Let’s be blunt: despite it being 2016, Australia is still uncomfortable with its colonial history. Specifically, with the massacres, the cruelty inflicted on Aboriginal Australians under white settlement.

Ningali Lawford-Wolf has been spending her days embodying that history for the theatre production, The Secret River. It’s a story of the clashes between white settlers and the local Dharug people on the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney.

“This play, to me, is a story of healing… It’s trying to reconcile the atrocities of the past.”

But for Ningali, Australia’s racist treatment of Indigenous people isn’t a thing of the past.

On Saturday night, after rehearsals at the Sydney Theatre Company, Ningali, 48, was rejected by a taxi driver, because she’s Aboriginal.

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Whatsapp The Secret River actor Ningali Lawford-Wolf with director Neil Armfield

“I was the only person in the rank and I saw a taxi coming… I waved it down. It turned in and as I looked up to grab the door, it sped off!”

Disheartened - but not a stranger to this experience - she waited for the next one.

It happened again. And again. And again. Four taxi drivers drove off and left Ningali waiting. The fifth saw her and picked up a group of white diners instead.

After half an hour of humiliation, Ningali had to ask a nearby group to stand with her and hail her a cab. In Sydney. In 2016.

“I am grateful for those people because it was late at night. But the fact is, I don’t need nobody to catch me a taxi if I’m at an appropriate place. Not only that, yes I’m Indigenous, but I’m a woman and I’m alone,” she told Hack.

“It’s quite insulting. It disheartens you.”

Ningali Lawford-Wolf, ironically, last year received critical praise and an AACTA nomination for her touching performance in Last Cab to Darwin alongside Michael Caton. She’s also starred in Rabbit Proof Fence and Bran Nue Dae.

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Ningali Lawford-Wolf has made an official complaint about the incident and thinks that taxi drivers should have to undergo some cultural awareness training to avoid this happening to others.

“They need to have training to recognise that we are the first peoples of this country.

The New South Wales Taxi Commission CEO, Roy Wakelin-King, has apologised to Ningali.

"If there's been any racial discrimination in terms of the service they didn't provide, that's unacceptable."

Last year, Senior Victorian of the Year, Indigenous elder Jack Charles was refused a taxi twice in Melbourne in the same week he was awarded the honours.

Acclaimed Secret River director, Neil Armfield, (Candy, Holding the Man) told Hack all of the Indigenous cast and crew in the production have similar experiences with taxis.

“It’s a constant problem. White Australians have no idea of the daily indignations that Indigenous Australians face.”

The unhappy irony of Ningali’s situation isn’t lost on Armfield.

“Here’s Ningali leading a show that’s a great act of human coming-together and cleansing, and then you step out of the magic of theatrical light and onto the street, and the world is just as unforgiving.”

Listen back to the full interview: