The man from the pay TV company was adamant: he wasn't selling anything. But too often I've opened my front door to strangers and found myself tempted by some sales pitch. So I'd answered the bell warily, spoke through the screen door and tried to keep the encounter brief.
'I'm sorry but we're not interested.'
But he knew better. 'It's because of the colour of my skin,' he said as he turned to leave.
It was to be a parting shot. But I called him back, stepping out onto the veranda. Surely he could not assume that everyone not interested in hearing what he had to say was a bigot.
I had no idea, he replied, how often he was called a 'brown bastard' by people he approached.
Later, I wondered if I was not all the more defensive because I grew up in segregated, apartheid-era South Africa. In Australia, where I've spent well over half my life, it seems at times that as long as you have a fairish complexion, you can be lulled into assuming tolerance and goodwill.
Last 26 January I sat with a small crowd near Belgrave, east of Melbourne. I had come there to hear filmmaker and musician, Richard Frankland, and his band, the Charcoal Club. We hadn't seen each other in a few years and I thought I'd stop by.
Elsewhere this was Australia Day, the national flag unfurled in celebration. But here in Belgrave's Borthwick Park it was Survival Day. A whispy-haired toddler in striped shirt waddled in front of the stage holding a small Aboriginal flag. A sign tied to tree trunks declared 'The country needs a treaty'.
Frankland, a big man in broad-brimmed hat, leaned over a tiny mandolin. He'd been to Canberra in February 2008 to film the impact of Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations. Rudd's apology, Frankland once told me, was 'an incredibly wonderful step forwards'. 'I felt more Australian,' he said. 'I felt more a part of the nation; that I was seen as a contributor.'
I like to think we can rise to the challenge of increasing diversity. I didn't want to believe the assertions of that pay TV man at my front door. Then I read about objections to the presence of Australians of Indian background