0:00:06 > 0:00:09Out on the wastes of the Never Never...
0:00:09 > 0:00:11That's where the dead men lie.
0:00:11 > 0:00:14That's where the heat waves dance forever.
0:00:14 > 0:00:17That's where the dead men lie.
0:00:17 > 0:00:19That's where the earth's loved sons...
0:00:19 > 0:00:23The centre of Australia extends for over two million square kilometres
0:00:23 > 0:00:27of saltpans, scrubland, deserts,
0:00:27 > 0:00:29and stark mountain ranges.
0:00:29 > 0:00:33Strangled by thirst and fierce privation
0:00:33 > 0:00:37That's how the dead men die. Out on Moncygrub's farthest station...
0:00:37 > 0:00:41Many of the centre's prominent geographical features
0:00:41 > 0:00:45bear testimony to the dashed hopes of white explorers.
0:00:45 > 0:00:49Mount Disappointment, Mount Despair,
0:00:49 > 0:00:53Mount Hopeless, Desolation Camp, and Mount Destruction.
0:00:53 > 0:00:57There's even an Opthalmia Range to commemorate those
0:00:57 > 0:01:00who were blinded by the constant glare of the sun.
0:01:07 > 0:01:12There's a great poem by a young suicidal man called Barcroft Boake,
0:01:12 > 0:01:16who wrote a poem in which the constant refrain is
0:01:16 > 0:01:21that out there in the never, never were out where the dead men lie,
0:01:21 > 0:01:24out where the dead men lie.
0:01:24 > 0:01:29Now once you start to build a mythology about a country that says
0:01:29 > 0:01:31what matters about its centre
0:01:31 > 0:01:34is that it's a place which is out where the dead men lie,
0:01:34 > 0:01:39you've embarked on a very...
0:01:39 > 0:01:45pessimistic...and defeatist notion
0:01:45 > 0:01:48of what it means to live in this place and belong to it.
0:01:48 > 0:01:52It is in some ways a kind of emotional and spiritual dead-end.
0:01:54 > 0:01:58Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely,
0:01:58 > 0:02:01under the saltbush sparkling brightly,
0:02:01 > 0:02:04out where the wild dogs chorus nightly,
0:02:04 > 0:02:06that's where the dead men lie.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12Boakes' poem was written at a time when Australia's white settlers
0:02:12 > 0:02:18still regarded the centre of their new country as a horrendous blank.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21Like all new arrivals into an unknown landscape,
0:02:21 > 0:02:25they were to slowly fill in that blank with their own names
0:02:25 > 0:02:28and their own stories, often of sacrifice and failure.
0:02:34 > 0:02:37It was to take some time for an alternative,
0:02:37 > 0:02:40more positive vision of this country to evolve.
0:02:40 > 0:02:44A vision that was to recognise the extraordinary diversity
0:02:44 > 0:02:46and beauty of the centre
0:02:46 > 0:02:51and to finally incorporate the way the land has always been imagined
0:02:51 > 0:02:54and seen by its original inhabitants.
0:03:06 > 0:03:11This is a country that has developed into a nation of city-dwellers.
0:03:12 > 0:03:17Four out of every five Australians live on the edge of the continent,
0:03:17 > 0:03:19within 30 miles of the coast.
0:03:19 > 0:03:24Many citizens never venture into the interior,
0:03:24 > 0:03:27but that does not mean they ignore it.
0:03:27 > 0:03:31The desert is definitely part of Australia's identity.
0:03:31 > 0:03:34Not only our own structured identity
0:03:34 > 0:03:38but the identity that's put on Australia.
0:03:38 > 0:03:43If you look at tourist posters for Australia in other countries,
0:03:43 > 0:03:45along, right up there with the Opera House,
0:03:45 > 0:03:49is going to be the desert and of course it will be the red desert.
0:03:52 > 0:03:54And this is extraordinarily ironic
0:03:54 > 0:03:58because there's no country in the world that is so urbanised
0:03:58 > 0:03:59as Australia.
0:03:59 > 0:04:04The population is all concentrated in the fringe,
0:04:04 > 0:04:06in the cities of the coast.
0:04:09 > 0:04:12And yet, there is this kind of yearning
0:04:12 > 0:04:14to acknowledge
0:04:14 > 0:04:19and even identify with this great emptiness in the centre.
0:04:32 > 0:04:35180 years ago, the new white settlers had no idea
0:04:35 > 0:04:39whether the great blank in the centre of their country
0:04:39 > 0:04:43was a desert or a water-fed region ripe for agriculture.
0:04:43 > 0:04:46The map makers expected it would be the latter.
0:04:47 > 0:04:53All other continents in the world had obligingly got themselves
0:04:53 > 0:04:55a large inland river system
0:04:55 > 0:04:58and very large lakes for water,
0:04:58 > 0:05:01so why should Australia not have this?
0:05:03 > 0:05:07One man who was in no doubt that the centre of Australia
0:05:07 > 0:05:10had plenty of water was Captain Charles Sturt.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15Charles Sturt did develop this obsession
0:05:15 > 0:05:18that in the middle of Australia there was an inland sea,
0:05:18 > 0:05:21and he was an evangelical Anglican.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25He believed that he had been ordained by God
0:05:25 > 0:05:28to discover this...
0:05:28 > 0:05:31almost sacred mystery that lay at the heart of Australia.
0:05:36 > 0:05:41Sturt had travelled in Western Victoria,
0:05:41 > 0:05:47in the 1820s and he had noted that flights of birds,
0:05:47 > 0:05:51quite consistently flew northwest from there,
0:05:51 > 0:05:55and he thought, "I'm sure they're flying towards water."
0:05:59 > 0:06:02When he subsequently went to Adelaide,
0:06:02 > 0:06:04and he noticed birds flying north,
0:06:04 > 0:06:08he thought, "They're going for water, so it's a simple matter of geometry.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12"If we intersect the flight paths, we have the situation
0:06:12 > 0:06:16"where there's an inland sea, that's what they're all flying to."
0:06:17 > 0:06:22So I was led to conclude that the country in to which they went
0:06:22 > 0:06:26would in great measure resemble that which they'd left,
0:06:26 > 0:06:29that birds which delighted in rich valleys
0:06:29 > 0:06:32would not go into deserts and into flat country.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36Everything tends, I believe,
0:06:36 > 0:06:40to prove that a large body of water exists in the interior.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45He sets off with great panoply,
0:06:45 > 0:06:50but also with...with a whale boat, an enormous thing,
0:06:50 > 0:06:54which he kept having re-painted on the way,
0:06:54 > 0:06:58so that it would be ready to sail on this inland sea.
0:06:59 > 0:07:04So off he goes in the 1840s looking for the inland sea
0:07:04 > 0:07:06and he ends up in the Simpson Desert.
0:07:19 > 0:07:221,000 kilometres north of Adelaide,
0:07:22 > 0:07:24Sturt and his team blundered into
0:07:24 > 0:07:28the world's largest parallel sand dune system.
0:07:28 > 0:07:33A desert that stretches over 176,000 square kilometres.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49Where he stands on a sand dune in the middle of the desert
0:07:49 > 0:07:53and sees that the waves just go on and on forever.
0:07:56 > 0:07:58He calls them these land waves,
0:07:58 > 0:08:00because the land is taunting him,
0:08:00 > 0:08:02it's...it's mocking him,
0:08:02 > 0:08:08because where there should be a great ocean, there's just waves of sand.
