The sun sits low on the horizon as Maureen Donnegan searches the cool outback sand.
She bends near a scrubby bush, lifts one end of a stick and kicks down on its middle, snapping it in two.
A creature – creamy yellow and wriggling – spills onto the ground of Australia's largest desert.
Ms Donnegan grins, triumphant.
Her friend Shona Jamieson plucks the squirming lump from the dirt and sets it over the coals of a small campfire, before cupping it in her hands and blowing gently.
"It's got protein in it," Mrs Jamieson says.
"Really healthy."
The women learned how to collect maku – the Pitjantjatjara word for witchetty grub – when they were girls growing up at Cundeelee Mission and Coonana in Western Australia's Goldfields.
Both are now long-time residents of Tjuntjuntjara, a small town 650 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie in the Great Victoria Desert, one of the most remote Aboriginal communities in Australia.
It was founded by elders of the Spinifex people, or Anangu, who wanted to return to country after years of displacement following nuclear weapons testing and the mission era.
The two women, sitting cross legged below the setting sun, are passionate about ensuring their culture carries through into future generations.
"When you're out with me, because I take my family out bush, you've got to learn," Mrs Jamieson said.
"Learn from me, Nanna Shona."
Advocates hope a recently signed declaration will help that happen.
'An incredible model'
The tree wears the same tin sign Byron Brooks first saw on it more than 50 years ago.
Back then, it marked a ration station where food and clothes were placed by missionaries, to entice Aboriginal families out of the bush, eventually leading him to the Cundeelee Mission as a 10-year-old.
But it is a joyous occasion that brings Mr Brooks back to the tree on a sunny day last year with fellow ranger Ethan Hansen translating his words for a crowd of government workers, local staff, dignitaries and journalists.
A new Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) has been declared – one-and-a-half times the size of Tasmania and comprising the Spinifex, Pilki and Untiri Pulka Native Title Determination Areas.
The IPA means the federal government recognises traditional owners' rights to manage their country in accordance with their wishes and objectives.
It gives formal legal backing for Indigenous organisations to establish and pursue partnerships in conservation and also income-generating activities.
There are more than 80 IPAs covering an estimated 85 million hectares.
Although a ranger program has run in Tjuntjuntjara for a decade, with Mr Brooks one of its senior members, the new Anangu Tjutaku ("many Aboriginal people") IPA locks in federal funding and resources for the future.
Weapons testing in the outback
It was a long journey to return to these traditional lands.
The Great Victoria Desert is extremely remote and unsuitable for pastoral and mining operations so contact between white settlers and local Aboriginal people happened much later than in most parts of Australia.
Spinifex people were not consulted and many were not warned or evacuated before rockets were launched in Woomera, SA, shot overhead from 1947, and atomic tests shook Emu Field and Maralinga from 1953.
In the years preceding the tests, many Spinifex people were moved to, or gradually drifted to Cundeelee Mission, about 130 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie.
When it closed in the 1980s due to funding and water shortages, the WA Government bought a cattle station, called Coonana, believing former Cundeelee residents could move there and run it.
But that went against the wishes of many elders, who wanted to return to their homelands.
Returning to country
"The Maralinga testing is an amazing story really, in that it was so unfair," says Pila Nguru Aboriginal Corporation general manager Ian Baird, who was a new graduate of Aboriginal Studies when he arrived in the western desert in the early 1980s.
He had learned Pitjantjatjara as part of his syllabus and soon joined the homelands movement.
"The reason I got caught up in it was because I actually listened to the old people," he said.
"And they desperately wanted to get back to country."
They began by setting up camp at a site called Double Pump before bores were sunk further to the south of Spinifex Country at a place called Yakatunya.
During that time, as they made plans to push further into Spinifex country, they made an incredible discovery.
"It was … the most sort of amazing thing that I've experienced in my life," Mr Baird said.
The last nomads
In 1986 Mr Baird was with a group of elders driving through the bush near Ilkurlka, now the site of an outback roadhouse in the heart of Spinifex country, when he heard a shriek.
