Nancy Rooke said tomorrow morning’s formal apology in Parliament by the Federal Government was “a very good thing”.

“It’s been a long time in coming and should have been done long ago,” she said.

Mrs Rooke, of North Albury, said an apology meant a great deal.

“When you’re talking to people from the stolen generation they say ‘we can’t forget’,” she said.

“But at least this Government is doing something.

“The stolen generation people — they’re getting older and shakier by the moment.

“My grandmother was from the stolen generation and she used to get quite depressed about it.”

Mrs Rooke said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd saying sorry “won’t fix everything but it will help”.

“Sorry really isn’t such a hard word to say,” she said.

Mrs Rooke said a lot of people from the community would watch a live broadcast of the apology to be screened in the convention room of the Albury Performing Arts Centre tomorrow from 8.45am.

The screening was organised by Albury Council Aboriginal liaison officer Liz Heta, who believed only one Border person was travelling to Canberra to witness the apology.

Mrs Rooke said the fact there would be an “indigenous welcome to country” immediately before the opening of Federal Parliament today added to the significance of the apology.

“People have said to me that ‘we didn’t think it would happen in our lifetime’,” she said.

“There was a real buzz among people I spoke to this morning.”

Albury Council was more than a decade ahead of the Federal Government in expressing its sorrow to Aboriginal people.

On July 14, 1997, the council agreed to extend an apology for “past injustices and hurts”.

The apology, instigated by then councillor Lynda Summers, was only carried on the casting vote of mayor Patricia Gould after a councillor vote was deadlocked at 5-5.

The original motion said the city should “apologise unreservedly to the Aboriginal people of Australia in general and the local Wiradjuri people in particular for the systematic separation of generations of Aboriginal children from their parents, families and communities”.

In February 2005, the council endorsed a new reconciliation statement recognising the city as Wiradjuri country and saying sorry for past unjust practices.

The statement was worked out by the city’s Aboriginal liaison committee, including Wiradjuri representatives.