ORIGINAL SIN?

Over shimmering Darling Harbor she looms, as big as a building, staring down on bobbing ships, flapping flags, the tinklings of dinner toasts.

This is Cathy Freeman’s country now, even if it doesn’t much look like her.

The Aboriginal sprinter crouches in a skyscraper mural, preparing to run into the arms of a nation suddenly ready to hug.

“That’s our girl, mate,” announces white businessman Kevin Dixon from a nearby bridge.

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Over a frayed tenement he looms, discarded syringes at his feet, the smell of urine in the air.

Fred Irving, 24, lives in a graffiti-coated area of empty stares and missing windows.

Like Cathy Freeman, Irving is Aboriginal.

Unlike Cathy Freeman, this will never be his country.

“You’ve got to tell the world, man,” he says. “The world has to know how we are being treated.”

Irving lives with most of this city’s Aborigines--the original Australians--in a four-street neighborhood near downtown built specifically for them by a society that has never quite decided where they belong.

As recently as the 1960s, his people were refused the right to vote, refused the right to register on a census, even forced to helplessly watch their children be stolen away by a government that felt they should be raised by whites.

Today, although Aborigines account for 2% of the country’s 19 million residents, they are eerily invisible.

Many of those cheering for favored Cathy Freeman to win an Olympic gold medal in the 400-meter run have never met an Aborigine. Some have never even seen one in person.

Not only is Freeman the “tallest” person in fashionable Darling Harbor these days, she is also the only one with brown skin.

Several miles away, Fred Irving walks to the back of a narrow hall, squeezes a needle from the left pocket of sagging jeans, slowly injects himself between the right thumb and forefinger.

Across a dusty path, two policeman idly watch.

“Tell the world,” Irving repeats. “No matter what they see on TV, they have to know that in this country, we are treated like we don’t even exist.”

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Less than two weeks before Cathy Freeman raises possibly the biggest ruckus of these Olympics, she’s not talking.

“Completely unavailable,” an Australian Olympic Committee spokeswoman said. “We don’t even know where she is.”

Probably hiding. She has hidden before.

She has been so besieged in this sports-nutty country, she has worn a wig, fled to London, even escaped for several weeks this summer to Los Angeles.

The only thing for certain is, she will be back Sept. 25 for the party disguised as the finals of the women’s 400.

Freeman is the two-time defending world champion. She is the Australians’ best chance for a track gold medal.

More than all that, though, she represents an opportunity for her mostly white countrymen to cheer through their usual feelings of Aboriginal confusion and shame.

“Some of it is prejudice and some of it is fear,” said Debbie Colley, 30, a Sydney housewife. “It’s not like we hate them, but . . . if I see three of them walking together down the street, I get uncomfortable.”

Colley has lived in Australia her entire life, yet never met an Aborigine.

Neither has her husband, Andrew, a Sydney bank manager.

Like virtually every Australian interviewed about Cathy Freeman, they pleasantly talk openly of both their love for the runner, and their uncertainty about others of her race.

There is no shame in that uncertainty. There is little apparent regret in views that those in other parts of the world might consider racist.

“We don’t see it as any different than your treatment of the American Indians,” said businessman Dixon, “and it’s not the same as the American blacks are treated, because at least we didn’t ship ours in.”

Perhaps because Australia’s geographic remoteness allows it to escape worldwide scrutiny, the mistreatment of Aborigines is discussed here as openly as the weather, only with much more certainty.

“It’s like when I worked in a bank,” Debbie Colley explained. “Whenever an Aborigine would come up, my hands would tighten a little bit. My friends who worked with me were like, ‘OK, whose turn is it?’ Nobody wanted to deal with them.”

Andrew Colley understands how outsiders might not understand.

“This whole thing with Cathy Freeman is such a paradox,” he said.

People here rave about Freeman, until you say you wish to meet others like her. Then they recant.

“Better bring a bottle of port with you,” said a white man on a train stopping at the tenement town of Redfern.

“I would suggest you not go in there,” a Redfern policeman said of the four-block area.

On this recent day, there was a government-sponsored Aboriginal festival featuring native bands and dancing on an old rugby field near the tenements.

From outside the ivy-covered walls of the stadium, one could hear a loud band and see groups of brightly clothed dancers.

But inside, in cracked bleachers and on a huge field dotted by bits of dying grass, there sat fewer than 50 people.

“This is just the government’s way of keeping people here, and not having them go to Olympic Park,” said Billy Cummings, one of the musicians. “It’s so typical. And it wasn’t very well planned.”

Perhaps folks were preparing for one of several Aboriginal protest marches planned for the Games, including the forming of a human chain.

Those marches were partly inspired by some of Freeman’s most recent public comments, when she told a London newspaper earlier this summer that the government was “insensitive” for refusing to apologize for the “Lost Generation” of stolen children.

She then admitted that her grandmother had been a stolen child.

“You have a government that is so insensitive to the issues that are close to the people’s hearts, that have affected so many lives for the worst, people are going to be really angry and emotional,” Freeman told the Sunday Telegraph.

Part of that emotion can be seen in Freeman’s shoes, which have been dyed to match the red, black and gold of the Aboriginal flag. Another part will be seen if Freeman wins the 400, after which she is expected to run a victory lap waving that flag.

The government, which spent $1.5 billion this year in Aboriginal programs, says it will be cheering her along with the rest of Australia.

It just won’t apologize for the “Stolen Generation.”

“Such an apology could imply that the present generation are in some way responsible and accountable for the actions of earlier generations,” a government spokesman said. “[Those were] actions that were sanctioned by the laws of the time, and they were believed to be in the best interests of the children concerned.”

At the rugby field, an Aboriginal park ranger scoffed at such arrogance.

“Our white government is like the Klu Klux Klan,” David Wright said. “It’s so sad when they refuse to even say they’re sorry.”

Wright remembers once giving an Aboriginal demonstration to a group of fifth-graders and hearing one little girl ask her friend when the Aborigine was going to show up.

“The little girl thought Aboriginals were black guys running around half naked with a spear in one hand and a boomerang in the other,” Wright said. “Lots of people think like that.”

One woman at the field said she would be cheering for Cathy Freeman in honor of the time a waitress wouldn’t serve her. Several people repeated the sentiment.

Another said the cheers will be, among other things, about the time the cashier at a sandwich shop made her wait until three people behind her were served.

“The government doesn’t get that the problem is not with us, it’s with them,” said Jenny Munro, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council.

One of the people cheering loudest for Cathy Freeman in a couple of weeks might not even watch her run. He doesn’t have a ticket, and he might have to work.

“I just want her to help us get recognized,” Vincent Freeman said.

He is her half-brother. While she sprints, he dances, even at sorry festivals such as this one.

He had driven two days to dance there. He was wondering if it was worth it.

“It’s a real power drain, having such a small turnout,” he said. “It’s so disappointing.”

He said that being Aboriginal in Australia, though, you are used to such things.

“When I walk down the street, it’s like I’m not there,” he said. “Cathy will help people realize we are people.”

Back on the Darling Harbor bridge, businessman Kevin Dixon was staring up at the Cathy Freeman mural and beaming about this country’s white great hope.

“It’s like we’ve adopted her,” he said.

A strange use of words, perhaps, considering this woman’s ancestors were here centuries before his ancestors.

White Australians would indeed be fortunate, of course, if Cathy Freeman adopted them.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.