0:08:11 > 0:08:15I really shuddered at the reappearance of those solid waves,
0:08:15 > 0:08:20these heart-depressing features existed to damp the spirits
0:08:20 > 0:08:24of my men, and irresistibly depress my own.
0:08:26 > 0:08:30For Sturt, it was a kind of gothic imprisonment
0:08:30 > 0:08:35because he was imprisoned at Depot Glen by thirst,
0:08:35 > 0:08:38which was as...as big a prison as any iron bars,
0:08:38 > 0:08:41and this was also internalised
0:08:41 > 0:08:44as a kind of psychological imprisonment
0:08:44 > 0:08:47by the terrors of the landscape.
0:08:49 > 0:08:50Hunger, thirst and scurvy
0:08:50 > 0:08:55eventually drove the Sturt expedition to a complete standstill.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58They returned barely alive.
0:08:58 > 0:09:03He really does return to the coast,
0:09:03 > 0:09:07to the civilization of the coast, defeated.
0:09:07 > 0:09:13And that's...that's a very important moment
0:09:13 > 0:09:18in...the shaping of the colonial mind.
0:09:18 > 0:09:22Sturt comes back, the man who had believed above all others,
0:09:22 > 0:09:26that there was inland sea, and he hasn't found it, he's found desert.
0:09:32 > 0:09:39So you get this extraordinary development of an explorer hero,
0:09:39 > 0:09:44who is a failed explorer in the terms of the original contract,
0:09:44 > 0:09:51but who nevertheless achieves an enormous status, as a hero
0:09:51 > 0:09:54who has battled with the land, with the elements,
0:09:54 > 0:09:58with thirst and drought, and the difficulty of the terrain
0:09:58 > 0:10:00and all of these things,
0:10:00 > 0:10:05and who has done this for some noble, selfless reason.
0:10:05 > 0:10:09Sturt rescued his reputation and financed his journeys
0:10:09 > 0:10:13by writing an account of his struggle against a forbidding enemy,
0:10:13 > 0:10:16a remorseless, arid, and lifeless desert.
0:10:20 > 0:10:24Just as the British thought of Africa as the dark continent,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27they thought of Australia as the silent continent.
0:10:27 > 0:10:32It was a continent waiting to be conquered by the sounds of industry.
0:10:34 > 0:10:36And they were confident
0:10:36 > 0:10:40that they could simply sweep that silence away,
0:10:40 > 0:10:45and introduce productivity and optimism and industry
0:10:45 > 0:10:48and bring the continent to life.
0:10:48 > 0:10:52But what happens is that the explorers cross a kind of frontier
0:10:52 > 0:10:56in which they discover that the silence just won't go away.
0:11:00 > 0:11:03Once you cross that frontier, you're in an arid zone
0:11:03 > 0:11:07where there are no rivers, you're looking every day for water,
0:11:07 > 0:11:11and you can feel the silence hanging in the air,
0:11:11 > 0:11:15and explorers like Charles Sturt refer to this not just as silence
0:11:15 > 0:11:17but death-like silence.
0:11:17 > 0:11:20They feel as though they've entered a zone of death.
0:11:25 > 0:11:29In creating this forbidding image of their country,
0:11:29 > 0:11:32Sturt and his fellow explorers were feeding a public in Europe
0:11:32 > 0:11:36with a voracious appetite for stories of discovery.
0:11:39 > 0:11:42They're competing for readership against the African explorers
0:11:42 > 0:11:46who find great cataracts and great jungles and over every hill
0:11:46 > 0:11:49there's a new and exotic people that, you know...
0:11:49 > 0:11:51treat you to exotic feasts.
0:11:51 > 0:11:56Or scare the daylights out of you with making war on you.
0:11:56 > 0:11:58Whereas by and large their encounters
0:11:58 > 0:12:02with the Aborigines were far more, erm...unadventurous than that,
0:12:02 > 0:12:03and often very hospitable.
0:12:05 > 0:12:09The Europeans' first encounter with Australia's indigenous people
0:12:09 > 0:12:12occurred when they met the Dutch explorers in the 17th century.
0:12:12 > 0:12:13From the beginning,
0:12:13 > 0:12:17the relationship was fraught with mutual non-comprehension.
0:12:17 > 0:12:21The Aborigines of the centre had been adapting to,
0:12:21 > 0:12:25and celebrating their landscape for at least 40,000 years.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28Nothing could be more different.
0:12:28 > 0:12:34The aboriginal people saw the land as a spiritual entity.
0:12:35 > 0:12:37When the Europeans came,
0:12:37 > 0:12:41they felt the land had no context, it had no history.
0:12:41 > 0:12:44The converse was true for the aboriginal people.
0:12:44 > 0:12:49For them, every single rock, every tree, every water hole,
0:12:49 > 0:12:53possibly even every flat piece of land
0:12:53 > 0:12:57had a history which stretched to the Dreaming.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05And they believed that in the Dreaming,
0:13:05 > 0:13:10the ancestral powerful spiritual beings emerged
0:13:10 > 0:13:13from the land and made great epic journeys
0:13:13 > 0:13:18through what had been a flat and featureless country,
0:13:18 > 0:13:22lifting up the mountains, making the water holes,
0:13:22 > 0:13:27making the country that they saw, literally creating the country.
0:13:41 > 0:13:43So, unlike most creation stories,
0:13:43 > 0:13:48where the power that creates is located outside the Earth,
0:13:48 > 0:13:50in the heavens or somewhere,
0:13:50 > 0:13:52for aboriginal people,
0:13:52 > 0:13:56the creating power is in the land, and it remains so.
0:14:01 > 0:14:04Every water hole, valleys and hills
0:14:04 > 0:14:08is associated from the time of creation
0:14:08 > 0:14:11as a very sacred part of who you are.
0:14:12 > 0:14:18They saw country and everything on it as a family member.
0:14:22 > 0:14:24See, and that includes every living thing,
0:14:24 > 0:14:27like every plant, every reptile,
0:14:27 > 0:14:31every animal, every bird, every insect.
0:14:31 > 0:14:36It's all a living entity, and must be treated as such.
0:14:42 > 0:14:46As settlement along the coast and the fertile areas proceeded,
0:14:46 > 0:14:49the Aborigines were either marginalised
0:14:49 > 0:14:51or driven further inland.
0:14:51 > 0:14:54New cities developed as entirely white enclaves,
0:14:54 > 0:14:58with aspirations to all the amenities and institutions
0:14:58 > 0:15:01to be found in Europe and North America.
0:15:01 > 0:15:05Melbourne in the 1850s, is an extraordinarily rich city.
0:15:05 > 0:15:08Gold, discovered at the beginning of the decade,
0:15:08 > 0:15:10had generated fabulous wealth,
0:15:10 > 0:15:13and it allows that society to do all kinds of things
0:15:13 > 0:15:15which they hadn't been able to do before.
0:15:15 > 0:15:18They can build fantastic buildings,
0:15:18 > 0:15:21they can create cultural institutions,
0:15:21 > 0:15:24like a fabulous library,
0:15:24 > 0:15:26like a museum,
0:15:26 > 0:15:29and it also allows them
0:15:29 > 0:15:33to think of engaging in serious science.
0:15:33 > 0:15:36And very soon the city's great and good
0:15:36 > 0:15:39formed their very own Royal Society.
0:15:39 > 0:15:43Modelled on the illustrious British institution of the same name,
0:15:43 > 0:15:45it shared the same objectives,
0:15:45 > 0:15:48the pursuit of scientific enquiry.
