Philobiblon

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald presents a seductive idea, that the Aborigines are reconquerng Australia, starting from the dry centre, where the “whites” are leaving due to the lack of economic opportunities.

It isn’t as simplistic as that; it does acknowledge that the Aboriginal communities do have enormous problems, flowing in part from that lack of opportunity, but what it also doesn’t address is the way the environment has been enormously degraded – mined you might almost say. The water has been used up, the vegetation over-grazed to the point of extinction, the soil eroded.