The party had come across a site where people had recently been digging for maku.
He said everyone piled out of the car wondering who on earth it could have been before one of the elders found a footprint, instantly realising it could only have been left by one of their relatives who had never left the desert country.
Running low on fuel and tires, Mr Baird's vehicle returned to base camp while another followed the footprints to try to find the long-lost family members.
"And then about two days later, during the evening ... we were all camped at Ilkurlka. We could see these lights coming and next morning, they were there," Mr Baird said. "Seven of them."
The seven brought back to camp were the Rictor family — the last known group of Aboriginal people to live a traditional nomadic life in Australia.
After the initial contact the family came in from the desert, eventually settling in Tjuntjuntjara.
"Whether they wanted to be with their family, I don't know. But they came in," Mr Baird said.
"It would have been a strange life for them because they wouldn't have had any contact with anybody else."
Two members of the Rictor family still live in Tjuntjuntjara to this day.
Land rights finally won
Spinifex elder Lennard Walker was born at a rock hole near Kuru Ala, a sacred seven sisters site in northern Spinifex Country.
He was a young boy when he and his parents arrived at the Warburton Mission, where he spent his early years before moving to Cundeelee and eventually the camp at Yakatunya.
"All old people at Cundeelee said, 'We go move out bush'," he recounts between sips of tea.
"So all the old people move out to Yakatunya.
"But can't stay there. Nullarbor Plain. No tree."
Yakatunya lacked water and shade, so after receiving compensation following the Maralinga Royal Commission into the British nuclear tests, the residents bought machinery to push a road north, all the way to Wingellina, near the intersection of the WA, SA and NT borders.
The route was decided by two elders, who spent nine months in 1988-89 walking in front of a bulldozer as it ploughed the way.
Meanwhile, bores were sunk at Tjuntjuntjara and a temporary camp sprang up, with the intention of building a permanent community about 120kms north at Ilkurlka.
"[But] once this place started to get a bit established then it all became a bit too hard," Mr Baird says.
In 2000 the Spinifex people became the first in WA to be granted native title, administered through the Pila Nguru Aboriginal Corporation.
It covers 5.5 million hectares, with its only population centre at Tjuntjuntjara.
Mr Walker, a celebrated artist, is among Tjuntjuntjara's 200 residents.
He is custodian of the northern part of Spinifex country where he was born and women ask his permission before entering the area for ceremonies.
Keeping culture strong
With the IPA designed to help keep connections to culture strong, the priority for elders who led the return to Tjuntjuntjara was to reconnect with the tjukurpa – cultural stories, dreaming and law.
"It was to reconnect with that law and pass that on to the younger generation," Mr Baird says.
"Not just in song and ritual and dance, but in actual tangible form, where the young people would actually see what they were singing and dancing about."
Wayne Donaldson, chair of Paupiyala Tjarutja Aboriginal Corporation that manages the Tjuntjuntjara community, spent much of his life in Perth but wanted to learn from Spinifex elders.
"We've got to try and take everything we can from them, all the knowledge and wisdom," he says..
"[They help] teach the younger ones, like myself, where we actually really come from.
"Which keeps you really good in the heart and keeps you going."
Caring for land and culture
Ainsley Mungee squints towards the horizon and points at two eagles.
"They'll come for the leftovers," he says.
It is a hot day on Spinifex country and Mr Mungee, along with a group of other rangers, have found a shady spot to cook malu – kangaroo – while others hunt camels.
They do so according to custom the old people were determined to maintain when they returned to country.
Mr Mungee has been a ranger for six years, since he was 16, and is passionate about his work, which includes fire management, cultural obligations to country and passing knowledge to younger people.
"I like ranger working," he says.
"Feels good, no dogs barking, feels quiet."
Just outside Tjuntjuntjara, Mr Mungee's mother, Mrs Jamieson, finishes her maku under a purple sunset and says she is happy he is in the role.
"I'm proud of him," she says.
"Working on the land, be strong for the other generations.
"Help the other generations to be like them."
