Aden Ridgeway is only 52, but he's old enough to remember a time when segregation of black and white Australians was commonplace.
It was only in the year of his birth that Indigenous people were granted the vote, and it wasn't until he was five that the first Australians were counted as citizens.
Growing up on the Bellwood Aboriginal Reserve in Nambucca Valley in northern NSW, Ridgeway remembers how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people sat in separate areas at the cinema. Whites would sit on plush chairs, while Aboriginal people sat on hard, wooden fold-up seats, or lay on the floor.
It was this segregation that drew the Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins and a group of university students to the Bowraville picture theatre on their "freedom ride" 50 years ago. The group challenged the racism of the time by attempting to enter the cinema through the front door, and sitting in the cushioned seats usually occupied by whites.
Half a century later, Ridgeway, a former Australian Democrats Senator, returned to his Gumbaynggirr ancestral lands as part of a contemporary struggle for justice – the push to recognise the first Australians in the nation's founding document.
"This is a storybook missing a chapter … which is about the 50,000-year history of Aboriginal people in this country… and the campaign is about putting that back," Ridgeway says.
Much has changed in Bowraville since the freedom riders visited in 1965. The cinema sat empty for decades after closing in the late '60s, and for a while housed a haberdashery shop. When it reopened in 2003 as a live performance venue after a community restoration effort, the local Indigenous community performed a smoking ceremony and a welcome dance.
"I think what we saw after the 1967 referendum and with other big moments since then is that things slowly started to shift and you see people being more open and coming together. We see that with this movement too. People were aware of the campaign and were open to it," he says.
Since launching in May 2013, the journey to recognition has covered more than 30,000 kilometres, travelling through some 200 communities by foot, bike, car, kayak, surfboard and paddle-board.
A parliamentary committee charged with charting a course to constitutional change will present its final report to Parliament next month.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has nominated May 27, 2017 - the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, which gave the Commonwealth the power to make special laws for Aboriginal people and count them in population statistics - as "a richly symbolic time to complete our constitution".
But he has not committed to that date, arguing the success of the referendum was more important than timing.
