3 June, marks one of the most significant days in Australian history.

It begins with a man called Eddie Koiki Mabo.

Eddie was born in 1936 on Mer — Murray Island — a small jewel of land in the eastern Torres Strait, homeland of the Meriam people. He grew up knowing exactly who he was, where he came from and where he belonged. His family's connection to that land wasn't something that needed to be proven. It was simply true. It had always been true.

Then one day in 1974, while working at James Cook University in Townsville, Eddie sat down with law academics and learned something that stopped him cold — under Queensland law, the Murray Islands weren't his people's land at all. They were Crown Land. The government's land.

The concept behind that? Terra nullius. Latin for "land belonging to no one."

When Britain claimed the east coast of Australia in 1770, it was on the basis that Aboriginal people had no form of political organisation, no leaders with authority, and therefore no legitimate claim to the land on which they had lived for thousands of years.

No one. The land belonged to no one.

A people who had cultivated, navigated, named, sung, mapped, governed and cared for this continent and its surrounding islands for 65,000 years — simply declared invisible. Not by accident. By law.

Eddie Mabo decided that law was wrong. And he was going to prove it.

In May 1982, Eddie and four fellow Meriam people — Reverend David Passi, Sam Passi, James Rice and Celuia Mapo Sale — began legal proceedings to assert their right to their traditional lands. What followed was a decade-long legal battle that tested every one of them.

Eddie had said it plainly: "It is my father's and grandfather's, grandmother's land. I am related to it. It is my identity. That's why I need to fight for it, so I don't lose my identity to the land."

He fought for ten years. He never stopped.

On 3 June 1992, the High Court announced its historic decision — five months after Eddie Mabo had passed away. He never heard the verdict.

But the verdict came.

Six of the seven High Court judges upheld the claim. The Meriam people were ruled to be entitled to possession, occupation, use and enjoyment of the lands of the Murray Islands. Terra nullius was overturned.

In doing so, the court didn't just find in favour of the Meriam people — it applied the same principles to Australia as a whole, upending legal foundations that had stood for 204 years and retelling the history of Australian colonisation itself.

The law finally caught up with the truth that First Nations people had always known. They were never invisible. Their law was always real. Their connection to Country was never broken — not by a proclamation, not by a legal fiction, not by 204 years of being told otherwise.

The following year, the Native Title Act 1993 was passed — providing the framework for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to make claims of native title over their traditional lands.

Eddie Mabo didn't live to see it. But his name is now woven into the legal and moral fabric of this country forever.

Today we remember him. We remember the Meriam people. And we remember what becomes possible when one person refuses to accept a lie — no matter how long it has been written into law.