Deep in the heart of Western Australia’s outback, Maitland Parker is fighting the biggest battle of his life, and it is not because he is dying of cancer.
The Banjima elder’s mob have lived around the area now known as Wittenoom for tens of thousands of years, but he can no longer go there. The eerily striking Pilbara town – at the foot of a deep gorge, 15 hours’ drive north-east of Perth – is blanketed in the deadliest type of asbestos, crocidolite. This has earned it the unwanted accolade of being the “largest contaminated site in the southern hemisphere”.