0:15:50 > 0:15:52And it was this institution
0:15:52 > 0:15:55which was to launch an expedition which would fill
0:15:55 > 0:16:01the apparently lifeless desert with a story of heroism and sacrifice.
0:16:07 > 0:16:09And they're thinking, "OK, well,
0:16:09 > 0:16:12"here we are, these learned gentlemen,
0:16:12 > 0:16:14"in our fine, 19th-century clothes
0:16:14 > 0:16:18"with our fine-19th century manners and our clever books.
0:16:18 > 0:16:20"We need a jolly good expedition."
0:16:21 > 0:16:24After months of prevarication and indecision,
0:16:24 > 0:16:26the Society's exploration committee
0:16:26 > 0:16:29resolved upon a scientific expedition
0:16:29 > 0:16:32that would cross the continent from Melbourne
0:16:32 > 0:16:34to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north.
0:16:37 > 0:16:40On the way they were to collect scientific specimens,
0:16:40 > 0:16:44survey the land, and paint watercolours.
0:16:47 > 0:16:50And they have the most extravagant ideas
0:16:50 > 0:16:53about what they're going to achieve.
0:16:53 > 0:16:55They spend thousands of pounds,
0:16:55 > 0:16:58and they get scientists and they have meetings,
0:16:58 > 0:17:02and by the time the whole thing is set up,
0:17:02 > 0:17:06they have created this... lumbering caravan
0:17:06 > 0:17:09of Victorian scientific endeavour
0:17:09 > 0:17:15that costs a fortune and which moves at snail pace out of Melbourne
0:17:15 > 0:17:20and in fact makes camp that night, well, within easy walking distance
0:17:20 > 0:17:21in the nearby suburb of Essenden.
0:17:21 > 0:17:25You could walk back into town and have a drink, it was pathetic.
0:17:26 > 0:17:31And in command of this whole outfit is this fellow Robert O'Hara Burke.
0:17:31 > 0:17:33Now, Mr Burke's a nice fellow,
0:17:33 > 0:17:36he's handsome, has a bit of a sort of dashing way about him.
0:17:36 > 0:17:39He's been in the cavalry.
0:17:39 > 0:17:43But he's famous for not being able to find his way about.
0:17:43 > 0:17:45I mean, he is just hopeless as a Bushman.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49Burke was also not much of diarist.
0:17:49 > 0:17:52It was to be his eventual second-in-command John Wills
0:17:52 > 0:17:56whose accounts were to become the stuff of legend.
0:17:58 > 0:18:03No expense was to be spared on Melbourne's awfully big adventure.
0:18:03 > 0:18:0825 camels were shipped across from India with eight Afghan cameleers.
0:18:11 > 0:18:16The expedition which set off from Melbourne, with 15,000 spectators
0:18:16 > 0:18:18and with such high ambitions
0:18:18 > 0:18:22soon shed its scientists and most of its 20 tons of equipment.
0:18:24 > 0:18:28The interior they encountered was to be very different from the one
0:18:28 > 0:18:31that previous explorers like Sturt had experienced.
0:18:31 > 0:18:34Their paintings and diaries described a landscape
0:18:34 > 0:18:36that is often lush and green.
0:18:39 > 0:18:43We often think of the centre as being extraordinarily dry,
0:18:43 > 0:18:46and clearly at various times, it is.
0:18:46 > 0:18:50But Burke and Wills crossed the continent
0:18:50 > 0:18:52in one of the wettest of...of years.
0:18:52 > 0:18:56There is so much water that the grass is so long.
0:18:56 > 0:19:00They make the crossing in one of the best of seasons.
0:19:00 > 0:19:02The vagaries of the Australian climate
0:19:02 > 0:19:04were not understood at the time.
0:19:04 > 0:19:07This might be the driest of continents
0:19:07 > 0:19:10but it is also the most unpredictable.
0:19:16 > 0:19:18It's only in the last few decades
0:19:18 > 0:19:22that we've come to understand how powerful oscillations in the winds
0:19:22 > 0:19:24and temperature of the Pacific Ocean
0:19:24 > 0:19:28can determine the difference between drought and flood.
0:19:30 > 0:19:32Burkes' expedition entered the centre
0:19:32 > 0:19:35during what is known as a La Nina year, a wet year.
0:19:35 > 0:19:42The climate of Australia as we've now come to appreciate is...
0:19:42 > 0:19:46is hugely influenced by both...
0:19:46 > 0:19:53the climatic events we now know of as El Nino and la Nina.
0:19:55 > 0:19:59In la Nina years we often get big rainfall events
0:19:59 > 0:20:01in the centre of Australia.
0:20:01 > 0:20:04We often end up with big amounts of water running through
0:20:04 > 0:20:08the channel country, we end up with Lake Eyre flooding.
0:20:14 > 0:20:21During a La Nina event in the Pacific, millions of birds migrate to temporary lakes in the centre.
0:20:25 > 0:20:30For a few months every decade Sturt's vision of the inland sea comes true.
0:20:35 > 0:20:38Burke, Wills and two others successfully crossed the centre
0:20:38 > 0:20:41and reached the swamps of the Gulf of Carpentaria
0:20:41 > 0:20:43on the north coast of Australia.
0:20:45 > 0:20:47But it was on their return journey
0:20:47 > 0:20:49that they began to run out of food and water.
0:20:49 > 0:20:52One member of the expedition died.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56The remaining three returned to their base camp in Cooper's Creek
0:20:56 > 0:20:59to find that it had been deserted the same day.
0:21:03 > 0:21:07Burke and Wills walk in to camp and the camp is empty,
0:21:07 > 0:21:13they expected to find horses, men, a big pot of emu stew,
0:21:13 > 0:21:15a whole welcoming party.
0:21:15 > 0:21:22Instead they walk in to silence, an empty camp and this fateful word,
0:21:22 > 0:21:24carved on the tree, "dig".
0:21:26 > 0:21:30And they dig at the bottom of the tree and they find provisions,
0:21:30 > 0:21:33and a note that says that the party, the support party
0:21:33 > 0:21:37has left that morning, that very morning after waiting for months.
0:21:39 > 0:21:41And Burke and Wills are...
0:21:41 > 0:21:45and King are...pretty devastated.
0:21:52 > 0:21:57There were people nearby at Cooper's Creek, people who could have helped.
0:21:57 > 0:22:00The Yandruwandha people gave them fish, 'padlu' beans
0:22:00 > 0:22:04and a type of bread made from the ground seeds of the ngardu plant.
0:22:06 > 0:22:09If not prepared in the right way,
0:22:09 > 0:22:12ngardu may cause a form of Beriberi.
0:22:12 > 0:22:16Fatally, Burke and Wills were not the kind of explorers
0:22:16 > 0:22:18who took advice from the locals.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22At one point when the Yandruwandha came to offer them more fish,
0:22:22 > 0:22:26Wills fired above their heads and scared them off.
0:22:26 > 0:22:31In June 1861, they both died on the banks of Cooper's Creek.
0:22:33 > 0:22:36Now, there are lots of theories about how Burke and Wills died,
0:22:36 > 0:22:42but the one that really persuades me is the idea that they were poisoned.
0:22:42 > 0:22:45That they were grinding up this ngardu,
0:22:45 > 0:22:47to make a flour
0:22:47 > 0:22:49and they didn't know how to prepare it properly,
0:22:49 > 0:22:52and that the ngardu basically poisoned them.
