It was not always a smooth existence north of the Bridge. She says that because she is a "black Australian", just finding a flat was difficult.

"At one stage, when I was looking for another flat, a white friend of mine who worked for Social Security said: 'No, of course you won't have difficulties.'

"She rang every real estate agent on the North Shore, from Chatswood down, and said: 'Look, I'm trying to rent a place for a woman with two children, she's a senior public servant in the Health Department; she's also a journalist.' They would say: 'No problem at all.'

"Then my friend would say: 'Because I don't want to waste her time or yours, she's also black.' The immediate response was: 'Oh listen, I'll call you back.'

"And none of them called back.

"She rang me up in tears. She said: 'I thought you guys were making half this stuff up, that you were rejected all the time like this.'"

Dr Sykes says people expect her to live in Redfern because she is black.

Her appearance belies her 40-plus years. She is slim and unwrinkled, with a vulnerable air.

She grew up in Townsville, daughter of a white mother and a black father. At the age of 14 she was thrown out of her convent school for no other reason, she believes, than that her teachers saw no academic future for blacks.

"Around town, when I was a young girl, the value of a black woman was half a bottle of beer. These guys would say: 'Listen. I've got a bottle, come on, babe.' And then, of course, you were available.

"But I just rejected that notion."

Roberta Sykes moved to Sydney in the late 60s, and rapidly became one of Australia's best-known activists. She was the first executive secretary of the Aboriginal Embassy on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra, and was at the forefront of the land rights movement.

Harvard University invited her to enrol after seeing her work in Australian newspapers and medical journals.

Despite her doctorate in educational policy from Harvard, she has faced an unfriendly job market since she left the Health Department.

"The jobs that I have applied for I haven't got," she said. "I won't specify the places, but they're frequently places where I have been asked in as a guest of honour to give speeches. That says they want to look non-racist once a year, but they don't want a black on campus every day.

"If I want to work in educational policy, I'm supposed to limit my ability to saying what would be good for 1 per cent of the population, and I'm not entitled to speak about the other 99 per cent, even though that's what I'm trained to do.

"And the reverse side of the coin is that I am a specialist in Aboriginal areas, which is mostly Aboriginal employment, education and training, and because I do not look the role I do not get the jobs."

It seems that white people regard Roberta Sykes as black, but to black people her qualifications place her in the honorary white category.

"I will miss out every time to a 35-year-old black-skinned male," she said. "Every time."

Teachers often have negative expectations of black students, she says. She wanted to live north of the Bridge so her children could go to schools with resources.

"Consequently, my son is a psychologist," Dr Sykes said. "To my knowledge, he's the youngest black who has ever gone straight from high school to university, gone straight through and got his degree. I think he was at university by the time he was 17.

"'Dumb', 'fairly dumb', they kept telling me when he was at school, too -some of the teachers, not all of them."

Dr Sykes recently gave a lecture at Kuring-gai College of Advanced Education on "Black and white professionals towards the year 2000". Fewer than 100 of the 1,000 seats in the hall were occupied.

"The huge non-turnout would say how entrenched their attitudes are," Dr Sykes said. "I think that they think the school is doing well enough to allow me to speak here, without actually also having to attend."

Does she think northsiders are more enlightened and educated than most?

"Educated: not necessarily enlightened. Wouldn't you agree?"