As the boss of Australia's most powerful Indigenous land council, two years ago, Marion Scrymgour could've turned down the proposition to run for parliament.
She spent days and nights dwelling on the prospect.
Why cut the moorings at a career high watermark to set sail for a job she may not even get?
"There was a lot of contemplation and hand-wringing for a long time with this, before I was convinced that I could do it," Ms Scrymgour said.
"I was in a job that I absolutely loved, I enjoyed my job at the Northern Land Council (NLC), it was a fantastic job – it was fixing a major institution that Aboriginal people needed to be fixed."
But something inside her had been stirred.
The thought of being able to try to resolve what she sees as "unfinished business" for the people of the Northern Territory, through a platform in federal parliament, was too big an opportunity to refuse.
Early last year, she announced she had been preselected to run for Labor in the seat of Lingiari: an electorate with a landmass double the size of Texas, that encompasses 99.4 per cent of the Northern Territory.
Fight for the bush seat
From the northern coast to the arid desert climes, Lingiari is home to some of the nation's richest cultural heritage – the living vibrancy of remote Indigenous Australia.
It also presides over some of the country's most protracted social challenges.
Overcrowded housing. Ongoing crime. Widespread welfare dependency. Frustrations of remoteness.
It's been the scene of some of the tensest moments in the territory's history – and of Australia's history. The Coniston Massacre. The Wave Hill Walk Off. The Gove Land Rights case. The shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker by a police officer in 2019.
After she was selected to run, Ms Scrymgour packed up her life in the tropics and moved south, to the Central Australian town of Alice Springs – Lingiari's largest voter stronghold.
"I've relocated down to Alice Springs now, so I've got a house down there, I've been living down there, my husband has relocated with his work," she says.
A fortune-teller would have their work cut out for them trying to predict the impending outcome of Lingiari at the upcoming election.
The seat has been held by Labor since its inception in 2001, under the watch of just one politician – MP Warren Snowdon, who is retiring after serving the bush for more than three decades.
Now, political analysts say, with a 5.5 per cent margin, it's an open slather.
Ms Scrymgour, widely known in the Top End, is less of a familiar face in her new Red Centre home, where she's up against a formidable opponent from the conservative corner.
Country Liberal Party candidate Damien Ryan is an Alice lifer.
Once known as the amiable proprietor of the town's camera shop, more recent arrivals will know him as Alice Springs's long-term mayor, who wrapped up his 13-year tenure in 2021.
"I'm just offering myself to the community of Lingiari to say, 'I've lived here, I've run businesses here, I've grown up, I've raised my family [here]'," Mr Ryan says.
After Mr Ryan ended his stint as the head of Alice Springs town council, he hit the road to traverse Lingiari's myriad communities, from Arnhem Land to the Tiwi Islands.
Just as Ms Scrymgour tries to make headway in Mr Ryan's hometown, the CLP candidate is making himself known across his opponent's former stomping grounds in the north.
"Since January 1 [this year] I started to keep track of my mileage; I've done about 45,000 kilometres on the road, and probably another 25,000 in the air," he says.
An 'open race'
Both Mr Ryan and Ms Scrymgour have long backgrounds in governance – Mr Ryan as mayor and in the NT Local Government Association, and Ms Scrymgour most notably as an NT government minister and head of the NLC.
Both also come with some baggage.
Ms Scrymgour concedes she has run aground of critics on the campaign trail who are distrustful of Aboriginal land councils due to past grievances.
Mr Ryan has been forced to fend off criticism in recent months (particularly from the current NT Labor government) that he didn't do enough to curb social problems in Alice during his years as mayor.
But whatever the perceptions may be of their pasts, the two candidates have the backing of Australia's major parties, which have both spent weeks offering up hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of election promises to try to land the seat: from new roads to housing and infrastructure.
While there are nine candidates in the running for Lingiari – mostly minor parties and independents – the final weeks will be largely a two-horse sprint between Labor and the CLP.
"It's a very open race," says Mr Ryan.
"Any seat across Australia without an incumbent, it becomes an open race. Look … there's a lot to be played out over the next two weeks."
Whoever voters decide will inherit Lingiari from Mr Snowdon also inherits some of the most complex challenges in Australia – and the hopes of residents that they'll urgently seek out some solutions.
