I thought of anoth­er con­nec­tion with McDouall Stu­art. He still had to do sur­vey­ing work for Cham­bers and Finke on his ear­ly expe­di­tions. I’m the same. I’m fund­ing this trip with a writ­ing gig in Alice Springs at a remote nurs­es con­fer­ence. That means I’m trav­el­ling through the cen­tre a bit lat­er than I’d like. McDouall Stu­art, too, didn’t have a choice on the tim­ing of his trips.

I go straight to one of the car­a­van parks and pitch my tent which looks small and lost among the motor homes and trail­ers. I head for a café along the road to check my notes about bush tuck­er and bush med­i­cine and hope­ful­ly get a decent cof­fee. Despite the noon­day heat, I’ve cho­sen an out­side table in the gar­den. I’m not quite ready for walls. Am I turn­ing into McDouall Stu­art? Heav­en forbid.

I’m lov­ing this rein­tro­duc­tion to refined liv­ing; inter­net access, a com­fy chair and a decent cof­fee, a fan waft­ing the air and an awning shield­ing the lap­top screen from the sun’s reflec­tion. Sheer lux­u­ry. At this very moment, a room is being pre­pared for me at a posh hotel not far from here, where I’ve got three days’ work at a remote health work­ers’ con­fer­ence. Fluffy pil­lows and a mat­tress off the ground. Will I want to return to basic camp­ing after that?

One of my aims on this trip is to explore how much bet­ter McDouall Stu­art might have fared if he’d been able to chat with the locals for tips on which plants to eat…

‘Stick to bush tuck­er,’ one of the teach­ers says [en route to the con­fer­ece]. ​‘Stay away from Abo­rig­i­nal issues. You’ll be delib­er­ate­ly mis­un­der­stood by one side or the oth­er, and prob­a­bly both.’ I’ve no inten­tion of stay­ing away from Abo­rig­i­nal issues. Remote and rur­al health work­ers from all over Aus­tralia are attend­ing the con­fer­ence where I’ll be writ­ing sto­ries about the pro­ceed­ings. That gath­er­ing won’t flinch from talk­ing about inequal­i­ties in Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ties. The pre­sen­ters know their stuff about health con­di­tions that per­sist in remote areas of Aus­tralia, dis­eases that shouldn’t be tol­er­at­ed in a first-world coun­try but are. I’ll ask about scurvy.

‘Ah. The Abo­rig­i­nal prob­lem.’ ​‘What’s to be done.’ ​‘No one has the answer.’ Now we’re onto respons­es that usu­al­ly stop any fur­ther debate, fol­lowed by a com­mu­nal help­less shak­ing of the head. I point out that the par­tic­i­pants in the con­fer­ence will be propos­ing all man­ner of solu­tions, from path­ways for Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple who aspire to study health at uni­ver­si­ty to pro­grammes with­in com­mu­ni­ties, such as car­ing for coun­try, all of which could have pos­i­tive effects on health out­comes. But I’ve lost their atten­tion. The teach­ers are more inter­est­ed in my hotel room. ​‘We’ll take it off your hands,’ says Jean, lust­ing after the mat­tress off the ground. ​‘Plump, fluffy pil­lows,’ sighs Sue.

I lis­ten to a pre­sen­ta­tion writ­ten by Pat Ander­son, Alyawarre woman, found­ing chair of the Low­it­ja Insti­tute. First Nations peo­ple find they are not spo­ken to, rather they are spo­ken about, she point­ed out.

‘It’s a tragedy that racism still exists in Aus­tralia,’ is the mes­sage in the address from CRANAplus CEO at the time, Chris Cliffe. ​‘The evi­dence is clear: racism has a direct and pro­found impact on not only the emo­tion­al but also the phys­i­cal health of victims.’

‘Our nation is a wealthy, well-con­nect­ed, peace­ful, devel­oped coun­try,’ he said. ​‘But still, the fur­ther away peo­ple live from a cap­i­tal city, the worse their health becomes.’ This is because of the inequity of ser­vices in remote areas com­pared to the cities.

And a call to action comes from Pro­fes­sor Roianne West, born and raised Kalka­doon on her grandmother’s ances­tral lands in North West Queens­land, who out­lines her vision.

‘I want to see my peo­ple social­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly includ­ed in the nation. I want to see our kids edu­cat­ed, healthy and with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow up and get jobs and to be engaged in mean­ing­ful activ­i­ty. I want to see our peo­ple liv­ing in good hous­ing. I want our chil­dren to have good food to eat, fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink.

‘Not too much to ask.’

Book blurb. Jour­nal­ist and adven­tur­er Rose­mary Cad­den gets more than she bar­gained for when explor­er and fel­low Scot, John McDouall Stu­art, joins her on a road trip to retrace his tracks from Ade­laide to the Top End of Aus­tralia. They are a tetchy cou­ple but rub along as they dri­ve around moun­tain ranges, through sandy deserts and into the lush trop­ics in Bad-Ass Bet­sy, the ever-reli­able Toy­ota, deal­ing with flies, leech­es and howl­ing din­goes. In a time when many of us want to bet­ter under­stand our his­to­ry, the explorer’s con­stant pres­ence on the trip and the peo­ple she meets along the way force Rose­mary to ques­tion what she knows and how much she still has to learn about this coun­try she now calls home.