Lethal highways: the Indigenous pedestrian deaths that haunt the Northern Territory

Steven Rory and Wendy Baker at the Jilkminggan camp, outside Mataranka in the Northern Territory. Wendy’s brothers Shane and Shaun were both killed in separate road collisions as pedestrians. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

It is early evening and the edges of passing cars and trees and road signs soften in the half-light as we head out of Darwin. It is as if we are driving in a dream.

Just near Palmerston camp, an Aboriginal settlement also known as 15 Mile because of its distance from the city, the road bends slightly to the right.