State of grace

In her very first photoshoot as a mother - and with her own mum actor Miranda Tapsell pays homage to the Black matriarchy and reveals her hopes for her daughter's future

- ALLEY PASCOE

Miranda Tapsell's grandmother was born under a tree outside Darwin High School. At that point in time, that plot of land was a meat works. It was while working at the attoir nat Tapsell's heavily pregnant great-grandmother went into labour. She gave birth to her daughter there and then, under the shade of the tree that still stands today. In June, Tapsell plans to take her baby daughter, Grace, to her ancestral land to introduce her to her extended family, immerse her in their culture, and show her the tree outside Darwin High.

The 34-year-old Sydney-based actor grew up in Jabiru in Kakadu National Park, where her mum, Barbara, worked at the local school and her dad, Tony, was the town clerk. It will be something of a homecoming for Tapsell. “My mum's history is embedded in Darwin and I'm so excited for Grace to have a sense of that,” she tells marie claire. "I hope she falls in love with the place and draws strength from it, like I have.”

In October last year, Barbara and Tony left the thick humidity of Darwin for Sydney, ahead of the arrival of their first grandchild. They brought the spirit of the tropics with them, though, and gifted it to their granddaughter Grace, who was born in November. Barbara gave her the middle name Birri-Pa, which means butterfly in Larrakia, and her great-grandmothers on the Tiwi Islands gifted her Purnarrika, which means water lily. What's in a name? For Tapsell's first born it's character, soul and the power of the world's oldest living culture. “I wanted my daughter to have a strong understanding of who she is, who her mother and grandmother are and where her family comes from. When she goes to school, she'll be excited to share her name; she can shout from the rooftops that she's a little Aboriginal girl and no-one will be able to question her Aboriginality. No-one my daughter's name away from her," says Tapsell proudly.