Massacres recounted in chilling detail, recollections of the first time an Aboriginal person saw a camel or a car, and the double-edged harshness and compassion of missionaries might, for many non-Indigenous Australians, seem like the preserve of a foreign and distant world.
But these experiences, bequeathed from memory to memory of central Australian First Nations peoples, are a startling testimony to the very recent nature of the cataclysmic upheaval of ancient Indigenous civilisation in the continental centre.
