A dream of belonging: for Indigenous Australians the fabled 'outback' is home | Alexis Wright

Aboriginal people have the skills, refined over thousands of years, to care for this fragile, fire-prone ancient continent

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My childhood was spent in Cloncurry, a small town in north-western Queensland once known and locally celebrated as being the hottest in Australia. This was not really true. There were plenty of other places that were scorchingly hot to be found in the country's remote regions.

I have fond memories of Cloncurry as a town of relatives and families. A town where closely connected families supported each other. Yet there was also the loneliness of being racially hemmed in and stereotyped in narratives based on racially divisive myths - the stories of the mind that defined the outback, about what it meant to belong.