0:22:54 > 0:22:59And there are really disturbing descriptions by Wills
0:22:59 > 0:23:04of just how appallingly painful the effects were on them
0:23:04 > 0:23:06when they went to the toilet.
0:23:06 > 0:23:11I mean, it describes passing these gigantic stools, he says,
0:23:11 > 0:23:14and he can't help noticing that he appears to be evacuating
0:23:14 > 0:23:17a greater bulk than he's actually eating.
0:23:18 > 0:23:21Nothing became these two explorers so much
0:23:21 > 0:23:23as the manner of their dying.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27Some of Robert O'Hara Burke's and John Wills' last written notes
0:23:27 > 0:23:32seem as if they're already preparing for the hagiographies and paintings
0:23:32 > 0:23:34that were to later venerate them.
0:23:36 > 0:23:39I hope you remain with me here till I am quite dead.
0:23:41 > 0:23:44It is a comfort for me to know that someone will be here when I die,
0:23:44 > 0:23:46that when I am dying
0:23:46 > 0:23:51it is my wish that you should place the pistol in my right hand,
0:23:51 > 0:23:55that you leave me unburied as I lie.
0:23:56 > 0:24:00It soon became part of the legend that their unburied bodies
0:24:00 > 0:24:04provided food for the feral dogs of the centre, dingoes.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12The last surviving member of the expedition,
0:24:12 > 0:24:15John King, was later found almost out of his mind,
0:24:15 > 0:24:20but alive, and fed by the Yandruwandha people.
0:24:20 > 0:24:25Melbourne struggles with the expedition in its aftermath.
0:24:25 > 0:24:28There is huge debate over what it meant,
0:24:28 > 0:24:33and there is always a very, very powerful body of opinion
0:24:33 > 0:24:38that this has been a disaster and an embarrassment.
0:24:38 > 0:24:41But I guess the... But officialdom
0:24:41 > 0:24:45do not want to admit that it had been a failure,
0:24:45 > 0:24:51and so they very deliberately elevate Burke and Wills into heroes,
0:24:51 > 0:24:55and that involves declaring a...a holiday,
0:24:55 > 0:24:58and having a massive state funeral
0:24:58 > 0:25:02and giving them a great sort of mausoleum in the cemetery,
0:25:02 > 0:25:04and then giving them
0:25:04 > 0:25:08what in colonial terms was a huge bronze statue
0:25:08 > 0:25:11in the centre of the city.
0:25:11 > 0:25:1640,000 people attended Burke and Wills' funeral.
0:25:16 > 0:25:20Statues were commissioned, granite memorials were constructed,
0:25:20 > 0:25:24streets renamed, stories were written and pictures painted.
0:25:26 > 0:25:31Burke and Wills became Australia's first martyrs to the arid centre,
0:25:31 > 0:25:34that horrendous blank in the middle of the continent.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42I bet you if you went out and asked any Australians
0:25:42 > 0:25:45what killed Burke and Wills, they'd say they died of thirst.
0:25:45 > 0:25:47They didn't die of thirst.
0:25:48 > 0:25:51The country they were in was not that dry.
0:25:51 > 0:25:55Cooper's Creek itself is a very fertile place.
0:25:55 > 0:25:56It's not a silent place.
0:25:56 > 0:26:00It's filled with bird life, the river there is teeming with fish.
0:26:00 > 0:26:03It's the department store of the outback.
0:26:03 > 0:26:05You can't go wrong at Cooper's Creek.
0:26:06 > 0:26:11But you see, that doesn't fit the mythology, that doesn't fit the story.
0:26:14 > 0:26:18You want Burke and Wills to be claimed by the wilderness.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21If they're going to be turned into some story of heroism
0:26:21 > 0:26:24then they have to die of thirst in the desert.
0:26:27 > 0:26:31Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely,
0:26:31 > 0:26:34under the saltbush sparkling brightly,
0:26:34 > 0:26:37out where the wild dogs chorus nightly,
0:26:37 > 0:26:39that's where the dead men lie.
0:26:46 > 0:26:49And that's why Burke and Wills are so important,
0:26:49 > 0:26:52because Burke and Wills are an attempt
0:26:52 > 0:26:55to make a sense of the silence.
0:26:55 > 0:27:00They're an attempt by white Australia to give a story to the emptiness.
0:27:00 > 0:27:04For us to hear some version of ourselves in a land
0:27:04 > 0:27:08which refuses to speak to us of ourselves.
0:27:08 > 0:27:13It's the start of creating a white mythology about Australia.
0:27:15 > 0:27:16And it's not risible.
0:27:16 > 0:27:18It's not...
0:27:18 > 0:27:20er...
0:27:20 > 0:27:23finally an act of folly, it's a...
0:27:23 > 0:27:25it's a hunger to belong.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36The continent's indigenous people have had 40,000 years
0:27:36 > 0:27:40of storytelling to justify their presence in the landscape.
0:27:47 > 0:27:51This dreaming here, this belonged to my grandmother.
0:27:51 > 0:27:54My grandmother's country
0:27:54 > 0:27:57is this place called Anunga.
0:27:57 > 0:27:58And from Anunga,
0:27:58 > 0:28:01we've got this dreaming called "inguta".
0:28:02 > 0:28:05And in Anunga there was this...
0:28:05 > 0:28:07there's this lizard...
0:28:07 > 0:28:11this mountain devil lizard.
0:28:11 > 0:28:17The white settlers, they know this lizard as the thorny devil lizard.
0:28:17 > 0:28:20This lizard travelled around this country,
0:28:20 > 0:28:23and collected all these rocks and put it in his pouch,
0:28:23 > 0:28:27which is what this circle here represents.
0:28:27 > 0:28:30And this pouch is found on the back of its neck,
0:28:30 > 0:28:34and when it walks through the country it deposited...
0:28:34 > 0:28:39deposited these ochre colours into sacred areas.
0:28:39 > 0:28:41This one belonging to the men,
0:28:41 > 0:28:44men with the boomerang spear
0:28:44 > 0:28:47and the other one belonging to the women dreaming.
0:28:47 > 0:28:52Now, the woman one, they've got sacred place here,
0:28:52 > 0:28:53which is a water hole
0:28:53 > 0:28:57and I heard this from my grandparents, my grandmother.
0:28:57 > 0:29:00This place here, this is called Anunga,
0:29:00 > 0:29:03and this is where this lizard come from.
0:29:12 > 0:29:16Just as Burke and Wills' bodies were being reburied in Melbourne,
0:29:16 > 0:29:19a rival explorer reached the geographical centre
0:29:19 > 0:29:20of the continent.
0:29:20 > 0:29:24It's notable that John McDouall Stuart's achievement
0:29:24 > 0:29:26in reaching the centre and surviving
0:29:26 > 0:29:30is far less celebrated than Burke and Wills' failure.
0:29:30 > 0:29:31Yet it was the route
0:29:31 > 0:29:35that Stuart blazed from Adelaide to the north coast,
0:29:35 > 0:29:37which had far more permanent consequences
0:29:37 > 0:29:39for the history of Australia,
0:29:39 > 0:29:42the Aborigines, and the country's interior.
0:29:42 > 0:29:47In the following decade, you've got teams of men, hundreds of men,
0:29:47 > 0:29:50living along that route, building the overland telegraph,
0:29:50 > 0:29:52and that telegraph
0:29:52 > 0:29:56really does transform the centre of Australia.
