The precise location of Victoria’s most dangerous fugitive was finally revealed last week after international news networks aired footage of him shaking hands with Xi Jinping. But just as the man whose Covid policies destroyed the lives of many Victorians may never face justice, at time of writing the surname of the state’s second-most wanted man, Dezi Freeman, continues to describe his status. Freeman’s public resistance to Dan Andrews’s Covid overreach is said to have won him support amongst the local community. But the longer the hunt goes on, the more national the sense of déjà vu, the obvious precedent for this sylvan stand-off being as geographical as it is historical. Even riding a horse in a suit of armour with a bucket on your head, Freeman’s Porepunkah home is only a few hours from Stringybark Creek.

Victorian Police chief commissioner Mike Bush might be consoled to know that it took the state’s inaugural top cop, Francis Hare, almost two years to run Australia’s first famous outlaw to ground. It might have taken even longer if Ned Kelly had been as familiar as Freeman is said to be with the region’s abandoned gold mines; a network of caves and tunnels so extensive it might have been constructed with United Nations funding and the promise of 72 virgins. Since these mines were at their most productive when Kelly was in the ’hood, it redounds to his Robin Hood reputation that he never robbed a single prospector. Superintendent Hare tested Kelly’s popularity by putting up a reward of £8,000 for his capture, a sum which in the 1890s would have bought you one of the grander mansions on the Yarra. Commissioner Bush has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to Freeman’s apprehension; the biggest reward in Australian manhunt history. But it is unlikely to trigger a second Victorian gold rush. Partly because shortly after dangling this carrot Mr Bush warned the public somewhat counter-intuitively to stay out of the area. But mainly because these days a million dollars won’t buy you a two-bedroom semi in Ballarat.

If Freeman’s allies are keeping him abreast of local news, we can assume, from his low opinion of Dan Andrews, that he is not a fan of the Bill which Andrews’ successor is currently pushing through the Victorian parliament. Amongst the stated aims of Gellung Warl, the advisory body Jacinta Allan is championing, is the aboriginalisation of Victorian place names – a process already well under way in what used to be called New Zealand. So if the Bill goes through, Stringybark Creek will at some stage be given a Wiradjuri name which translates either as ‘a place with a creek and bark like string’ or as ‘a place where one genocidal colonialist invader fought several other genocidal colonialist invaders’. A less contentious aim of the new body will be to crack down on the making of dubious claims to First Nations heritage. If, as a Gellung Warl spokesperson has proposed, the prosecution of such fraud is backdated, Victoria’s highest profile late-onset Aboriginal may have to relocate. Perhaps anticipating just such a legal hurdle, soi-disant Kulin elder Bruce Pascoe took the precaution some years ago to also identify as a member of the Palawa and Yuin peoples of, respectively, Tasmania and New South Wales. Those mobs will doubtless welcome him like the lost child he purports to be.

It goes almost without saying that the treaty proposed by Jacinta Allan’s Bill will include an apology for historic mistreatment of indigenous Victorians. But cynics might question whether this formal written apology will improve the lives of today’s most disadvantaged Australians any more than have the various verbal ones made by so many other politicians. Premier Allan should also remember that very few Australians bothered to read the Uluru Statement of the Heart before voting on the Voice. So rather than letting her apology gather dust on a piece of parchment in a vault, perhaps she should also give it common currency. When I first arrived in Australia, the number plates of cars registered in Victoria described it as The Garden State. On Dan Andrew’s watch it became, for reasons which were just shy of obvious to the rest of the country, The Education State. So perhaps it’s now time for a motto that everyone will understand. One that doesn’t just mark the state’s leadership on treaty, but also its eleventh consecutive year of Labor government. Perhaps it’s time for Victorians to acknowledge that they are in A Sorry State.