Cirrus@Austlit

As he moves through his academic life in busy Melbourne, anthropologist John Bradley holds the songlines of the coastal country around remote Borroloola in the forefront of his thoughts. In its tone of profound engagement it recalls the mid-century anthropologist Ted Strehlow; in its anguished explanation of the traps besetting contemporary Aboriginal societies, it comes from the same stable of thought as Peter Sutton's recent work.

'For the old keepers of the landscape, it seems clear the world is shrivelling, losing its resonance, precisely because the people who belonged to it are gone and the law is weakening' (pull quote).