0:29:56 > 0:30:00After the telegraph, it's very hard to get lost out there,
0:30:00 > 0:30:01and people still do get lost,
0:30:01 > 0:30:05but it's not...it's not a kind of great unknown any more.
0:30:05 > 0:30:07There's a kind of highway through the middle.
0:30:08 > 0:30:12And there are a series of water holes basically across Australia,
0:30:12 > 0:30:14which are the telegraph posts,
0:30:14 > 0:30:16and the most famous of these is Alice Springs.
0:30:18 > 0:30:21At Darwin the wire was linked to a underwater cable
0:30:21 > 0:30:23that connected Australia to London.
0:30:23 > 0:30:29On the 22nd of August 1872, the chief engineer Charles Todd
0:30:29 > 0:30:34tapped out Australia's first instant message to posterity and the world.
0:30:37 > 0:30:39We have this day, within two years,
0:30:39 > 0:30:44completed a line of communications 2,000 miles long
0:30:44 > 0:30:47through the very centre of Australia,
0:30:47 > 0:30:52until a few years ago a terra incognita believed to be a desert.
0:30:52 > 0:30:58The desert telegraph bisected the centre, speeding up settlement
0:30:58 > 0:31:01and, where there was enough water, these formed the focus
0:31:01 > 0:31:04for cattle stations along a line from north to south.
0:31:04 > 0:31:09But either side, vast tracts lay undiscovered and undeveloped.
0:31:16 > 0:31:22After these great expeditions, really very little was done
0:31:22 > 0:31:26about desert exploration for maybe 40 years.
0:31:26 > 0:31:29There was no sense that we should be bothered with this any more.
0:31:29 > 0:31:32Let's get on with developing the cities,
0:31:32 > 0:31:36let's get on with commerce in an urban sense.
0:31:36 > 0:31:39Let's get on with certainly pastoral industry,
0:31:39 > 0:31:43but pastoral industry in areas where we know it works.
0:31:43 > 0:31:48So, the huge cult of the merino sheep, for example,
0:31:48 > 0:31:53was something which took people's attention away from the desert,
0:31:53 > 0:31:57and said, "This is where Australia's great value lies.
0:31:57 > 0:32:01"This is the thing we do, we do sheep, we do merinos."
0:32:01 > 0:32:05A desert was a kind of dead letter, nobody wanted to know about it.
0:32:07 > 0:32:1440 years after the Burke and Wills expedition, a British geologist John Walter Gregory
0:32:14 > 0:32:19was to present the new Australians with even more reason to keep their backs to the centre.
0:32:22 > 0:32:25But amazingly, in the hottest time of the year,
0:32:25 > 0:32:27professor Gregory gets a group of students
0:32:27 > 0:32:30from the University of Melbourne
0:32:30 > 0:32:33and takes them on the field trip of a lifetime to Lake Eyre.
0:32:33 > 0:32:37Lake Eyre is the great empty salt lake,
0:32:37 > 0:32:41that drains central Australia.
0:32:43 > 0:32:45It would now, I guess, seem like hubris,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48but he details his students into little squads
0:32:48 > 0:32:51and some of them survey the plants and some of them look at animals,
0:32:51 > 0:32:54and some of them look at the aboriginal culture and so on.
0:32:54 > 0:32:56And he comes back and he writes a book,
0:32:56 > 0:33:01and he gives that book a fateful title, he calls it the Dead Heart.
0:33:01 > 0:33:02That book comes out
0:33:02 > 0:33:08shortly after the Australian colonies have federated into a nation.
0:33:08 > 0:33:12Australia is now a new nation, and it's still a nation
0:33:12 > 0:33:17that's attempting to define what it means to be Australian.
0:33:17 > 0:33:21It's still a nation that's trying to learn how to be in this land
0:33:21 > 0:33:25and the most powerful book, the best-selling book
0:33:25 > 0:33:28that comes out of that period is a book that says
0:33:28 > 0:33:31at the heart of this continent lies the dead heart.
0:33:33 > 0:33:36It's not an image that he hasn't thought about carefully.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40He really means that Lake Eyre is like a heart muscle,
0:33:40 > 0:33:44that has stopped beating and that all those rivers
0:33:44 > 0:33:47that come out of, or that flow in to Lake Eyre
0:33:47 > 0:33:52are like withered veins and arteries, that the heart of the nation is dead.
0:33:53 > 0:33:58Now that is perpetuating the whole silence, death-like silence,
0:33:58 > 0:34:03Burke and Wills, necro-nationalist thing that we've been talking about,
0:34:03 > 0:34:07and that's a debilitating idea for a country that's attempting to come up
0:34:07 > 0:34:10with some sense of purpose and self-definition.
0:34:12 > 0:34:16Although Gregory meant the Dead Heart to refer to Lake Eyre,
0:34:16 > 0:34:21it became a cliche for the pessimistic view of the whole centre of the continent.
0:34:24 > 0:34:27But there was a rival, optimistic vision
0:34:27 > 0:34:30that came from the cattle men and the hydraulic engineers.
0:34:30 > 0:34:34To bring the desert heart to life, just add water.
0:34:34 > 0:34:37They also had their influential books.
0:34:37 > 0:34:39The centre could be turned green
0:34:39 > 0:34:43by drawing water from underground wells, and irrigation schemes.
0:34:43 > 0:34:50These optimists encouraged the cattle drovers to move inland towards the interior.
0:34:53 > 0:34:55The most dramatic impact was not
0:34:55 > 0:34:58that produced by explorers,
0:34:58 > 0:35:04but the arrival of the first permanent settlers, the squatters,
0:35:04 > 0:35:07the outback pastoralists
0:35:07 > 0:35:13who would arrive in the country of an aboriginal nation,
0:35:13 > 0:35:17their numbers all quite small, maybe half a dozen men,
0:35:17 > 0:35:22but hundreds of sheep and cattle,
0:35:22 > 0:35:23hundreds of them.
0:35:26 > 0:35:30Now, these animals needed water,
0:35:30 > 0:35:32so the European animals immediately
0:35:32 > 0:35:35occupied the river frontages or the water holes.
0:35:37 > 0:35:42And usually the frontiersmen would take the view
0:35:42 > 0:35:45that this was their water.
0:35:45 > 0:35:50And that cattle and blacks don't mix.
0:35:50 > 0:35:54That if we want to get our cattle, in particular, or our sheep,
0:35:54 > 0:35:58to settle on the land, you've got to keep the blacks away.
0:36:01 > 0:36:04What were once pristine waterholes
0:36:04 > 0:36:07where both Aborigines and wild animals drank at the edge,
0:36:07 > 0:36:11were swamped by cattle ill adapted to the relentless heat.
0:36:12 > 0:36:17When this new stock arrives especially the horses and cattle,
0:36:17 > 0:36:19they walked straight into this water
0:36:19 > 0:36:24and would mess it up with urinating and with their droppings,
0:36:24 > 0:36:28and stand there, drink it, and do all their terrible things in it.
0:36:28 > 0:36:31So it didn't take long
0:36:31 > 0:36:35for the water to be contaminated, to be unusable.
0:36:35 > 0:36:40You know, and that spoilt the waterways for every single one,
0:36:40 > 0:36:44and then this then drove the...our native species
0:36:44 > 0:36:46away from those areas,
0:36:46 > 0:36:51which our people was quite able to, you know, live off.
0:36:51 > 0:36:55And then we started moving towards killing the stock
0:36:55 > 0:36:59that had intruded or come into our land.
