They appear out of nowhere. A series of rusted car wrecks baked into the red dirt flanking the Great Northern Highway near Warmun, a small Indigenous township in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Some are wreathed in a tangle of weeds, others so molten the earth might swallow them whole.
It’s a visually arresting sight, but to Gija woman Madeline Purdie these decaying relics are a potent reminder of her childhood. “When I was growing up in Warmun, there were probably only three cars in the whole community,” she says. “Every day we would go out bush and we’d all jump on the tray, packed like sardines. People were sitting on our laps, on the roof, on the bull bars. No one got left behind.”
