Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
establishing three Aboriginal land councils empowered to claim land on behalf of
traditional owners.
Under the act, the only claimable land is crown land outside town boundaries
that no one else owns or leases - usually semidesert or desert. So when the Anan-
gu, Uluru's traditional owners, claimed ownership of Uluru and Kata Tjuta, their
claim was overruled because the land was within a national park. It was only by
amending two acts of parliament that Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park was handed
back to its traditional owners providing it was leased back to the federal govern-
ment as a national park.
Around half of the NT has been claimed, or is under claim. The native-title pro-
cess is tedious and can take years to complete, often without success. Many
claims are opposed by state and territory governments, and claimants are required
to prove they have continuous connection to the land and are responsible for sac-
red sites under Aboriginal law. If a claim is successful, Aboriginal peoples have the
right to negotiate with mining interests and ultimately accept or reject exploration
and mining proposals. This right is often opposed by Australia's mining lobby, des-
pite traditional Aboriginal owners in the NT rejecting only about a third of such pro-
posals outright.
These Days
Today, mining continues to drive the economies of SA and the NT (and Australia's as a
nation), but tourism is the big success story in central Australia. SA has an extremely
well-oiled governing tourist body extolling the virtues of the state's diverse regions. In
the NT the tourist magnets of Uluru and Kakadu each receive more than half a million
visitors per year. At the end of WWII the population of Alice Springs (Uluru's main ac-
cess point) was around 1000; today it's around 25,000 - a direct result of selling the cent-
ral Australian outback as 'the real-deal Aussie experience'. The rise in environmental
awareness and ecotourism has also boosted Kakadu's popularity.
In the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy in 1974, an exodus saw Darwin's population fall from
45,000 to just 11,000. These days it's bounced back to a cosmopolitan 127,500.
Across the region, major issues spark and fade and spark again - most notably the af-
termath of the 2007
Northern Territory National Emergency Response
(aka 'The Inter-
vention'), heavily criticised as a backward step in Aboriginal reconcilliation; and in SA,
the water levels in the Murray River - but in the big cities daily life continues uninterrup-
ted. Adelaide retains its barrage of quality festivals dappling the calendar: this is a city of