0:36:59 > 0:37:02And being on my land, I'm quite entitled to take anything that's
0:37:02 > 0:37:04on it, if I need it for survival,
0:37:04 > 0:37:07and that's exactly the attitude we had.
0:37:07 > 0:37:10So the men started killing some of the stocks
0:37:10 > 0:37:12to feed us, as their children.
0:37:12 > 0:37:15And for that of course, you know,
0:37:15 > 0:37:18they were really punished badly, they were shot.
0:37:22 > 0:37:26And in their many dozens and dozens of lot, you know.
0:37:28 > 0:37:30A lot of terrible stories
0:37:30 > 0:37:36about the massacres of our people through those early cattle people.
0:37:38 > 0:37:42The range wars with the Aborigines were fought across the continent.
0:37:42 > 0:37:45As many as 20,000 were killed or massacred.
0:37:45 > 0:37:49Many more died from exposure to the diseases
0:37:49 > 0:37:51that Europeans brought with them.
0:37:51 > 0:37:54The impact was just as devastating for the animal
0:37:54 > 0:37:57and plant species of the interior.
0:37:57 > 0:38:01Cattle, camels, horses, goats and rabbits
0:38:01 > 0:38:04grazed out much of the plant life.
0:38:04 > 0:38:10Foxes and cats took a great toll on the reptiles and smaller mammals.
0:38:10 > 0:38:15Australia has lost more mammal species than any other country.
0:38:15 > 0:38:20You see that's one story that just tells you how it is,
0:38:20 > 0:38:22and it was like that with all our people.
0:38:22 > 0:38:26And the plant world, and the land itself.
0:38:26 > 0:38:29It's a living being to us.
0:38:29 > 0:38:31And it hurts the same as we hurt
0:38:31 > 0:38:35and we hurt for it the same as it hurts for us.
0:38:35 > 0:38:41It is...it is a two-way emotional connection that's a reality,
0:38:41 > 0:38:45and when we see country being damaged like that,
0:38:45 > 0:38:47OK, we feel the same pain.
0:38:51 > 0:38:56Isolated in the vast interior, some Aborigine communities were able to continue,
0:38:56 > 0:39:00clinging on to their culture and relationship with nature.
0:39:05 > 0:39:09Whereas the Aborigines had 40,000 years to adapt to a climate
0:39:09 > 0:39:13that varies between years of drought and then sudden rains,
0:39:13 > 0:39:17the animals of their Dreamtime have had millions.
0:39:18 > 0:39:22Totemic animals like the kangaroos have flexible breeding cycles
0:39:22 > 0:39:26that can take advantage of the sudden blooming of the desert.
0:39:29 > 0:39:33Another Dreamtime creature, the thorny devil, has evolved
0:39:33 > 0:39:37tiny channels in between its spikes and can convey the morning dew
0:39:37 > 0:39:40to its mouth through capillary action.
0:39:44 > 0:39:49Far away from the rapidly developing cities around the periphery,
0:39:49 > 0:39:54Australia's Dead Heart remained an inaccessible wasteland,
0:39:54 > 0:39:57inhabited by primitives and isolated cattle men.
0:40:01 > 0:40:05It was a land portrayed in black and white images,
0:40:05 > 0:40:09occasionally penetrated by scientific expeditions.
0:40:09 > 0:40:13It was from one of these surveys that a new champion was to emerge,
0:40:13 > 0:40:15someone who saw the desert in a new light.
0:40:19 > 0:40:22Driven by the fear that many species were on the verge of extinction,
0:40:22 > 0:40:24even before they were discovered,
0:40:24 > 0:40:29Dr Hedley Finlayson set about finding and documenting them.
0:40:29 > 0:40:32In 1935 he published The Red Centre,
0:40:32 > 0:40:35a book that promoted a radical change
0:40:35 > 0:40:39in the perception of the interior.
0:40:39 > 0:40:43And he goes actually looking for marsupials,
0:40:43 > 0:40:46but what he comes away with
0:40:46 > 0:40:49is not so much his zoological finds,
0:40:49 > 0:40:52but with a new vision of the desert
0:40:52 > 0:40:56which he writes about as the red centre,
0:40:56 > 0:40:59and the red centre for him was absolutely mind blowing.
0:41:04 > 0:41:08Finlayson is absolutely blown away by the red.
0:41:08 > 0:41:10He says, "This fiery cinnabar country."
0:41:10 > 0:41:15And of course, he's fixated on this iron oxide soil and rocks,
0:41:15 > 0:41:21which is so stunning, particularly when you have the white ghost gums
0:41:21 > 0:41:27against the red sand and the sort of cobalt blue sky overhead,
0:41:27 > 0:41:28it is amazing.
0:41:38 > 0:41:40And what is fascinating is that
0:41:40 > 0:41:43when you track back from Finlayson,
0:41:43 > 0:41:47you find that almost no-one else has mentioned the colour red,
0:41:47 > 0:41:51all those explorers, all the missionaries, all the settlers,
0:41:51 > 0:41:56who go into the desert, none of them mentions this word red.
0:41:56 > 0:41:58All they're doing is looking for green,
0:41:58 > 0:42:01and if they can't find green, it's nothing, it's not red.
0:42:03 > 0:42:08But it's an indication of how much we only see what we're looking for,
0:42:08 > 0:42:12and if we don't see what we're looking for, then there's nothing.
0:42:12 > 0:42:16So Finlayson turned around the idea of the Dead Heart
0:42:16 > 0:42:17to being something
0:42:17 > 0:42:22which was vivid and beautiful and well worth our attention.
0:42:26 > 0:42:28Finlayson went further than advocating
0:42:28 > 0:42:30the way the desert should be seen.
0:42:30 > 0:42:34He railed against the destructive influence of the white man.
0:42:34 > 0:42:40Above all, he took up the cause of the centre's indigenous people.
0:42:40 > 0:42:45But the debt we owe them is for the whole white community to discharge.
0:42:45 > 0:42:48That it may be done soon, and done with an open hand,
0:42:48 > 0:42:53must be the earnest wish of all who set justice above expediency.
0:42:55 > 0:42:58It was this more enlightened attitude
0:42:58 > 0:43:00that allowed the emergence of a man
0:43:00 > 0:43:02who was going to paint in the colours
0:43:02 > 0:43:04that Finlayson could only describe.
0:43:09 > 0:43:11For Australians,
0:43:11 > 0:43:14with their origins in Europe,
0:43:14 > 0:43:18the colour of beauty and of nature is green.
0:43:18 > 0:43:20And the colour of death is brown.
0:43:21 > 0:43:23When you travel in the centre of Australia
0:43:23 > 0:43:25the land is brown, the grass is brown
0:43:26 > 0:43:29and it required a whole shift of imagination
0:43:29 > 0:43:33to come to understand that the colours of this country
0:43:33 > 0:43:37can be thought of as the colours of life.
0:43:39 > 0:43:44Now one of the people who helped us to see the centre differently,
0:43:44 > 0:43:47who transformed the Australian sense of the centre
0:43:47 > 0:43:49is the Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira.
0:43:51 > 0:43:54Now, Namatjira is working in the '40s and '50s.
0:43:54 > 0:43:58He's a traditional tribal man, and he learns watercolour painting.
0:43:58 > 0:43:59And he paints
0:43:59 > 0:44:04these extraordinarily beautiful paintings of his own country,
0:44:04 > 0:44:08and these paintings become a fixture of homes around Australia.
