In the heart of Australia, more than 500 kilometres (310 miles) from the outback town of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), lies the Simpson Desert, a 17.6 million hectare (43. 5 million acre) expanse of red and beige dotted with the green that bursts from the landscape in brief, rain-fed ‘boom’ times and disappears just as quickly. For more than 60,000 years, people and wildlife have coexisted in this arid climate. For Indigenous Australians, this region has always been a special area of Country – a word they use to refer to all ancestral territory. Here, as in other sacred swaths of Country, Indigenous Australians continue to pass down physical, cultural and spiritual responsibilities over generations.
