Songlines and Fault Lines

Book excerpt: Visitors to the Red Centre come looking for the real Australia, but find a place both beautiful and disturbing. There is wilderness, desire and an Aboriginal philosophy of home. But there is also the confusing countenance of the Australian frontier, a meeting place between black and white, ancient and modern. Songlines and Fault Lines explores the Red Centre through the eyes of those who have walked it, in six remarkable stories that have shaped our nation. It follows Aboriginal Dreamtime Ancestors along a songline, trudges with John McDouall Stuart as he crosses the continent, and walks the Finke River in the footsteps of anthropologist T.G.H. Strehlow. It keeps pace with conservationist Arthur Groom as he reimagines the country's heart as tourist playground, ponders a philosophy of walking with British travel writer Bruce Chatwin, and then strolls the grog-troubled streets of Alice Springs with Eleanor Hogan. Retracing time-worn pathways and stories of Australia's centre, Glenn Morrison finds fresh answers to age-old queries.