0:44:08 > 0:44:10When I was a little boy, you know,
0:44:10 > 0:44:12when you went to see Aunty Vi or Uncle Ken,
0:44:12 > 0:44:15there would always be an Albert Namatjira on the wall.
0:44:15 > 0:44:18There would be a picture of Her Majesty the Queen
0:44:18 > 0:44:22as a young and beautiful lady, and there would be an Albert Namatjira.
0:44:22 > 0:44:24They became a kind of cliche of the 50s.
0:44:27 > 0:44:29The pictures are successful,
0:44:29 > 0:44:34partly because they conform so well
0:44:34 > 0:44:38to the canons of European picture making.
0:44:38 > 0:44:41The ways in which the foreground and the middle ground
0:44:41 > 0:44:43and the background are organized
0:44:43 > 0:44:47and the ways in which you have trees which frame the view
0:44:47 > 0:44:51and which take your eye into the landscape.
0:44:53 > 0:44:57They are hugely accessible and easy
0:44:57 > 0:45:00for a settler audience
0:45:00 > 0:45:03to absorb and to embrace.
0:45:04 > 0:45:09And Australians loved them because they showed them an Australia
0:45:09 > 0:45:12they didn't know they had, because the central Australia
0:45:12 > 0:45:14that urban Australians knew,
0:45:14 > 0:45:17they were grainy, grey photographs in magazines.
0:45:17 > 0:45:19So, after the Second World War,
0:45:19 > 0:45:23we start to see central Australia in colour.
0:45:23 > 0:45:27And Namatjira is absolutely fundamental to opening our eyes
0:45:27 > 0:45:31to the colour of Australia, so we stop listening and start looking.
0:45:34 > 0:45:40Namatjira belonged to the Arrernte people who live in the country around what is now Alice Springs.
0:45:44 > 0:45:47Although he painted in a Western manner,
0:45:47 > 0:45:50he, like many Aboriginal artists that followed him,
0:45:50 > 0:45:57stuck to portraying the landscape of his country, the Arrernte country.
0:45:57 > 0:46:00Albert Namatjira's painting was extremely useful,
0:46:00 > 0:46:05because he became very popular in the early days
0:46:05 > 0:46:09of an Aboriginal artist, presenting the work in a language
0:46:09 > 0:46:12the wider community could understand.
0:46:12 > 0:46:15Our belief is if he'd presented it in the dot painting system,
0:46:15 > 0:46:18then no-one would have known what he was doing.
0:46:18 > 0:46:20HE CHUCKLES
0:46:21 > 0:46:27But he was painting his country and he was honouring his family,
0:46:27 > 0:46:30you know, by doing what he was doing.
0:46:33 > 0:46:40This idea of the sensuousness, the vibrancy, the intensity
0:46:40 > 0:46:43of the colour of central Australia
0:46:43 > 0:46:47is a kind of spiritual awakening that occurs.
0:46:47 > 0:46:51So, it's not advertising or politics or rhetoric,
0:46:51 > 0:46:54it's an Aboriginal man with a paintbrush,
0:46:54 > 0:46:58who really opens the Australian heart to the Australian wilderness.
0:47:06 > 0:47:09Other painters were also beginning
0:47:09 > 0:47:11to see the potential of the red centre.
0:47:13 > 0:47:17Sydney Nolan also became interested in the desert
0:47:17 > 0:47:21and he was the first person who painted the desert from a plane.
0:47:21 > 0:47:24He went up in an aeroplane around Alice Springs,
0:47:24 > 0:47:27and he flew over the McDonald ranges
0:47:27 > 0:47:31and he flew even as far as the Tanami, I think.
0:47:31 > 0:47:34And he painted what he saw from above.
0:47:34 > 0:47:37Now, ironically, of course, this is how traditionally
0:47:37 > 0:47:41Aboriginal people painted the land, looking down, into it.
0:47:41 > 0:47:46And what he saw then was not a sort of sense of a flat horizon
0:47:46 > 0:47:52extending forever, but in fact he saw almost a sense of the bones
0:47:52 > 0:47:56of the country pushing up through the land.
0:47:58 > 0:48:03You have these bare red ranges sticking up like...
0:48:03 > 0:48:07like the skeleton of a dinosaur, coming out, up at you.
0:48:11 > 0:48:14And these had an enormous effect on people.
0:48:14 > 0:48:18They felt suddenly, there is, a starkness and a beauty
0:48:18 > 0:48:20and an excitement about this country.
0:48:20 > 0:48:24One place above all would come to represent
0:48:24 > 0:48:26this new positive vision of the interior.
0:48:26 > 0:48:29Local Aborigines call it Uluru,
0:48:29 > 0:48:33but white explorers gave it another name.
0:48:33 > 0:48:37'This is the goal. Ayers rock looms up like a giant mound.
0:48:37 > 0:48:39'From ten miles away.'
0:48:41 > 0:48:4250 years after Federation,
0:48:42 > 0:48:47white Australians were redefining their relationship with the centre.
0:48:47 > 0:48:51The Dead Heart was becoming the Red Heart.
0:48:52 > 0:48:55In a sense, the sense of nationalism
0:48:55 > 0:49:01begins to move from the settled pastoral districts into the centre.
0:49:01 > 0:49:06And so the centre itself, gradually comes to play a role
0:49:06 > 0:49:10in the sense of Australian nationalism,
0:49:10 > 0:49:14until by the middle of the 20th century it is the centre
0:49:14 > 0:49:18that is seen, in a way, as the heart of Australia.
0:49:18 > 0:49:21But this was still very much a white Australian vision.
0:49:21 > 0:49:24Climbing Ayers rock became a rite of passage,
0:49:24 > 0:49:28ignoring the reservations of the local Anangu people
0:49:28 > 0:49:31who see climbing it as an act of disrespect
0:49:31 > 0:49:33for a place that they regard as sacred.
0:49:33 > 0:49:37'The radio mast goes up to confound the spirits of the primitive men
0:49:37 > 0:49:41'who have made the rock for untold ages the focal point
0:49:41 > 0:49:43'of their legends and ceremonials.'
0:49:44 > 0:49:48Nowadays 400,000 people a year make the long journey
0:49:48 > 0:49:53to the giant sandstone monolith in the centre of Australia.
0:49:54 > 0:49:59But the focus has changed. This is no longer simply Ayers Rock.
0:49:59 > 0:50:01It's now recognised as Uluru,
0:50:01 > 0:50:05acknowledging the local Anangu people's rights to the land
0:50:05 > 0:50:09and respecting it as a focal point for their beliefs and ceremonials.
0:50:12 > 0:50:18It's just the name of it, but that was it given to it from the period
0:50:18 > 0:50:23of what we call the "chilcupa", or white people refer to as Dreamtime.
0:50:23 > 0:50:25It's...it is the name Uluru.
0:50:25 > 0:50:31And that should be there for all of us to continue calling it that.
0:50:33 > 0:50:36Many visitors still ignore the wishes of the Anangu
0:50:36 > 0:50:38and make the climb to the rock summit,
0:50:38 > 0:50:40but each year their numbers decline,
0:50:40 > 0:50:44reflecting an increasing respect for the local people.
0:50:44 > 0:50:49Uluru has become a national icon for Australia, and its red centre.
0:50:49 > 0:50:53The centre is even more distinctive.
0:50:53 > 0:50:57The centre is even more uniquely ours.
