Me and my Stetson 4x Beaver Open Road hat.
I am moving as gracelessly as possible towards a middle age that I suspect is already upon me, and I try to have as much fun as a disgruntled, one-legged, anti-social, curmudgeon of an occasional lawyer can have in the circumstances.
I live in the small township of Yuendumu, 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs on the southern fringes of the Tanami Desert on land owned by people of the Warlpiri and Anmatyerre language groups. Our small house is shared with my loving best friend and a constantly changing horde of camp dogs, orphaned joeys, lizards, snakes, birds, insects, dust and all the other strays and injured animals that come our way from the roadside or locals. I try to spend at least a couple of hours each day out bush, having earnest conversations with my avian friends and checking the constants and changes around me.
I’ve lived in the Territory for most of the past three decades and after a few years in the far south of the country returned to live in the desert in 2006 for the first time after too many sweaty years in the humid north.
Here I want to write about politics, law and life in the Northern Territory – looking back over my shoulder every now and then to remind myself and you, dear reader, of what has passed before, so that we might not forget lessons already learned. I’ll also write about the things that I love and share this part of the world with – the birds, animals, the acculturated landscapes and the people of central Australia. Hopefully you will like what you read and make your own views known. If I get things wrong, need to be pulled up or get a bit full of myself please feel free to correct me as you seek fit, while at all times maintaining a forceful civility. But of course I’ll reserve to myself the right to disagree, rationally or otherwise, with anything you say.
