Around 40 lives are lost in the Australian Outback every year. It’s a land that only some of the most resilient of Earth’s plants and animals are capable of calling home. Aboriginal tribes have mastered survival in the Outback over the course of 65,000 years, learning to live in the unique environment and source meals from sparse and poisonous vegetation. Most tribes respect the power of nature in the Outback to give and take life, and have become wiser through each generation. Their innovative methods that utilise the resources around them include extracting parts of plants as medication for illness and animal-inflicted injuries. For example, the leaves of the emu bush are used to wash cuts, and have demonstrated similar natural strength to modern antibiotic medication. Meanwhile, the bright-orange desert mushroom works to treat oral thrush when held in the mouth.
Many people who visit the Outback each year are foreigners to the unforgiving landscape. Despite covering 2.1 million square miles – more than 70 per cent of Australia – only five per cent of the country’s population live there. Often visitors fear the animals that have claimed the land, but heat and dehydration are the two biggest killers in the Outback.