0:50:57 > 0:51:01No-one else has got a centre like we have,
0:51:01 > 0:51:06so that if we want to be a distinctive people, a nation,
0:51:06 > 0:51:10then the centre becomes important.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15Alongside the recognition of Aboriginal rights
0:51:15 > 0:51:17and their cultural connection to the centre,
0:51:17 > 0:51:22the new Australians have continued to develop their own relationship with it.
0:51:24 > 0:51:28I think in Australia, increasingly, there's a real sense
0:51:28 > 0:51:31that we need to form those bonds,
0:51:31 > 0:51:34spiritual is perhaps too strong a word,
0:51:34 > 0:51:40but, certainly, a bond that is more than just physical with the country,
0:51:40 > 0:51:42to have a sense of belonging,
0:51:42 > 0:51:47so that we're not just the dispossessors of the land,
0:51:47 > 0:51:50but that we can actually engage with the land.
0:51:51 > 0:51:55This engagement has gone beyond painting and tourism
0:51:55 > 0:51:57and into television and cinema.
0:52:08 > 0:52:13More recently we have blockbusters like Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert,
0:52:13 > 0:52:17which is set in a desert because, or part of it is set in the desert,
0:52:17 > 0:52:20because the desert represents freedom.
0:52:20 > 0:52:26In the climactic scene where the three travellers
0:52:26 > 0:52:31suddenly expand in their incredible costumes on top of Kings Canyon
0:52:31 > 0:52:35and there's a feeling that now they know who they are,
0:52:35 > 0:52:39now they can go home, because they have found themselves.
0:52:47 > 0:52:50We can never be the indigenous people,
0:52:50 > 0:52:55but the extraordinarily generous thing is that the Aboriginal people
0:52:55 > 0:53:00welcome this involvement, welcome this identification.
0:53:00 > 0:53:03They don't say, "You can't have a part of this."
0:53:03 > 0:53:07They welcome attempts by non-Aboriginal people
0:53:07 > 0:53:12to form these identifying bonds with country.
0:53:12 > 0:53:14They speak of this word country,
0:53:14 > 0:53:17which is, I think, a whole new concept for us,
0:53:17 > 0:53:22but something which we're trying very hard to learn.
0:53:22 > 0:53:29It's a great paradox, isn't it, that...that once-despised Aborigines
0:53:29 > 0:53:32are producing art about the country in a way
0:53:32 > 0:53:36that so many white fellows would have loved to be able to do,
0:53:36 > 0:53:37but never could,
0:53:37 > 0:53:40because they could only paint the colours,
0:53:40 > 0:53:43they could only aesthetically appreciate the landscape.
0:53:43 > 0:53:50Whereas the aboriginal appreciation is infinitely greater than that.
0:53:51 > 0:53:55So this mountain devil lizard is responsible for collecting
0:53:55 > 0:53:58all these ochre stones and they use these...
0:53:58 > 0:54:00these ochre colours during ceremony time,
0:54:00 > 0:54:03and the most important colour is the red colour.
0:54:03 > 0:54:07Cos this red colour is the one we paint our bodies with.
0:54:08 > 0:54:11And after we put that on, maybe mix it with emu fat.
0:54:13 > 0:54:16After we put that on, we put the other colours
0:54:16 > 0:54:19to paint the body design of the Dreaming
0:54:19 > 0:54:21we are representing from our country.
0:54:31 > 0:54:35So, this colour here, the red dirt, it's important to our people.
0:54:35 > 0:54:39It represents the earth, represents our mother.
0:54:39 > 0:54:41It's a colour that belongs to all people,
0:54:41 > 0:54:43all Aboriginal people in the central region.
0:54:43 > 0:54:46It's very powerful.
0:54:46 > 0:54:48It's as though...
0:54:48 > 0:54:52the Europeans' search...
0:54:52 > 0:54:56looking inland for the spirit of Australia,
0:54:56 > 0:54:59was answered by the Aborigines...
0:54:59 > 0:55:01who said, "Here it is."
0:55:10 > 0:55:12But the story doesn't end there.
0:55:12 > 0:55:15And even at this very moment,
0:55:15 > 0:55:19there is great controversy about the condition of life
0:55:19 > 0:55:25in the settlements around Alice Springs and around Uluru.
0:55:25 > 0:55:28Many indigenous communities in the interior
0:55:28 > 0:55:31present a contrasting image of the centre.
0:55:31 > 0:55:36Australia's original inhabitants still suffer from the highest levels
0:55:36 > 0:55:38of social deprivation in the country.
0:55:38 > 0:55:45Overall, their life expectancy is 17 years less than the national average.
0:55:45 > 0:55:48They've been left behind in a New Australia
0:55:48 > 0:55:51which has co-opted their vision of the centre.
0:55:56 > 0:56:00But among the populations of the towns and cities
0:56:00 > 0:56:02around Australia's periphery,
0:56:02 > 0:56:06older visions of a more sinister interior still survive.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09For some, the centre still holds the same fears
0:56:09 > 0:56:12that haunted the early explorers.
0:56:17 > 0:56:21Now a very different side of the desert is seen
0:56:21 > 0:56:24in the psycho thriller called Wolf Creek.
0:56:28 > 0:56:31And this was based on an actual story of hitchhikers
0:56:31 > 0:56:34who travelled into the desert
0:56:34 > 0:56:37and one of them escaped to tell the tale
0:56:37 > 0:56:40of the others being murdered
0:56:40 > 0:56:43by a psychopath killer in the desert.
0:56:45 > 0:56:49This harks back to the idea of the gothic desert as a place
0:56:49 > 0:56:53where, because it's so remote, because it's so vast,
0:56:53 > 0:56:55anything can happen,
0:56:55 > 0:56:59and all the normal restraints of civilisation are cast aside.
0:57:00 > 0:57:04Every year, backpackers and campers still disappear
0:57:04 > 0:57:06or die of thirst in Australia's deserts.
0:57:11 > 0:57:15There are still unresolved mysteries.
0:57:15 > 0:57:20So, that idea of a macabre evil presence lurking in the desert
0:57:20 > 0:57:23is still very strong in the culture.
0:57:33 > 0:57:35MUTED SCREAMING
0:57:38 > 0:57:43In two centuries of nation building, the new Australians have progressed
0:57:43 > 0:57:46beyond the original perception of their desert interior
0:57:46 > 0:57:50as a horrendous blank, a national embarrassment.
0:57:50 > 0:57:52It can now be seen as the red heart,
0:57:52 > 0:57:57a place of wild beauty that gives the nation a sense of uniqueness.
0:57:57 > 0:58:01But this new vision of life and freedom still competes
0:58:01 > 0:58:05with the vestiges of the older vision, of silence and death.
0:58:05 > 0:58:08It's a kind of dynamic, and it won't end and it shouldn't end,
0:58:08 > 0:58:10because it's all about wrestling
0:58:10 > 0:58:13with who we are and how we belong, and how white Australians
0:58:13 > 0:58:17and Aboriginal Australians are going to live together in this land
0:58:17 > 0:58:19and move forward in a way that's filled with prosperity
0:58:19 > 0:58:22and justice and hope and happiness.
0:58:22 > 0:58:24It's an important issue to engage with.
0:58:25 > 0:58:28It never stops, this is the great contention,
0:58:28 > 0:58:31which is carrying on in the Australian conversation.
0:58:33 > 0:58:36Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely,
0:58:36 > 0:58:39under the saltbush sparkling brightly,
0:58:39 > 0:58:42out where the wild dogs chorus nightly,
0:58:42 > 0:58:44that's where the dead men lie.
0:58:57 > 0:59:00Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:59:00 > 0:59:03E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk